[Bf-education] A reference for certificate training based on MIT open courseware.

[Victor Yap]

Hello Bf-education members:

Someone recently gave me this website.  As I see the discussions going
on, I thought it might be a useful reference as the Blender Foundation
design its certification.  Granted that the program is for students
rather than to certified a trainer.  Hope it's helpful.

MIT launching certificate program based on OpenCourseWare, open source platform.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/12/mit-launching-certificate-program-based-on-opencourseware-open-source-platform.ars


Cheers!!!
Victor Yap
Lead Organizer of Blender User Group of Singapore.

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 7:00 PM,  <bf-education-request at blender.org> wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. Re: Organizing / suporting education (Adamson, Thomas)
>   2. Goal of BFCT. (Ivan Paulos Tom?)
>   3. Blender Reference (Pep Ribal)
>   4. Re: Organizing / supporting education (2) (Knapp)
>   5. Re: Goal of BFCT. (Knapp)
>   6. Re: Blender Reference (Knapp)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:08:47 -0500
> From: "Adamson, Thomas" <T.Adamson at snhu.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Bf-education] Organizing / suporting education
> To: Blender Educators and Trainers <bf-education at blender.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <E1111BCE21126847B96A1DF0F961457CC416CDA0D6 at SNHU-CCR-A.snhu.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Excellent point.
> Thanks,
> Tom A.
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: bf-education-bounces at blender.org [bf-education-bounces at blender.org] On Behalf Of Knapp [magick.crow at gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, December 19, 2011 12:43 PM
> To: Blender Educators and Trainers
> Subject: Re: [Bf-education] Organizing / suporting education
>
> On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 12:36 PM, Adamson, Thomas <T.Adamson at snhu.edu> wrote:
>> Doug,
>>  I will bet there are thousands of South Sea Islanders who are excellent swimmers and practice the skills you point out here, yet they would fail your exam - Meaning knowing the definitions is not an indicator of your actual swimming abilities.  :)
>>
>> Tom Adamson
>
> I don't disagree with you. On the other hand would you hire a 3d
> artist that said, I have no idea what IOR is or does? I was watching a
> video by Andrew Price where he says to set the IOR to 1.333 for water
> and then says he has no idea what it stands for. You can't say his
> blends suck, he does good nature work! But, my respect for him dropped
> a good bit at that point. We are making tests so that people can show
> that they are pros, not great hobbyists. I think that they should have
> a basic level of knowledge about each setting in blender and what it
> does. Knowing your tools and medium is basic to any profession,
> getting good results comes after you know your tools and you have
> developed your skill sets.
>
> Also I teach martial arts. There are people that just are good
> fighters but there are a LOT more that learned to be good. But really
> the important point is that most of those South Sea Islanders would
> loose to an Olympic swimmer and that Olympic swimmer could very likely
> tell you exactly what they are doing wrong and how they can improve it
> because he/she knows the physics of swimming as well as how to train
> and eat for best results.
>
>
> --
> Douglas E Knapp
>
> Creative Commons Film Group, Helping people make open source movies
> with open source software!
> http://douglas.bespin.org/CommonsFilmGroup/phpBB3/index.php
>
> Massage in Gelsenkirchen-Buer:
> http://douglas.bespin.org/tcm/ztab1.htm
> Please link to me and trade links with me!
>
> Open Source Sci-Fi mmoRPG Game project.
> http://sf-journey-creations.wikispot.org/Front_Page
> http://code.google.com/p/perspectiveproject/
> _______________________________________________
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:48:39 -0200
> From: Ivan Paulos Tom? <greylica at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Bf-education] Goal of BFCT.
> To: bf-education at blender.org
> Message-ID:
>        <CA+Zt8s7LsiqUo0gSp7Pav4kotJft+dmW+tzQb3wpy2EwWtX0gg at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Hi friends !
>
> Today I stand most of the day in IRC, answering questions.
>
> The goal of BFCT is not to be creating individuals
> that could pass through a test. Fans of Blender can pass it .
> The goal of BFCT is to teach professionals, artists
> or even good fans how to Teach other persons.
>
> To know the tools will be a necessary part of the proccess,
>  but it's not the goal !
>
> The goal is to help persons that have apropriate skills and knowledge,
> how to properly explain tools, using practical examples, solving
> everyday problems, and how to turn Blender 3D in a sharing
> platform of inspired winners !
