A couple of thoughts after class

These would definitely qualify as jump cuts. So don't feel obliged to read on. Perhaps the next one will be worth a look.

It seemed like I had my mouth open a lot tonight, so I eventually started editing. Here are a couple of random observations after the fact.

It seems funny in view of the end of the discussion that part of the minimal film training in editing that I had dealt with the issue of self-evaluation of the great ideas that you had while shooting. Usually, that really good footage that you took that was the thing you loved most needs to be left on the floor in the editing room (old school, I suppose), because it rarely fits with the rest of what you are working on. Same with a lot of "best ideas."

---The issue of accountability to those you are teaching just by the nature of evaluation seems to me to suggest that instruction has to be dynamic. If you realize in the middle of a lesson that there would have been a better way to present that material, shouldn't the next go round include those changes even if the disparity between the first and the last lesson is great? I spent a little bit of the A day this week with the beginning classes doing clean-up because I changed the lesson plan after the first couple of tries. It always seems to be worth it.

---An observation that my brother made after finishing his degree in computer science (he worked most of his life as an electrician before going back for the degree) was that software was one of the only things out there marketed with the understanding that when it got to you, it still wouldn't be working correctly. Perhaps instruction falls in that category as well according to the models that we looked at tonight.

---Final thing: when a new piece of software gets dumped on you that is supposed to be part of your instruction (Oracle based grade/student info system), how much responsibility should the trainers have? I mean, if they didn't cover the stuff in the main menus, if you are still discovering basic stuff about the program five years later when you have time to play with it, should you send a note to your boss and tell him/her that they need to look for someone new in ID, or do you cut them the same break that you get in front of a class every day?

Anyway...

The waste of time tonight, the next blog button. How far before you find someone you could reasonable have run into in the flesh?