SkillDisplay - Plan or Enhance Your TYPO3 Lectures

Thanks to Christina from SkillDisplay for sharing!

This blog post is for everyone who wants to teach content management systems. Possible applications are trainings, school classes, university modules, further education in companies, workshops and events.

Topics covered in this blog posts include:

• How to get started

• Available learning resources for TCCE

• Why use SkillDisplay?

• Get support from a company

Are you at the beginning of creating your TYPO3 lecture/training, or do you already have resources and want to enhance and structure them? We can help you in either way!

First of all: Find the right SkillPath

Find the SkillPath that suits the level of learners you are teaching. For TYPO3 beginners, you can use the TYPO3 CMS Certified Editor. Higher education would include the TYPO3 CMS Certified Integrator as well as the TYPO3 CMS Certified Developer SkillPaths.The SkillPaths were created by the TYPO3 Education Committee as well as the TYPO3 GmbH and match the syllabus from the official certifications.

How many skills?

To get a rough feeling for how much time you will need for teaching, we created a rule of thumb plan. We would recommend using 10 minutes to explain the skill and give a basic concept of it. Another 15 minutes can be used to experiment and test the new knowledge in a hands-on way. If you have a 50 minutes lecture, you‘ll be able to teach two skills. Be aware that teaching styles and student knowledge levels differ greatly - in the end this demonstration for a calculation should give you a basic idea. As you are the expert in education you'll quickly identify a realistic average per skill for your own lectures.

How to choose skills

You can either choose certain skills of the SkillPath or the whole thing. It depends on how much time you have to teach and how much experience the attendees already have. As the skills have dependencies, you may stick to the SkillPath and teach them in the given order. We are currently working on an automated visualisation of the SkillTrees on the platform. SkillTrees show how skills are related to each other and which prerequisites you need for a skill you choose, visualised in a tree. That means that you can choose a skill and get a visualisation of all the prerequisites in the future. There is already a manually created SkillTree for TCCE v8 you can download it here.

How to structure your class / workshop

• Find or create learning resources
  By using a SkillPath, you already have a predefined order what to teach. Description, goals and links with recommended resources are available for each skill. If you teach the TCCE skills, find all the information about already existing content in the next passage. In case you are teaching skills of the TCCI or TCCD you‘d have to create your own teaching material.

• Prepare the Introduction
  The beginning of your class or workshop should be used for introduction and setup. If you have just a short time available, tell the participants to come with a setup that is already ready to use. There is a setup sheet available in the educator box, which is explained later in this post.

• Online Classroom
  By cooperating with SkillDisplay, you get the possibility to create your own ‘online classroom‘. The learners join a so-called ‘organisation’ by using predefined codes. The organisation will be set up by the SkillDisplay team for you. You can then see who of your learners gained which skills and can verify them with the Educational-SkillUp.

• Verify Students
  SkillUps are four ways of verifying a learner’s skill. The Self-SkillUp button is used by the student, when he or she thinks to be capable to reflect and apply the skill. For the others - Educational, Business and Certification - the learner has to send a request. As you are the trainer, you can accept or decline the educational SkillUp, depending on your opinion whether the learner has acquired the skill. For verifying by Educational SkillUps you need to cooperate with SkillDisplay.

During the course of the Erasmus project, our partners created learning resources, that you can just “Plug and play”. Take the resources and adapt them to your class.

You can choose from the Educator Box or the Mainzific Rim adventure, or combine them.

• Educator Box
  The resources for the Educator Box are created by the TYPO3 Education Committee, empowered by SkillDisplay. It contains the first skills of the TCCE v8 and a setup guide, as well as the TCCE SkillTree. In the future, also educator sheets created by our partner school in Vienna to provide additional content, will be available. The partner school in Romania has the task to translate the whole content to Romanian, so we are happy to announce that Romanian resources will also be available in the future! You can download the English Educator Box which also contains business content here, the SkillSheets here and the SkillTree here.
  Did you already get the Educator Box as a hard copy at one of the events we attended and tried it out? Send your story about how it worked out to the SkillDisplay team!

• MainzificRim
  The MainificRim adventure is split up into four chapters which contain all the skills of TYPO3 v8 LTS. You can use them for free, but need to send an email to office@skilldisplay.eu for getting access to it. If you want to get access to the secret missions, you’d have to become our partner. The adventure is a hands-on way to study for the TCCE exam while protecting Mainz from a dinosaur attack.

• Best practice: University Days 2018 in Mainz
  In our last blog post about the MainzificRim Adventure at TYPO3 University Day 2018 (T3UD18), there was a 1 ½ day guided self-learning workshop. The students were able to gain a lot of new skills in just a short time. Three of them were even able to accomplish the complete TCCE certificate during this time. If you'd like to find out more, read SkillDisplay's last blog post about the TCCE exams at T3UD18.

You meet industry standards while only teaching what you need

Not only do the lectures match your curriculum, but also the industry standards. All skills are created by industry fellows (e.g. for TYPO3 they’re created by the TYPO3 GmbH and the TYPO3 Education Committee) and legitimized with an according certificate.

You teach all or a part of the skills needed for an official industry certification

The SkillPaths match the syllabus of the official certifications. The students may do a certificate in the future, to show what they can do. This is a good way to prepare them.

You stay up to date with development in technology

When the certification changes, our industry fellows will update this in the SkillPath - rotating out obsolete skills or introducing new ones. You'll be able to adapt easily by having those skills identified for you on the platform.

Identify recommended learning material

Each skill has a "links" section which identifies recommended learning material where you can find the necessary information to meet the goals of said skill - a perfect base for teaching your students or using the "flipped classroom" technique.

Cooperate as an educational institution with a company! The partnerships for educational institutions are not for free, but it is possible to get an already paid partnership, as there are companies who want to support educational institutions in TYPO3.

There are companies partnering with us, who would like you to become their partner. These companies are F7 media GmbH from Hamburg, abaton from Graz and plan2net from Vienna. When they accept you as their partnering educational institution, you’ll get the ability to verify your learners with the educational SkillUp, as well as get your own “organisation“. Besides, you can benefit from your industry partner, as they can hold workshops and interact with your students. That way the students get in touch with the working environment.

If you‘d like to get a partner, but are not located near to one of the companies we can set you on the list so you’ll get a partner as soon as one is available.