>
> Good Vibrations !
> -------------- next part --------------
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:04:58 +0300
> From: Pep Ribal <pepribal at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Bf-education] Blender Reference
> To: bf-education at blender.org
> Message-ID: <4EF0258A.8070003 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Hi all,
>
> I haven't posted anything yet, because I feel that my vision on all this
> might be a bit off of what it seems to be the way of action you all are
> pointing out. However I feel that I must share my ideas. Actually I
> wasn't unsure if I had to post it or in bf-docboard... However if you
> think I also should post in the docboard list, tell me and I will do it too.
>
> Last 2 days I've been having interesting conversations in the IRC (with
> darKoram and greylica), and I think I should share my thoughts with the
> rest of you.
>
> The thing began 2 months ago. I've been thinking on becoming BFCT for a
> while, and finally I decided to go for it. However I find that the major
> problem for someone that wants to learn Blender in depth is the lack of
> an in-depth up-to-date Blender reference. The wiki can definitely be a
> good place to give you good hints, but I think it's far away from being
> a complete reference site... To make things "worse", development goes so
> fast that documentation gets outdated easily.
>
> I contributed in a few places in the wiki manual (and years ago I worked
> on the manual translation to spanish), but I think that it is currently
> not the resource (at least) I need.
>
> So I boldly decided to create my own Blender reference. My idea is to
> make a "dissection" of Blender, trying and testing every bit and piece
> of it, and to slowly create a brief reference (in Spanish at the moment)
> documents for myself which I could use in the future to make video
> tutorials, lectures and so on. I think that such a reference would be
> the perfect basis for: official manual, tutorials and video tutorials,
> examinations, courses, and a long etcetera.
>
> So these 2 months I've been "touching everything" in Blender in all the
> possible ways and forms. Result has been I start to learn a lot; at the
> same time I've done a lot of bug reporting (as I push Blender in all
> ways, and I find many little things), but it's hard, as ther is not a
> source of complete knowledge about all Blender features.
>
> The problem: it's very sluggish. That is Herculean task for a single
> person. However, I'm decided to continue no matter how long it takes.
> And it's gonna take me ages.
>
> With my recent conversations on the IRC, I would like to know if perhaps
> my personal project could be integrated into the Blender community. My
> goal atm is not certification, or exams, or whatever. I'm thinking on
> the long run: I am for a complete in-depth up-to-date Blender reference.
> Either made by me, or rather turned into an official project. Then, I
> can start thinking again on my BFCT, because I will have good material.
>
> If it worked ok, developers could even forget about documenting, except
> for a) the release logs and b) the weekly meetings.
>
> As I took a master certificate on project management time ago, I'm very
> aware that in every project planning is more than 50%. If a good project
> charter and plan could be designed (with all key elements of project
> planning or similar), and if enough people could commit, I would
> definitely change the approach from a personal project to a community one.
>
> The plan should integrate: writers, reference breakdown and assignments,
> regular meetings with the developers (let's say once a week?),
> schedules, definite milestones, resource management, scope, and so on.
>
> Regarding meetings with coders, I've been bothering them a bit those
> past days, but I think that "official" meetings would give writers much
> more confidence that their questions will be answered "this week".
>
> I think I've written too much. Well, I don't know if someone will think
> I'm saying a single interesting word, but at least I could share my
> thoughts. Let me know what you think.
>
> Best,
>
> Pep.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 07:35:47 +0100
> From: Knapp <magick.crow at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Bf-education] Organizing / supporting education (2)
> To: Blender Educators and Trainers <bf-education at blender.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <CAOdBB_4-QR3DskmjCnQYhAdyNZQU=Fv9js2=MFAVt8hKE4rwcw at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 10:42 PM, Octavio Mendez <octavio at g-blender.org> wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> 2011/12/19 Ton Roosendaal <ton at blender.org>
>>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Let's try to summarize the current state of discussions. I think
>>> there's three main approaches we can evaluate.
>>>
>>> (I also don't propose to rush in decisions in this holiday season, but
>>> try to find a good way forward mid january 2012?).
>>>
>>> ---- (1) Product approach ----
>>>
>>> Proposed by Ivan Paulos Tom? (discussed with me in Brazil too).
