Hi List~
I'm curious about teaching Pd to interested people, and know that a number of you have given workshops on the subject. I could really use some collective wisdom on this.
What methods do you use to structure and communicate your course material? How do you market it within the city that you are teaching? What sorts of materials do you use?
I found this wiki page that has some tutorials http://wiki.dataflow.ws/PdMtlAbstractions/Contents. Is there any other information about teaching Pd that has been posted? It would be great if there were a space dedicated to Pd-educators to know the tried and true methods of communicating the ideas to new students.
Thanks!
~Kyle
Hi Kyle and the list,
2007/6/20, Kyle Klipowicz kyleklip@gmail.com:
Hi List~
I'm curious about teaching Pd to interested people, and know that a number of you have given workshops on the subject. I could really use some collective wisdom on this.
What methods do you use to structure and communicate your course material? How do you market it within the city that you are teaching? What sorts of materials do you use?
Artists centers are great. Pd is free as in beer and speech. It is good to explain much how the GUI works, and to help the students to create a common patch (everyone the same) step by step. Go deeply into one instead on trying to cover too much. You can go as far as dollar signs and such in one day, but stick with one or two patches together as a group. You can start with a few examples though. (not goind in too much detail in their explanation)
I found this wiki page that has some tutorials http://wiki.dataflow.ws/PdMtlAbstractions/Contents. Is there any other
It is a library. Of course you can look in the abstractions files to understand how they work. We would like to have more users in it, and I would like to make it a standard pd library / namespace with categories for even externals some day, in not too long.
information about teaching Pd that has been posted? It would be great if there were a space dedicated to Pd-educators to know the tried and true methods of communicating the ideas to new students.
For now : http://wiki.dataflow.ws/TeachingPureData ... I know I should use puredata.info, but I am really in love with this little Moinmoin wiki on dataflow.ws !
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:18:23 -0500 "Kyle Klipowicz" kyleklip@gmail.com wrote:
Hi List~
I'm curious about teaching Pd to interested people, and know that a number of you have given workshops on the subject. I could really use some collective wisdom on this.
Teaching Pd is something I really enjoy. What I've seen so far are great differences in audience goals and the need to prepare and research exactly who you are talking to and why, because Pd has such wide applications. Look for your own niche skill that Pd allows you to express and use that as a guide.
What methods do you use to structure and communicate your course material? How do you market it within the city that you are teaching? What sorts of materials do you use?
Often people bring their own laptops and headphones.
The best format imho is lots of practical elements, short exercises that can be done individually or in small groups, keep dove-tailing talk time with hacking time.
If machines are available but are administrated workstations it helps to take live CD environments so you aren't treading on anyones toes having groups of students install stuff. Or make sure whoever invited you or organised the talk has done the groundwork for any practical element.
A copy of PureDyne is useful, with the patches used in a workshop handed out on thumbdrive, by web-site or burned into the distro. For the cost and time it takes to run off a dozen copies it's worth it for everyone to take home a workable Pd environment for the PC.
I guess it depends on whether you're teaching audio, video or physical computing what needs and priorities you might have. For audio I always want a good stereo sound system and a pocket mixer is a useful gadget. For Gem/Visual presentations I suppose you'd spend more thought on the beamer resolution and framerate. For physical you need desk space where people can play with components and wires.
Often it's requested that laptop users install Pd on their machines and get it running before coming to a session, that way everyone is ready to go *and* they can take their work home with them.
What makes it fun imho, and possible to make focused presentations, is the flexibility of Pd as a teaching tool... it's almost designed for the job! Using Pd itself as the presentation tool, making folders of patches that are linked as "slides", and having it self document to pdf handouts and html resources are things I've put a bit of thought into.
It's nice if you have a LAN available so you can go into the network parts of Pd. A good finale is to get everyone jamming with some OSC net-pd type patches linked together.
For finding audiences, I think the same as Alexandres advice, technical and art colleges and universities doing interactive design, music technology and courses like that. I specialise in audio so I try to use Pd as a vehicle to teach it, rather than generally "all about puredata" which is quite beyond me. And also try to get groups of producers from standard industry roles interested too, Pd is obviously very enabling in radio, TV, film, animation, games and theatre.
