I an not a professional flight instructor per se but rather in charge of training for a 703/704/705 Air Operator with 14 pieces of turbine equipment and 1 piston pounder. I do the ground school and some of the flight training on 5 different airplane types. Is there any manual you pro flight instructors would recommend that would help me do a better job of presenting the material I have spent a lot of time putting together. I see some of my guys loosing interest in some of my lectures.

It's good to see an experienced aviator seeing value in an input from an instructor.
I would start with TC's flight insructor guide.
http://www.tc.gc.ca/civilaviation/gener ... htm#Flight

I'm sure more experienced instructors will have more sources for you.

A few ideas:

1) I'm sure Transport will disagree, but if you can work some humour into your presentation, it will make it more entertaining and enjoyable. There is a very experienced flight instructor in the USA called Rod Machado that could easily do stand-up comedy part time. He is very successful.

2) Take regular breaks. Especially after a hour or so, people's attention wanders. Have a schedule up on the wall so people know when the next break (a few minutes - get some coffee or donuts) is going to be.

3) When people are starting out doing this sort of thing, at first they just talk, and they people just listen. That shortens their attention span. Make up a series of questions every 15 minutes or so, and work your way around the class, asking people the answers.

Good answer ndb.

Try and keep the students involved in the lecture. As opposed to giving them information, have them look it up in the manual. I really agree with the humour thing. That does help to keep students attention.
Use a variety of teaching aids, put some info on overheads, use a white board, and see if you can did up some videos. Power point presentations are good if you have the equiupment.
In terms of the a book, I really wouldn't recommend the FIG. Its geared more to ab initio training, and its a bit of an obscure read. (I didn't have much trouble with it, but I'd been teaching for 8 years already before I picked it up). I'd recommending heading over to chapters and asking for a book on doing presentations. (From what you've said you already have the lesson plans worked out, and you just want to polish up the presentation)

William Kershner has a really good book on instruction. It too is geared towards ab initio but has a section on advanced training.
His advanced pilot's guide is really good too - some interesting stuff you could incorporate into your lectures.
Cheers, FF

Oldtimer:

Get yourself a camcorder and mount it between the seats, you then control it with a remote so you can start and stop it at will.

After all your training flights plug it into a TV and both you and the other pilot will have the best learning tool you could ever want.

Next time you are in CYCD look me up and I will show you how to mount it , it is very simple to do.

I use a laser pen to point out on the screen where the problem started so the student really gets the picture.

I have been using video recording for years and it is flat out the best teaching aid I have ever seen.

Cat