>>>
>>> Basically it means to develop a course book (or package) for teachers,
>>> to allow them to efficiently teach Blender to students. Targeted at
>>> students without real 3d experience.
>>>
>>> Ivan could use help from others for it. A good project plan can also
>>> result in BF to help funding it. We can sell the book via Blender
>>> estore, or make deals with other publishers.
>>> The contents for this product itself can be open/free licensed too.
>>
>>
>> I think this is a great idea. It is a need to have some kind of ?official?
>> study guide to a certification exam.
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ---- (2) Free/Open Certification approach ----
>>>
>>> Proposed by Octavio Mendez, Carlos Santana.
>>>
>>> Challenge will be to find a way to have volunteers cooperate in
>>> developing a standard Certification test, which can be freely handed
>>> out to educators and institutes to use. The test will be standardized
>>> and "BF certified", the certification itself issued by the testing
>>> facility.
>>>
>>> For this to work, a strong and active team of volunteers need to
>>> cooperate.
>>
>>
>> I think we can start to develop a 100+ questions to get an skeleton of a
>> exam. We can focus first on evaluate Blender 3D general skills and then test
>> it with a small group to see if it can evaluate the skills of the person who
>> takes the exam. Whre do you think is the best place to share and construct
>> the questions of the exam? I agree is not a good idea be public available.
>
> :-) So only people that have passed it can know it the questions or
> make the questions? Really, I would like to take this when it is done.
>
> The first training material is the manual which is currently in no way
> as good as 2.4 was. I keep thinking that the people he should come
> together and help with the manual as a first step; a bit of a side
> track but important.
>
>
> --
> Douglas E Knapp
>
> Creative Commons Film Group, Helping people make open source movies
> with open source software!
> http://douglas.bespin.org/CommonsFilmGroup/phpBB3/index.php
>
> Massage in Gelsenkirchen-Buer:
> http://douglas.bespin.org/tcm/ztab1.htm
> Please link to me and trade links with me!
>
> Open Source Sci-Fi mmoRPG Game project.
> http://sf-journey-creations.wikispot.org/Front_Page
> http://code.google.com/p/perspectiveproject/
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 07:57:03 +0100
> From: Knapp <magick.crow at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Bf-education] Goal of BFCT.
> To: Blender Educators and Trainers <bf-education at blender.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <CAOdBB_5qR5N4MFx=MzAHTqFa4pFpUcxkn2U4MEapGs+QdX4mow at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> We clearly have more than one goal and need more than one test.
> Teacher test
> worker test
> advanced test
> part tests (animation, modeling, rigging etc)
>
> On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 1:48 AM, Ivan Paulos Tom? <greylica at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi friends !
>>
>> Today I stand most of the day in IRC, answering questions.
>>
>> The goal of BFCT is not to be creating individuals
>> that could pass through a test. Fans of Blender can pass it .
>> The goal of BFCT is to teach professionals, artists
>> or even good fans how to Teach other persons.
>>
>> To know the tools will be a necessary part of the proccess,
>> ?but it's not the goal !
>>
>> The goal is to help persons that have apropriate skills and knowledge,
>> how to properly explain tools, using practical examples, solving
>> everyday problems, and how to turn Blender 3D in a sharing
>> platform of inspired winners !
>>
>> Good Vibrations !
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bf-education mailing list
>> Bf-education at blender.org
>> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-education
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Douglas E Knapp
>
> Creative Commons Film Group, Helping people make open source movies
> with open source software!
> http://douglas.bespin.org/CommonsFilmGroup/phpBB3/index.php
>
> Massage in Gelsenkirchen-Buer:
> http://douglas.bespin.org/tcm/ztab1.htm
> Please link to me and trade links with me!
>
> Open Source Sci-Fi mmoRPG Game project.
> http://sf-journey-creations.wikispot.org/Front_Page
> http://code.google.com/p/perspectiveproject/
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 08:31:40 +0100
> From: Knapp <magick.crow at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Bf-education] Blender Reference
> To: Blender Educators and Trainers <bf-education at blender.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <CAOdBB_6eZzK-Ct40QtjQ97TZphq940Eu48h+8j843XxMRMF-rw at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> I made a post today with about the same idea in it. I agree with you
> strongly. We really need at least as many manual writers as programs
> just to keep up! Then there are all those undocumented bits that are
> out there for example,  light field, or plenoptic, photography tools
> in blender. You would never know they were there but I asked one day
> on the dev email list. I made me really sit up and wonder what else
> was out there in blender! I think writing your own book is the wrong
> way to go. What we need is a really strong manual writers group.
