am writting to inform you that the production draft of the TOSMI trainers manual is finished and released into the wild here
During the blender conference we discussed with Ton the possibility to
release an official blender foundation trainer’s manual like a
training guide to be used by trainers to set up blender educatio
projects around the world). The Tosmi training manual will be used as
a first draft for the official blender foundation trainers
guide/manual. This is the version of the manual that is TOSMI
specific, that is it includes information only on the experience of
the modules taught at the TOSMI project (for example it does not have
any info on particles etc.)
Also it is a little rough around the edges in grammar /syntax in some parts that are not still edited and some of the screenshots need also to be changed /added and so on.
The tosmi manual will be a starting point for the production of a blender foundation trainers guide/manual. So many things need to change, get edited , get conencted with blender online content. the wiki for example!
So consider this post to the forum as a call for all blender
teachers and educators to download the manual, use it, and give
feedback on effectiveness , faults, errors etc, But also as a call for
anyone that wishes to write / improve/ better a section of the
blender foundation trainers manual/guide.
Any possibility of making it into a wiki? I could do this if I had the word processing document form (not the pdf). I see a need for a Training manual, which then also links to the Tutorials for exercises, and to the User Manual and Reference Manual for more info.
Of course I am interested in getting feedback and suggestions. Please read the manual, compare it to your expererience in teaching blender and fire away any suggestions you have.
You also do not need be an educator to do this, if you ever showed some blender feature to someone you were effectively “teaching” (ok, not the full stuff, but showing something nonetheless)
I ll also post the openoffice document that generates the pdf, along with a .doc copy to make it easy for people to make changes.
Papasmurf getting it wikified at the end is one of our goals along with linking with the rest of the blender wiki.
Hello again:
the respective files in pdf, odt (openoffice) .doc format have been uploaded. f you do get around in changing something , pleae mark your changes in color when you do them in text , or put them in notes in the respective application you are using (acrobat, ms word, or OO writer)
Thanks!
But by-sa is “by attribution, share alike”, commercial use is allowed with this license (as long as you give credit and distribute it under a similar license).
I really would like to move this forward as well, but without putting it into a wiki, it is impossible to work on. If I modified the .doc file, and then sent it to you, and another person made other changes and sent them to you, it would be nearly impossible to merge the changes, especially when I made further changes and then sent you my revision.
At http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Books there are two books, one good and another abandoned. You could start by creating a link to your new main table of contents page for your book. Then click on that and the wiki will create that page for you. From my experience, the table of contents page should have the following sections:
This is free. It is the Blender manual mave and others put together to use for an open studio class they teach, which includes Blender. People younger than you use blender, and make use of the training materials. Download it, and take a look.
so essentially you would like a more detailed, point by point, step by step approach to be implemented and described inside a blender 's trainer manual?
Ahem, No need to point me at the wiki and tell how to use them, I already now how to use them. In my opinion editing in a wiki will have to come in a more mature stage where we have established many blender trainings, everyone knows the path that needs ot be taken and so on. Editing the document will allow us to get feedback and merge the changes someone suggests. I am all for wikifing it but on a later stage. We are still on the design stage where a few people can and are able to contribute, better if they have experience teaching Blender.
I would hope that we eventually only have one really good Blender Training, not a bunch of half-baked half-complete half-right half-up-to-date stuff that does not teach well. I think Blender is at a mature stage and ready for serious effort toward a manual much like your Tosmi. So, …why not use the wiki to develop that design and allow more that a few people to contribute? Are you afraid people will screw it up, or what? Why stick with antiquated and cumbersome monolithic word documents? Since you know the power of the wiki and its ability to hyperlink and reference other documents already out there, wouldn’t it be good to re-use some tutorials and lessons to teach certain points and aspects of Blender?
I am not reluctant to use the wiki, quite the contrary. But still we do not have ANY feedback, as in : it is bad, it is good, fix that , fix the other etc etc etc . A training program can go astray if it is not based on a solid discipline of how to do things, especially on how to teach. And a solid discipline will come out of a few people, since in my opinion opening it up to the world in such an early stage will not help with providing the very best teaching strategies to the blender community. In my opinion again “design by committee” does not work in early conceptual stages such as this. However instead of just discussing on whether we can work on a .doc .odg .pdf or whatever you can go ahead and upload everything on the wiki.
I am not doing it since I believe it will not help the effort in outlining and establishing teaching strategies for blender. So go ahead and upload it (I am not familiar with the blender wiki license but we can change ours to fit that!)
First - my english is rather bad so i cannot express my thoughts the way I would do in german.
Main thing I observe working with beginners is, that they try to transmit their “reallife experience” into Blender. In reality you switch on a lamp and everything is “there”. Color, Light, shadows, reflection etc.
What is crucial to understand is that Blender simulates all these things. Light doesnt mean shadow at the same time, its seperated from each other. Light in Blender can do what in reality is impossible - black light. Light doesnt mean shadow, color doesnt mean reflection and so on. Have a look around and describe what you see. Then you are able to reproduce (some) effekts in Blender.
Blender isnt physicaly correct but its a 100% correct concerning the picture in your head.
