Elevator Pitch
Show your coworkers a better way, and give them the tools they need to get to go from PowerShell mystery to mastery with PSKoans. Break away from being “THE PowerShell person” and shift to mentoring your coworkers in order to create a growth environment to elevate your team!
Description
PSKoans
Mastery comes from a thorough understanding and ability to effectively apply the basics, and such an understanding can only come from continually applying the tools to hand in order to solve problems both old and new. The PSKoans module provides a guided framework around which you can base one-on-one or group lessons. The module is publicly available on the PSGallery, so students can participate in class discussions and collaborative learning, as well as complete portions on their own time as homework or to revise sections they need to work on.
PSKoans is also very effective as a self-teaching tool; it allows you to try solutions and can give you immediate feedback on exactly what the result was, and what you need to look at changing. You can even add assertions to test yourself on the way to achieving a particular koan and verify your own assumptions as you work towards a solution. Every failed attempt is a step on the road to mastery, and each step on the road gives you something new to learn, or a new way to apply something you’re already familiar with.
Summary
In this session, I will cover:
- History of “koans”, concept, and purpose
- Getting started with PSKoans
- Fun with PSKoans (Demos!)
- Teaching with PSKoans
- Contributing to PSKoans
- Koans & Katas for other Languages
Notes
As the author of PSKoans, I am probably best acquainted with how it functions and some of the ways it can be used.
I believe Thomas Rayner has also submitted a PSKoans proposal, and he’s definitely better qualified to talk about using it from a teaching perspective, as he’s actually taught a number of his coworkers and peers using PSKoans. I’d love to see his talk as well, just to see what he’s managed to make of it.
Maybe a joint/back to back session would be fun, who knows. ;)