>
> On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 7:04 AM, Pep Ribal <pepribal at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I haven't posted anything yet, because I feel that my vision on all this
>> might be a bit off of what it seems to be the way of action you all are
>> pointing out. However I feel that I must share my ideas. Actually I
>> wasn't unsure if I had to post it or in bf-docboard... However if you
>> think I also should post in the docboard list, tell me and I will do it too.
>>
>> Last 2 days I've been having interesting conversations in the IRC (with
>> darKoram and greylica), and I think I should share my thoughts with the
>> rest of you.
>>
>> The thing began 2 months ago. I've been thinking on becoming BFCT for a
>> while, and finally I decided to go for it. However I find that the major
>> problem for someone that wants to learn Blender in depth is the lack of
>> an in-depth up-to-date Blender reference. The wiki can definitely be a
>> good place to give you good hints, but I think it's far away from being
>> a complete reference site... To make things "worse", development goes so
>> fast that documentation gets outdated easily.
>>
>> I contributed in a few places in the wiki manual (and years ago I worked
>> on the manual translation to spanish), but I think that it is currently
>> not the resource (at least) I need.
>>
>> So I boldly decided to create my own Blender reference. My idea is to
>> make a "dissection" of Blender, trying and testing every bit and piece
>> of it, and to slowly create a brief reference (in Spanish at the moment)
>> documents for myself which I could use in the future to make video
>> tutorials, lectures and so on. I think that such a reference would be
>> the perfect basis for: official manual, tutorials and video tutorials,
>> examinations, courses, and a long etcetera.
>>
>> So these 2 months I've been "touching everything" in Blender in all the
>> possible ways and forms. Result has been I start to learn a lot; at the
>> same time I've done a lot of bug reporting (as I push Blender in all
>> ways, and I find many little things), but it's hard, as ther is not a
>> source of complete knowledge about all Blender features.
>>
>> The problem: it's very sluggish. That is Herculean task for a single
>> person. However, I'm decided to continue no matter how long it takes.
>> And it's gonna take me ages.
>>
>> With my recent conversations on the IRC, I would like to know if perhaps
>> my personal project could be integrated into the Blender community. My
>> goal atm is not certification, or exams, or whatever. I'm thinking on
>> the long run: I am for a complete in-depth up-to-date Blender reference.
>> Either made by me, or rather turned into an official project. Then, I
>> can start thinking again on my BFCT, because I will have good material.
>>
>> If it worked ok, developers could even forget about documenting, except
>> for a) the release logs and b) the weekly meetings.
>>
>> As I took a master certificate on project management time ago, I'm very
>> aware that in every project planning is more than 50%. If a good project
>> charter and plan could be designed (with all key elements of project
>> planning or similar), and if enough people could commit, I would
>> definitely change the approach from a personal project to a community one.
>>
>> The plan should integrate: writers, reference breakdown and assignments,
>> regular meetings with the developers (let's say once a week?),
>> schedules, definite milestones, resource management, scope, and so on.
>>
>> Regarding meetings with coders, I've been bothering them a bit those
>> past days, but I think that "official" meetings would give writers much
>> more confidence that their questions will be answered "this week".
>>
>> I think I've written too much. Well, I don't know if someone will think
>> I'm saying a single interesting word, but at least I could share my
>> thoughts. Let me know what you think.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Pep.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bf-education mailing list
>> Bf-education at blender.org
>> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-education
>
>
>
> --
> Douglas E Knapp
>
> Creative Commons Film Group, Helping people make open source movies
> with open source software!
> http://douglas.bespin.org/CommonsFilmGroup/phpBB3/index.php
>
> Massage in Gelsenkirchen-Buer:
> http://douglas.bespin.org/tcm/ztab1.htm
> Please link to me and trade links with me!
>
> Open Source Sci-Fi mmoRPG Game project.
> http://sf-journey-creations.wikispot.org/Front_Page
> http://code.google.com/p/perspectiveproject/
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bf-education mailing list
> Bf-education at blender.org
> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-education
>
>
> End of Bf-education Digest, Vol 74, Issue 24
> ********************************************