[Bf-education] Bf-education Digest, Vol 156, Issue 1

[Peter Kemp]

Hi Rik,

I think a 'reset/panic/home' button would be great.

This is my attempt to collect common problems seen amongst beginners using
Blender:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ywBjURBWrNjWkA1tI-cn2Vf4bjkSUG5FOU9-F6NNJTc/edit?usp=sharing
I use this with my trainee teachers and college students to help them fix
common problems that students have. Any more that we could add would be
great. I wonder if the Blender team might be interested in the common
problems/misconceptions? This is surely what a 101 model should be
attempting to deal with.

All the best
Pete

Dear Pete,
>
> I would agree with you on the proposal of beginners can use blender it
> taught in the right way ( considering the group is not too big)
> However there are a few common problems in education that I have noticed
> it might be good to collect common problems as been noticed by other
> educators
>
> please note that there is a big difference between kids before they have
> their own phone and those who are exposed to e.g ipads for education
>
> my biggest problem for beginners is that they get lost and don?t know how
> to get back in viewpoint, interface or screen layout, these are not
> effected by Ctr-z so they can not undo them
>
> if there would be a ?home ? button as there is for the viewpoint to bring
> them to default layout and some kind of default zoom level, pivot point,
> snap setting, viewpoint shading, layer visibility, tool pallet
>
> so more or less like clicking on the application template default but
> without changing the model thus far constructed  would be great help
>
> other common problem is loosing objects in space by moving them too far
> this happens often when using the numeric pad and scale or grab
> once they click the home button they are left with a seemingly empty
> screen
>
> I set the number of undo to 500 this depends on the response time of the
> teacher : about 5 minutes of being lost is more than 200 attempt of kids to
> try to solve
>
> it would be nice if the history pallet stay visible and have short cut
> letters added to the action so they could see what happens at all times
>
> A simplified version does not apply for primary kids: they do not compare
> this to something they know or have worked with.
> however kids with and ipad history are already spoiled and much more
> difficult to train in blender
>
> hope this helps
>
> Rik
>
>
>
>
> > On 02 Nov 2018, at 09:31, Peter Kemp <peterejkemp at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi  All, I think that there are two positions here:
> >
> > 1. we need a version of blender for the beginner that hides functionality
> > 2. beginners can use blender if taught in the right way.
> >
> > I'm largely in agreement with number 2 as we have thousands of cases
> where this has happened with the b3d101.org <http://b3d101.org/> project.
> But there might be a case for 1 amongst the most occasional users
> >
> > If we are hiding functionality, how are children going to easily find it
> when they aren't being taught by us? If there is an education version of
> blender, then we need to start by disabling, rather than hiding
> functionality. Think along the lines of how some strategy computer games
> work, where there is a greyed out version of a button that you need to
> level up to use. My fear is a user learning a 101 version of blender will
> then have to largely relearn the full version. I had a good conversation
> with Ton about this and there might well be a case for a cut down version
> of blender, for the very occasional user, think big buttons and very
> limited sets of tools, but as a learning path towards being a full user,
> the argument appears to be flawed to me.
> >
> > As mentioned previously (
> https://twitter.com/peterejkemp/status/1050360844343750656 <
> https://twitter.com/peterejkemp/status/1050360844343750656>) if we get
> the basics of blender 2.8 right, then it will be far easier to learn than
> 2.8, and with the right educational approach there is no need for a special
> 'education' version. I know there are people who would disagree with my
> suggestions on how to change the interface, but maybe we should look at
> this another way, the normal blender is the version that's easy to use for
> the beginner and the 'pro' version has no tool selected, starts in grey
> viewport mode and doesn't tell you what the tools are.
> >
> > Pete
>
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