4 colour pens
KISS
No PowerPoint, OHP slides or any other tech-toys. As BPF has stated, you need to develop the brief in response to actual student understanding.
And make sure your students ENJOY their lessons!
Ha Ha - Only thing missing, your Tiger Moth!
Have you ever stopped to think that students might actually ENJOY their lessons more (and learn more) if modern technology was used, especially as this technology is very much part of every young person’s lives these days. In fact have you, Beagle, ever stopped to think about what your students would like, rather than what you want? Although, as you are not a current instructor, you probably haven't.
I appreciate and respect that you prefer instruction from the era that you learned in and are familiar with but do you really think an Airtour model aircraft, which looks like a reject from the Wright Brothers era, lends to a better explanation of pitch, roll and yaw than the actual picture of tbe cockpit and controls of the aircraft they are actually going to fly in, coupled with a dynamic slide of an aircraft pitching, rolling and yawing? Do you really think whiteboard text and a diagram can describe how the rudder pedals should be used on the ground?
Can you describe how the PA28 door locks and opens on a whiteboard better than I can show it with my three slides (with text) showing the two locks from both the interior and exterior of the aircraft. Can you write the complete checklist on the board in the time I can show a slide of the checklist? Do you really think that a landing pre flight briefing is not enhanced by an embedded video of aircraft landing and also showing landing errors such as ballooning and bouncing?
- Briefing from a laptop or Ipad couldnt be simpler as well as being able to provide much more information in the same amount of time. A statement can immediately be backed up with a picture, you just cannot do that on a white board.
There are a number of other reasons that white board briefings can be problematic:
The number of times Ive seen instructors scratching around trying to find pens to write on a whiteboard and then when they get one it doesnt write properly.
Some white board briefings ive seen you can hardly read because the instructors writing is so poor.
Its easier for the CFI/HOT to control standardisation with laptop/Ipad briefings.
Sunlight in the wrong direction can cause whiteboard problems in some briefing room as can glare from lights.
Putting up on a complete briefing on a whiteboard takes more time
A completed whiteboard briefing is too busy, in other words you end up with too much information presented to the student in one go. Bite size information presented without distraction of other text around it is much more efficient way of teaching and learning. If your not understanding this you need some serious revision of how people learn. Although most instructor courses never go into sufficient detail about how people learn apart from Beagles classic ‘4 colored pens’. If you apply some common sense to why we use different colored pens you may be able to understand why good teachers have moved on to modern technology
Sometimes instructors forget to put up sections before or during the briefings (One of the last instructors I checked out put up a circuit brief but had got onto base leg before he realised he hadn't mentioned LOOKOUT once!)
Its easier for new instructors to have a pre loaded briefing to use as an aid memoire
It’s difficult for the student to get the whiteboard into the boot of his car but a laptop/Ipad briefing can be loaded straight onto his device!
I stopped writing my PPL briefings on whiteboards 31 years ago! However on the FI course I teach students to construct briefings on a whiteboard but they must all also construct their own laptop/pad briefings.
I suspect most of you posting on this thread have never really tried briefing via a laptop or Ipad and I dont mean just once. It takes some effort to get your briefing on the device but you only need to do it once-now that is KISS! try it.