foolfillment: the blog

The second presentation was from my course’s very own Eddie Mack with a talk entitled Driving the software is a start but where to next?

Eddie as I say is a teacher on the BTechEd course at Glasgow Uni, he’s taught in schools until very recently and has a speciality in graphics.

For me Eddie’s talk followed very nicely on from Steve Stott’s. The theme of it was getting started with using Inventor (or any parametric software for that matter) and moving along a spectrum of heavily led tasks to complete freedom for the learner. Eddie has delivered a great number of inservice days for teachers this year and thinks he’s hit upon a pretty reasonable order for introducing the software.

His premise was that the aim when teaching the software should be to allow the pupils to model/design anything they can dream up with little or no help, but to get to that stage quickly the pupil needs to be given a series of very heavily led tasks with specific instructions.
I’m not going to go through them blow by blow, mainly because I can’t remember them all, but it was roughly starting out by modelling some form; then adding holes; then adding dimensions/constraints; then introducing features like fillets and chamfers that can give a bit more interest.

He argued that to be truly free with using the software the key thing to understand is when and why you might need to create new workplanes, which most of the audience seemed fairly agreeable to.

This was another good presentation with lots to think about for next year. Unfortunately time was a bit short so there wasn’t chance to have much discussion afterwards, one big point though was the importance of getting away from teaching from a workbook that simply gives step-by-step instructions on how to create exactly the same object as everyone else in the class/year/school. Instead to find a way that suits you to teach the skills that allow pupils to model whatever form they can dream up. Aim to get to the stage where you can just release you class onto the PCs and let them get on with it and all of your teaching is to do with the subject rather than the software (which will change in 6 months time anyway).

Chris Munro followed up this talk and happened to have with him an example of exactly the sort of thing that bores teacher and pupils silly - a 40 page A4 booklet showing every step in how to model some artefact, allowing for no creative input from the pupil whatsoever.

I’ve got my fingers crossed that Eddie will put his slides on slideshare soon. If he does I’ll link to them from here.

I don’t want to make a habit of these short posts so I’ll try to make this the last.
I found out my school today - Ross High in Tranent. I’ll not say any more than that for now, I’m hoping to manage a visit on Monday and after that I’ll maybe have a firmer idea of what I’ll be teaching next year and how much blogging I’ll be able to get in. Afterwards I’m planning to make it along to the next edubuzz open meeting.

On an unrelated note I was at uni today for a session on Inspiring Creativity and Design with 3D Modelling, I’m going to try to write up some of the presentations here soon but it’s looking like I’ll be bust for the next wee while. I will really have to nag Eddie Mack (one of my lecturers and the organiser of today’s event) to get around to putting his presentation online using youTube and technobuzz.