Kent,
LTM Monitor definitions form the template of what will be instantiated when they are associated with a Node, Pool, or Pool Member. In that sense they are all templates.
You can create monitor templates with iControl and customize attribute values based upon the attributes of a parent monitor template. There are many parent monitor templates on the LTM which form the basis of how you monitor a service. The parent monitor can be as specific as an LDAP or DB monitor which you then would customize with connection strings, queries, filters, etc. The most generic parent monitor template is the external monitor which simply supples the name of a external monitor executable, environment variables, and arguments to supply.
What are you trying to accomplish? I always tell my customers who are new to iControl to open the GUI and perform the action(s) they are trying to accomplish there to learn some of the object layout/thinking..