[Bf-education] Bf-education Digest, Vol 72, Issue 10

[Tony Mullen]

Hi Jentzen,

This mailing list doesn't get real heavy traffic. And no, other than
this list there's no centralized education-specific communication
channel that I'm aware of.

I'm also involved in documentation (I've written a number of Blender
books) and education. I teach Blender (among other things) to college
students at several universities and have organized weekend courses
for filmmakers and for the general public. I finished teaching a
week-long intermediate-advanced course at the Blender Institute
alongside Andy Goralczyk.

>I am interested to learn more about what the blender foundation take in regards to education.
>I am very tired of all the Autodesk Education summits and lip service.

The Blender Institute's main "official" educational effort is in the
Blender Foundation Certified Trainer certification program:

http://www.blender.org/education-help/certified-trainer/

I like to encourage people interested in teaching to take part in this
program. At the moment, to be honest, it is in its prolonged infancy.
We would like to see a time where it will become recognized as a
useful credential for Blender trainers. At presentt, it's not quite
all it could be, but it does represent the interest the BF has in
supporting educators. Please consider applying for certification.
Particularly with your background in the effects industry and your
work with Autodesk's educational programs, you might have some insight
into how the BFCT can be improved.

The Blender Foundation itself has pretty limited personnel resources.
The "official" education initiatives are the BFCT program, the Open
Movie Workshop which generates training material, and the occasional
publication of books (or maybe soon a magazine). Everything else is
basically grass-roots. There are a number of Blender books (both free
and commercial) training DVDs, and even curricula available (e.g.
http://ocw.tufts.edu/Course/57). There are also websites set up to do
Blender training or host tutorials.

http://cgcookie.com/blender/
http://www.blenderguru.com/
http://blenducation.org/wordpress/

Are a few that are currently online.

It would be nice to see Blender picked up by more schools. I think
there are distinct benefits to schools (art schools, high schools,
universities, even CG trade schools to some extent) teaching Blender
instead of or alongside Brand X. But there's no official plan to push
for this that I know of. Again, this kind of promotion is something
that is done on the grass-roots level.

I hope some of this is useful/new information to you. To be honest,
the Blender education scene is pretty fragmented, but I think this
also reflects how fragmented the professional demand is for Blender
educators. It's hard to develop a really robust certification program
if employers aren't using it as a hiring criterion.

Best regards,

Tony


>
> I have not?received?any new posts or digests since my?initial?post.
> Does the group?communicate?through other mean or goes through waves of communication throughout the year?
>
> Is anyone from the list going to the Blender conference for educational purposes?
> I would love to hear back from anyone who attends.
> curious about this talk, it seems like the only with specific goal of doing something?unique?with blender for education. ?"
> Samir Saidani, Bruno Meunier et al The Junior Studio: Blender as an Educational Tool for Cooperation Learning
> "
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