Benoit,
I agree with you here. Fisherman was good because students had the
opportunety to practice befor or even after class.
Andi
Benoit Melancon wrote:
Yes, I remember now that this was the major reason that was offered to
me at the time. I agree it makes a lot of sense (and the new system
DOES work well :-) ), but I am still personnally unsure that having
the 101 now taught by an ACI justifies taking away the "fisherman
project" altogether.
Some of my students only casually glance at the courseware when they
do the exercises in class, concentrating instead on whatever result is
expected of them at the end, and when hitting a wall like to find a
way out by themselves. The Fisherman was good for that because it was
a exercise that lasted a while and gave your a completed product at
the end, so you could really concentrate on a single goal (getting
the short completed) while you were doing it. In the case of David,
working on his own seemed to have been a necessity at the time, so
having such a tutorial could've helped.
My .02 greenback
Benoit
Tony Quinsee-Jover wrote:
Bonjour Benoit,
The fisherman project was removed for a reason. I'm not going to argue
whether the reasoning was good or bad, that's for others to decide.
You'll know as an ACI that the one recurring theme from students taking
201/301 was that there "wasn't enough time to cover all our
questions". By
far the main reason for this was that they hadn't completed the Getting
Started (Fisherman) tutorial carefully and methodically prior to taking
201/301 - so those students had large holes in their knowledge.
Avid therefore decided that the 201/301 courses would offer far
better value
for money if all students were starting from the same baseline - the
good
grounding in DS Methodology and layouts previously offered by Getting
Started. Hence they made it a pre-requisite that all students attending
201/301 must have previously completed 101 and at the same time they
insisted that 101 MUST be taught by an ACI so as to ensure that the
student
covered all areas in sufficient depth.
By way of example, our new Trainee Editor, Joe, came to us straight from
college 4 months ago. I gave him a couple of days on his own on a DS
training station to press buttons and get the feel of the software (and
tablet). I then took him through 101, then a week later took him
through
201/301. He's now conforming and onlining shows for us. Sure, I do
most of
the more complex stuff, but he has a comprehensive knowledge of all
areas of
DS and even reminds me of improved workflows occasionally.
So, from that one anecdotal experience I can testify that the new system
works, and works well.
Regards,
Tone :)
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ds(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-ds(at)Softimage.COM] On
Behalf Of
Benoit Melancon
Sent: 11 October 2005 17:50
To: DS(at)Softimage.COM
Subject: Re: DOCUMENTATION (was tracking)
Hello David,
Being an ACI for a living, I quite agree with you that the featured
documentation when you first get your DS can be quite dry to read...
Your story about spending a month on your own seems to me something that
most users have to go through somehow (isn't it the case with most
software
packages available today?), and where I work we usually tell the
people who
enroll for the 101 class to at least go through the "Getting Started"
manual
which is good groundwork for DS usage. When they come to the class after
that, their questions are always more numerous and well-targeted.
I believe as you do that classes are a good way to add to basic
knowledge of
the box. The major thing that changed over the years in DS education
is the
dissapearance of what used to be called the "fisherman's project', a
200-page or so tutorial that users could go through on their own. I
seem to
remember that one of the reasons was that some editors missed some key
elements when doing the tutorial by themselves, and having a class
environment was therefore considered a better alternative.
I'm usually better at learning on my own, so I can't really comment that
much on such decision, but I agree it would be nice to have a choice.
Benoit
david friedman wrote:
agreed. i took all 3 classes too. fortunately or unfortunately all
of my 'classes' ended up being 1 on 1 training.
but before that i spent a MONTH with the manuals and the system
trying to figger out how to work the damn thing.
d/l'ed everything i could from the web site (even stuff from earlier
versions), read... played... tinkered... cursed a lot (come to think
of it, i STILL do that sometimes) just trying to understand how it
works.
i shouldn't HAVE to take classes in order to learn how to use ANY
software! classes should provide supplemental information (maybe except
101 classes)
i SHOULD have been able to get a fair understanding from the
supplied documentation. that's what the docs are SUPPOSED to be for.
with ds they aren't.
david friedman
--
Andi Loor
www.andiloor.se
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