[CLUE-Talk] help with new course

[G. Richard Raab]

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On Sunday 15 December 2002 09:33 pm, Roger Frank wrote:
> Once again I go to the wellspring of creative ideas of my
> fellow Cluebies.  I am tasked with creating a new course for
> the high school to be offered next fall.  It is a course in
> Computer Animation and Graphics.  For anyone who has read
> previous posts, it should come as no surprise that there is
> no money to spend on software or probably even textbooks.
> So it's going to be open source all the way, which I hope will
> work out to do what I want to do.
>
> Therein lies the difficulty.  Just what should such a course
> include?  I'm thinking it is more than just creating some 3D
> images or animations.  I think there should be some appreciation
> of what's going on (perhaps with an OpenGL or a Java 3D piece).
> I think there should be some appreciation of animations that
> mimic intelligence (perhaps with boids or something else).
> The course prerequisites are Multimedia I and Algebra 2.
> What this means is that student might not have any programming
> experience, and they might not have had 3D matrices in math.

Have you done course design before? Disregarding that have you looked at some 
of the courses offered at other schools? I am actually suggesting perhaps the 
MIT stuff. If they do not have anything, then consider looking at the course 
outline from a University or a training facility (reputable is better).

- From my own suggestion, start low-level and build up.
Not try with a top-down. Likewise rather than teaching a libray/application, 
teach principles instead.





>
> So what are your thoughts on what might make sense in such a
> course?   Anything goes, to the list or to me personally if
> you prefer.  I'd like your input in how to make this a great
> course for the students.

Do you have a format on HOW to deliver?  I had to build and deliver several 
courses (perl, Linux SysAd,and Linux API) to a company. I found that using a 
web site on a local server actually worked great. The students (adults) loved 
it. In fact, All of them commented that they prefered it over the workbooks 
that I have been bringing. Interestingly enough, they wanted a textbook such 
as o'reilly. Made sense to me.

cheers
g.r.r.
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