[Bf-education] Re: Trainer Certification Entry (Dolf Veenvliet)

[info at macouno.com]

Lots of mail these last few days, which is great. A lot still needs to be done.

Ton, oddly I hadn't seen the wiki document about certification before today. So I've taken some 
time to read it.

Sorry if the next bit is a bit long, but I'd like to raise a few issues, that I think we must 
consider.

I don't know whether I would support giving a bunch of certificates to people requesting it 
through the education mailing list. Especially if the only requirement is to have produced either 
a "tutorial" or a "video". Which is also the big issue I have with proposal in the wiki.

To clarify: How can one judge whether someone is a good educator from what they have 
written? Certainly they might be good at "online education/documentation" but it says nothing 
about their skills in front of the classroom. This is also my biggest question to all of you. 
Where certification is concerned, how do we judge this? Is it even possible for any of us to find 
out if someone we haven't seen teach, is a good teacher?

I do think this is a real important issue, especially if the Blender Foundation certifies people. If 
someone is certified by the foundation, what they do in front of the classroom reflects on the 
reputation of the foundation itself. Pesonally I want the certification to really mean something. It 
has little value if it doesn't stand for a certain level of "excellence". One should not be certified 
just because they want to teach, they must be capable as well.

Now I must admit that perhaps it is a good idea for Ton to give a few certificates to people that 
he knows as "good blender educators". Because a start must be made somewhere, and it 
would be strange for those that set up the certification program to not be certified themselves.

I do like the idea of people having to submit a "tutorial" before getting certified. I also like the 
idea that this tutorial might be a tutorial that will really add something to the existing body of 
work online.

But also I am for a future educator having to take an exam. This exam could prove that the 
teacher at least has enough knowledge of 3d and blender to answer most of the general 
questions posed in a classroom. This might just be a multiple choice exam one could take 
online.

I am personally also for a Certificate not being limited by time constraints. Keeping track of 
teachers and making sure that they are still active would be a real pain. I'd say once someone 
is certified, they stay that way. But perhaps I see certification more as a "degree" in stead of 
simply the "backing of the foundation".

It's already a long mail, so I'll leave it here. I do hope a few more people will try to join us in the 
#blendereducation channel on the freenode irc chat server. There are meetings there from time 
to time, but mostly it's very quiet and chatting directly seems to be more productive than 
mailing lists.

Dolf Veenvliet (macouno)