We are using pd as the main tool in our course about musical communication ranging from basic synthesizer construction to sensors/video/sound interactions.
http://www.speech.kth.se/courses/1213/

We chose it since it is free and available on all platforms making it easy for the students to use it. pd is a little bit hard to start with due to the lacking coherence and documentation but the pd-extended version has helped a lot (Thanks Hans!). We do everything "pd-extended compliant" now. Also a number of master thesis students as well as researchers are using pd in projects right now.

I think the basic tutorials, such as the tutorial patches included in pd and Miller's tutorials, are pretty good to get started and understand the concepts. However, the most common problem is the following:
I want to do this <operation> - is there block that can do it and what's the name of it?
In the majority of cases in the beginning there is actually already a block that can do it but there is no way to find out except browse the whole documentation including all packages and guess. It used to pop up a text file with blocks ordered according to purpose in vanilla pd which I think was of great help. I suppose this is considered to lowtech and inflexible considering all the packages etc.
Anyway, some way of going from <function> to block would improve the usability of pd enormously. I think this is something we could engage in given that there are some simple tasks to do. For example, could the different blocks be give a category (e.g. "audio"), subcategory (e.g. "filter"), library (e.g. "zexy"), a one-liner description (e.g. "one-pole filter") and then include that in the browser so that you can sort and display according to categories?
/Anders

Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

We've been using Pd to teach sound and soon sensors/interaction here:

http://idmi.poly.edu

I try to make all my materials freely available.  It seems that we  
should all work together and come up with some kick-ass teaching  
materials.  Plus I think it would save us all a lot of work in the  
long run.

You might also be interested in Miller's new book which using Pd  
directly to teach DSP:

http://www.worldscibooks.com/compsci/6277.html

.hc

On May 29, 2007, at 6:32 AM, Mikael Fernstrom wrote:

  

I use PD with our MA/MSc students in Interactive Media and (some) in
Music Technology here at the University of Limerick.
http://www.csis.ul.ie/imedia/
http://www.ccmcm.ie/
http://www.idc.ul.ie/

- Mikael Fernström


On 29 May 2007, at 09:39, Eirik Arthur Blekesaune wrote:

    

Can anybody help me point out who uses PD to teach electronic
music? ..
(Algoritmic) Composistion
Synthesis
DSP-theory
real-time performance


What are the pros and cons for using it to teach DSP-theory?

Best,
Eirik Blekesaune
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