Yesterday’s meetings were primarily focused on the effectiveness of video instruction:
- It takes roughly six hours to create a three minute video, which is a 120X expansion
- It also takes about six hours to create a slide deck for a one-hour talk, which is only a 6X expansion
- So the video has to be 20X more effective (in some way) than the talk in order to be more time-effective
We then talked about the pros and cons of video, and about when it’s more effective: basically, it’s great for showing how, but not really better for explaining facts.
Which brings us to the next assignment:
- Fill in this Doodle to let me know if you’re taking part in the next round so that I can match you with a partner.
- Once you have been matched, you and your partner will each teach one another something in real-time using screen sharing etc. over the web (more details below).
- You and your partner will then jointly write a 3-paragraph blog post describing how you would tell if live real-time tutoring was better than, worse than, or just as effective as (a) recorded video and (b) live tutoring.
- You will then (individually) watch all of the videos in one section of the Version 4 videos (e.g., all of the regular expression videos, or all of the videos on spreadsheets), and write a short blog post explaining how you would make them better.
Here are the details:
- You can use any screensharing tool you like for part 2: Google Hangout, Skype desktop sharing, etc. The key is that you’re seeing each other’s desktops, not faces.
- You should spend about 3 minutes teaching your partner whatever you’ve chosen to teach (and they should spend about the same time teaching you).
- You do not have to record this: I’ve found in the past that as soon as I ask people to record sessions, they spend a lot longer “getting them right”, which isn’t the point
- Don’t teach the same thing you did your screencast on.
- For part 3, think like a scientist designing an experiment. What task would you set? What data would you collect when, and how? How would you analyze that data? (Note that we’re not actually going to do this experiment…)
- For part 4, you want to be the kind of movie critic every filmmaker hates: “If I had made this movie, I would have…” (The idea here is to help you learn how to critique and improve teaching practices.)
- You can critique anything in the videos: length, pace, content, choice of fonts…
- You can choose any lesson you want, but please do cover the entire lesson, since the topics in each stitch together.
People in the second call estimated this would take about 4 hours, so we’ll aim to have it done in two weeks, and we’ll meet on Thursday, August 1. (Several people have mailed me to say that Thursdays work better than Tuesdays.)
Please take daylight savings time into account when figuring out when our meetings are for you.
Finally, several people have asked whether they should still complete the screencast exercise. The answer is “yes”: you’re welcome to continue to take part in this round of training if you don’t, but I think that making the screencast, and analyzing the experience afterward, is an important part of what we’re doing. If you haven’t already made and posted one, please try to have it up by mid-August, and I’ll go through it with you one-to-one.
If you have questions or suggestions, please add them to this blog post as comments so that everyone can see the responses. Please also add suggestions for screensharing tools—there are a lot out there now, and I haven’t tried them all.
Pairs are:
Billy Rowell + Julia Evans
David Merand + Neal Davis
Luke Lee + Philipp Bayer
Nichole Bennett + Jordan Fish
Promita Bose + Preston Holmes
Ivan Gonzalez + Shoaib Sufi
Kirsten Fagnan + Sarah Richardson
Karmel Allison + Shreyas Cholia
Chris Holdgraf + Martin Schilling
Tim McNamara + Stuart Charters
Ted Kirkpatrick + David Perez-Suarez + Markus Binsteiner
Since we have an odd number, I’ve put Ted, David, and Markus together. Each member of the trio only has to teach once, and be taught once, but please work together on the blog post.