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Topic: An Informal Course? (Read 445 times) |
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tomek
 
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An Informal Course?
« on: Mar 2nd, 2003, 5:48pm » |
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Here is a sketch of an idea. There is a number of computational media courses being born at various educational institutions around the world. At this point that number is very small and people interested in taking them are not always in the position to attend the specific school or workshop. Could such a course become part of this very website?
Obviously running a course is an effort requiring time and energy, but here is a proposal how to organize it in such a way that it would almost 'self run' itself.
1. A section on this board/website called 'Assignment'. Once a week a new problem assignment is posted by educators associated with proce55ing. The topics could be 'recycled' from existing workshops, John Maeda's DBN courses, provided maybe by 'guest' educators, etc.
2. Students post their solutions (one per thread) and have them critiqued by other students and the educators on purely voluntary basics. I.e. there is no formal grading or guarantee that anybody will comment on one's work, but there is certain structure put in place for such process. Obviously there is no imposed obligation for the Proce55ing team to have time to critique the posted solutions, but their participation would be most welcome and valuable!
3. There is no need to register for the course and the assignments posted need not to have deadlines. The submission of the solutions can be an ongoing process so the newcomers that just discovered Proce55ing can participate in the already ongoing course.
4. Providing assignments/challanges/themes gives certain focus to one's study. It also puts sort of friendly creative 'competition' as each student would strive to shine with his or her submission.
The outlined above proposal is merely suggestion of introducing a bit of structure into the process of learning and critiquing the work on this forum. I think that assigning well though themes/questions by experienced educators will provide certain direction to the whole number of autodidactic souls exploring this new discipline during the late night sessions...
Many (most?) discussions on this forum are centered around the technical/programming issues. The proposed course would provide opportunity for shifting some of these discussions towards computational media as a form of expression and new way to design. Creativity would be the focus here, not the technical prowess.
I would love to 'take' such informal course. Anybody else?
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benelek
 
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Re: An Informal Course?
« Reply #1 on: Mar 3rd, 2003, 2:17pm » |
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mm, if there are enough "educators" trafficcing this bboard to make it an expanding idea... plus they'd have to know Processing better than the students 
i have a friend who used to hold a riddle competition on his website every week. while in general people might be less bothered to write tutorials, or even assignments, im sure people wouldnt mind posing challenges (a kind of reverse-example section?)
hehe, it may sound silly, but we could have a kind of P5 rapping battle going on, where someone posts a starter sketch, then others can take that one and twist it about and repost, and so on and so forth. if it were encouraged in a seperate section, this'd take the weight off starters to have to create something entirely new, and give everybody the chance to engage with the language as a dialog for conversation.
-jacob
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REAS
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Re: An Informal Course?
« Reply #2 on: Mar 3rd, 2003, 5:49pm » |
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I don't think it's important for the educators to "know" Processing better than the students, but I think it's imperative that the educators understand software and human concerns. I think tomek's idea is correct:
Quote:
Many (most?) discussions on this forum are centered around the technical/programming issues. The proposed course would provide opportunity for shifting some of these discussions towards computational media as a form of expression and new way to design. Creativity would be the focus here, not the technical prowess.
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But I would shift the focus away from "creativity" and onto invention, understanding the properties of the medium, and communication.
I think it's a great idea. I can't even begin to think about it until a proper reference is complete and the tutorials are finished.
I encourage other people to do it, though. If there is some consensus, I'll open a new channel on the board and give someone admin responsibilities for it.
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tomek
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Re: An Informal Course?
« Reply #3 on: Mar 3rd, 2003, 6:33pm » |
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Maybe somebody who is involved in giving Proce55ing workshops (outside of the core) team would like to use it as a development tool for future teaching materials? We can all probably provide suggestions to assignment themes, but I think that someone with good educational experience should make the final selections.
I think that the main value of such potential online course is in coming up with these themes/problems - it's all about asking good questions NOT about giving answers...
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