When contributing to this repository, please first discuss the change you wish to make via issue, email, or any other method with the owners of this repository before making a change.
Please note we have a code of conduct, please follow it in all your interactions with the project.
- Update the CHANGES.md with details of changes to the modules - this includes corrections, syllabus updates for new features, or practical information.
- You may merge the Pull Request in once you have the sign-off of another developer, or if you do not have permission to do that, you may request the reviewer to merge it for you.
Before making a DevOps Represent module, consider asking the following questions:
It's important to identify who your target audience is, and what their knowledge baselines would be. Put into practical terms: are you planning to cater for absolute beginners? Or do you aim to teach people with existing backgrounds in tech?
Even then, it's important to identify the level of experience you're working with. This is critical as you define the level of depth you want to dive in - e.g., do you assume that the attendees have experience with the command line, or do you also need to cover CLI basics?
It is also good to be able to articulate what you want the attendees to be able to do: the workshop aims to empower people, and it's useful to declare where you'd want them to be by the end of the day.
To put it into questions: do you want the attendees to be able to remember what you covered, or do you want them to be able to create a solution? Would they be able to evaluate between different solutions?
Consider using Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning as a guide.
Knowledge checks are a powerful tool - they let you verify if the attendees understand your content, while at the same time encouraging knowledge retention. This is why teachers usually structure lessons so that there are quizzes at the end of it.
Feedback can take many shapes: a quiz, a poll, or a question at the end of your practicals. Maybe make it fun even - have some small prizes for attendees who ask good questions.
It's good to have a fun, informative talk before diving into the practicals. Consider covering the following areas:
- The history and context of the particular technology
- How it works
- How and when to use it
- How it's valuable to the business
Keep it short, but remember to pace down. It's better to take your time than rush too fast and risk leaving people behind - remember: not everyone is willing to ask you to repeat concepts and facts.
Consider running a practical exercise that the attendees can follow. A few things to keep in mind:
- Make sure that everyone knows beforehand what they need to go through it. Do they need
awscliinstalled? Do they need their own AWS account? - Make sure that the environments the attendees are deploying/building to are enclosed and free of dependencies.
- Make sure that coaches have gone through the material beforehand.
If you're feeling up for it, moonshots are also a good idea - optional exercises for those who blitz through the material.
Consider saving a portion of time for reflection and self-evaluation. Ask the attendees questions (whether in text or face-to-face):
- What did you learn?
- How would you apply this to something you want to do?
It's worth thinking about the day as a whole. There's multiple ways that you can structure an all-day DevOps Represent workshop.
The "Kata" is essentially a way of structuring your content so that all your modules produce roughly the same output. Imagine an EC2, ECS, and Lambda modules all producing a standard webapp.
This approach works if you want to enable attendees by giving them the ability to distinguish between different ways to approach a problem. When do I use an EC2 versus a Lambda? would be the kind of questions that they will be able to answer.
The "Castle" is a way of structuring your content so that your modules contribute to one big thing. Imagine an EC2, RDS, and ELB module all contributing towards building a reasonably complex ecosystem.
This approach works if you want to enable attendees by giving them the experience of wiring up several systems and making them understand how to make everything work together. AWS thrives on providing "lego blocks" that you can stitch together, and this is a good way to highlight that.