What is it that is needed? ...tutorials

[Trevor DeVore]

On May 21, 2005, at 4:41 PM, Judy Perry wrote:

> SNIP ...
>
> Much as I'd like Trevor to be able to pay his bills and feed his  
> family, I
> believe that today's teachers really aught to consider it an  
> obligation to
> learn to create simple educational wares, just as we expect them to  
> devise
> lesson plans, dittos, overheads, PP presentations, etc.  With a  
> language
> as easy to learn as Rev, there's just no excuse not to (other than the
> lack of awareness of the product, something I thought our ed czar  
> would be
> working towards fixing).

I think we are actually working towards the same goal.  The learning  
software my company develops was made to facilitate creating learning  
materials.  We allow the educator to focus on content, not delivery.   
I don't want the average educator to have to understand interface  
design or know how to make their content searchable, etc.  I'm not  
saying that there is no need for teachers to create educational  
wares, but in many cases it is important to have a standardized way  
of organizing information.  I believe it makes things easier for the  
teacher and for the student.

My father is an example of what I am talking about.  He is a doctor  
and is one of the leading experts in his field.  He speaks all over  
the world and creates his own software in Macromedia Authorware in  
order to teach people certain concepts.  He has spent an enormous  
amount of time over the years learning about computers and figuring  
out the intricacies of the software so he can send CD-ROMs out to  
people.  He can only work on these training programs in his free time  
so they end up taking quite a while to produce.  If he didn't have to  
worry about why his fonts show up differently on mac and windows, how  
to burn a CD that works on both platforms, determine if his interface  
is logical or not, etc. then he could create more content in less  
time.  I think everybody wins in this scenario.  He will be doing his  
next project using our software so we will see for sure how much of a  
difference it makes.

With our solution there could still be a way for teachers to create  
their own stacks.  Right now our software supports QuickTime movies  
which can have all of their own logic (3D animations, etc.) and can  
used to teach concepts.  One day I hope to expand it to support  
revolution stacks (this would be easier if Rev allowed you to display  
a stack within a stack which had an independent message path, but  
that is a topic for another list).  If this happened then a teacher  
could create all of the stacks they wanted to and insert them into  
their lesson using our system which handles all of the grunt work.   
The teacher still has creative power but in a disciplined system that  
benefits the student.  The teacher also isn't required to learn as  
much about building standalones, interacting with the system, etc.  
because we remove the need.

Anyhow, I will be showing the software during one of my talks in  
Monterey.  It would be interesting to discuss this with you there.   
You will be there, right?

-- 
Trevor DeVore
Blue Mango Multimedia
trevor at mangomultimedia.com