To teach Pd generally, finding colleagues is as
important as finding audiences. I don't think anybody could tackle
the entirety of Pd and it's applications alone without it being a
very dull, highly structured and long exercise. I sometimes pair with
someone who is teaching visuals or composition or something else that
complements my stuff on audio synth. Work together to put on events.
With groups of more than 15-20 having a buddy as an extra demonstrator/helper
in practicals is essential or you can't give everyone enough 1 to 1 contact
time. Best all round Pd presentation I have attended was organised by goto10 at
space studios as a summer school with several specialised Pd users
teaching individual areas in a structured programme so that the whole 2 week
event became more than the sum of its parts.
my waffling 2c... hope that helps
Andy
Thanks guys for your feedback! I'm trying to explore what my best usages of Pd have been, and what I might have to offer to people starting out. Your tips will go a long way!
~Kyle
On 6/24/07, Andy Farnell padawan12@obiwannabe.co.uk wrote:
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:18:23 -0500 "Kyle Klipowicz" kyleklip@gmail.com wrote:
Hi List~
I'm curious about teaching Pd to interested people, and know that a number of you have given workshops on the subject. I could really use some collective wisdom on this.
Teaching Pd is something I really enjoy. What I've seen so far are great differences in audience goals and the need to prepare and research exactly who you are talking to and why, because Pd has such wide applications. Look for your own niche skill that Pd allows you to express and use that as a guide.
What methods do you use to structure and communicate your course material? How do you market it within the city that you are teaching? What sorts of materials do you use?
Often people bring their own laptops and headphones.
The best format imho is lots of practical elements, short exercises that can be done individually or in small groups, keep dove-tailing talk time with hacking time.
If machines are available but are administrated workstations it helps to take live CD environments so you aren't treading on anyones toes having groups of students install stuff. Or make sure whoever invited you or organised the talk has done the groundwork for any practical element.
A copy of PureDyne is useful, with the patches used in a workshop handed out on thumbdrive, by web-site or burned into the distro. For the cost and time it takes to run off a dozen copies it's worth it for everyone to take home a workable Pd environment for the PC.
I guess it depends on whether you're teaching audio, video or physical computing what needs and priorities you might have. For audio I always want a good stereo sound system and a pocket mixer is a useful gadget. For Gem/Visual presentations I suppose you'd spend more thought on the beamer resolution and framerate. For physical you need desk space where people can play with components and wires.
Often it's requested that laptop users install Pd on their machines and get it running before coming to a session, that way everyone is ready to go *and* they can take their work home with them.
What makes it fun imho, and possible to make focused presentations, is the flexibility of Pd as a teaching tool... it's almost designed for the job! Using Pd itself as the presentation tool, making folders of patches that are linked as "slides", and having it self document to pdf handouts and html resources are things I've put a bit of thought into.
It's nice if you have a LAN available so you can go into the network parts of Pd. A good finale is to get everyone jamming with some OSC net-pd type patches linked together.
For finding audiences, I think the same as Alexandres advice, technical and art colleges and universities doing interactive design, music technology and courses like that. I specialise in audio so I try to use Pd as a vehicle to teach it, rather than generally "all about puredata" which is quite beyond me. And also try to get groups of producers from standard industry roles interested too, Pd is obviously very enabling in radio, TV, film, animation, games and theatre.
To teach Pd generally, finding colleagues is as important as finding audiences. I don't think anybody could tackle the entirety of Pd and it's applications alone without it being a very dull, highly structured and long exercise. I sometimes pair with someone who is teaching visuals or composition or something else that complements my stuff on audio synth. Work together to put on events. With groups of more than 15-20 having a buddy as an extra demonstrator/helper in practicals is essential or you can't give everyone enough 1 to 1 contact time. Best all round Pd presentation I have attended was organised by goto10 at space studios as a summer school with several specialised Pd users teaching individual areas in a structured programme so that the whole 2 week event became more than the sum of its parts.
my waffling 2c... hope that helps
Andy
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Kyle Klipowicz