Once upon a time, I couldn't fathom talking in front of large groups. Sweaty palms, pounding heart, quavering voice--the symptoms of a self-conscience speaker unable to happily entertain himself with <a title="Picture Your Audience in Their Underwear" href="http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/picture-your-audience-in-their-underwear-3534112.html">thoughts of the audience in their underwear</a>.  Despite my fears, I somehow managed to regularly get up in front of thirty-six undergraduates and teach them the fundamentals of human anatomy and physiology, which included some weeks focusing on naughty bits that civilized gentlemen don't discuss in day-to-day conversation. Not the most comfortable of situations, yet I did fairly well--reviews were altogether positive, the single most memorable criticism suggesting, "He's cute, but he should smile more."

To date this particular period in my life, we still used overheads and transparencies as visual aids. Flash forward to the days of projectors and PowerPoint, and I find myself back in the teacher's saddle, although I find the experience more comforting and delightful than I did. The two hours that I teach every week in the spring lends me to two-hour catharsis of sorts--day-to-day worries bleed away while I focus on helping my students. And, admittedly, I sort of enjoy being on center stage, clicking my way through slides and drawing diagrams on the whiteboard.

Not only has my attitude changed, so has the content that I present. No longer do I list the bones of our skeleton, tour the chambers of our heart, or guide us through the labyrinth of the lymphatic system.  Instead I lead students through the fundamentals of a different kind of anatomy, the very building blocks of the world-wide-web. XHTML elements replace cells as our fundamental unit of life, HTTP protocols replace blood, and it's CSS, not bone structure and skin cells, that flesh out our web pages.