My first day teaching...

I just arrived home from Holyoke where I spent 2 hours teaching an introductory course on energy auditing. It is the first of 8 courses and each is supposed to last 2.5 hours...a total of 20 in-class hours. I found out today that 2 1/2 hours is a long time when you are standing in front of a room talking. The class went well - I showed some videos on energy auditing and how to conduct a blower door test, and we also read a few articles (like this one):

Stimulus Package has Green for Clean Energy

Here are links to the videos I showed:

(How to conduct an energy audit)

(A blower door test)

And lastly, a few pictures of my teaching:

Lost in thought...

There's only so much talking I can do!

All in all, today went really well. It ended at 2 hours instead of 2 1/2 hours as I had a hard time gauging time up there. The kids knew very little about alternative/renewable energies and energy auditing, so when I asked them what new things they learned today their response was "everything". I guess that's a good thing, though I'm having a little difficulty trying to figure out a way to make a long class more engaging. I'll think of something I'm sure.