[Bf-education] 2.49 or 2.5 this academic year

Juan Dario Rodas M. jdrodas at yahoo.com
Fri Apr 8 02:27:14 CEST 2011


Hello everyone, hope you're well.

I'd like to share my experience as a teacher using Blender, the documentation used in the course and the work opportunities for my students.

Last year when the alpha version was at the oven's door, I had the same concern expressed in this thread: Will I use 2.49 or 2.5x version? Ton offered me the vision of a relatively stable beta version by the end of spring term. Teaching CG with an alpha version is a real headache, especially when the options change their behavior or disappear altogether ("Add to toolshelf", we miss you!), no to mention the endless times it crashed. A big part of the class material and documentation had to be rewritten, so we encouraged our students to use video tutorials like BlenderCookie. The good thing is that by the time we started to see fluids and rigid bodies, the beta version allowed us to finish the topics of the course. One year later, the doubts have gone and the 2.5x version stayed.

In terms of career opportunities in my city, the major initiative proposed around this issue is to use the tools from Autodesk, which has agreements with almost all educational institutions in the area. A big portion of the Local Studios require specific expertise in tools like Maya, 3ds Max or Nuke. The problem is that the average student doesn't have the computer needed to run Maya or 3ds Max in a productive way; so they were very grateful we tought them the initial courses in Blender. Some of my students still use Blender as part of their professional skills and try to share the passion for the product in their workplaces, but they recognize that still there is much work to do in marketing of the open source alternatives.

Greetings from Colombia!

Juan Dario Rodas (JuanD)

--- On Tue, 4/5/11, Jessica Cortes <lou.jessica.cortes at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Jessica Cortes <lou.jessica.cortes at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Bf-education] 2.49 or 2.5 this academic year
To: "Blender Educators and Trainers" <bf-education at blender.org>
Date: Tuesday, April 5, 2011, 5:37 AM

Hi everyone !

I am following your discussion with great interest and I would like to ask a question.
If you teach Blender in school, do you know company that can already take this student to wook with Blender ? In France for exemple ?


Thank you and have a nice day !


2011/4/5 Doug Ollivier <doug at flipdesign.co.nz>

I get a lot of confused people (students, management, teachers, IT

department etc...) about the following:



[*] sing the beta versions over the stable versions (although they were

convinced after i just said i was doing it, and told them i can teach

30% more in the same time simply due to 2.5x being so much mroe logical)



[*] When to write a new book. i.e. they were waiting for a new version

before writing another book, not realizing that the blender naming

scheme is totally $#*(%ed.  I managed to convince them it is an entirely

new package now.



[*] When to stop distributing the old book. i.e. they are still handing

out 2.45 version books thinking it will be fine for the whole 2

series..... Uh-Oh, wrong!



This is a serious serious problem, and only gets me flack every time i

have a new class etc.... I've simply stopped defending Blender on it,

and say that it is great software with poor version numbering.



I wish Ton would understand the headaches the current numbering system

causes, It is a tangible issue that is holding Blender Back no-matter

how much it improves technically.





On 5/04/2011 11:41 a.m., Graham Hall wrote:

> Hey I teach @ FE college in UK

>

> Getting some stick from management for using 2.5 beta rather than 2.49

> - anyone else getting any?

>

> thanks

>

>

>

> _______________________________________________

> Bf-education mailing list

> Bf-education at blender.org

> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-education

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