Possibility of a Blender class in San Diego

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

Hey everyone,

I have been offered a great opportunity, but I really want the community’s input on a few things first. Here goes:

A local 33-seat CAD school has asked me to hold an “Introduction to Blender” course for them. While they teach CAD and Revit already, they are very interested in staying cutting edge, and to them, that means offering a Blender course as well (wise people!). I love the idea…I have a lot of background teaching Premiere, Photoshop and After Effects, so I understand what is involved in the way of creating lesson plans, course materials, and assignments. Here is what I am worried about, and I would really appreciate input from the community before I go much further.

First, I consider myself an intermediate user of Blender, in that I understand the core concepts, understand the art & framing aspects, and can produce a pretty good animation when I need to… I would not claim to be an expert in any one area, but my overall knowledgebase is strong. Is this enough to effectively teach an introductory course?

Next question- filling up the classroom & what to charge…

The current classes being taught (CAD and Revit) include 24 hours of training & course materials for $350 a student. I’ll add that the price does not include licenses for AutoCAD or Revit, only training. Does this price seem fairly reasonable for Blender training? Would you pay this price for a local class in your area? Personally, I think it ought to be a little lower, perhaps in the $250 range, in keeping with the trend of affordability…

Then there is actually filling the classroom with people eager to learn. AFAIK, there are only a few people from this area using Blender, so I don’t really count on that as being a big resource. The advertising of the classes will mainly be handled by the school, and they work through high schools and universities, so the theory is that with a little enticement and proper advertising, it should be easy enough to fill a Blender class, right?

Finally, the class itself…bear in mind that this conversation only got serious about an hour ago, so I haven’t even begun to draft any kind of materials for it. I know what I plan on teaching, and I will post an outline in a week or so for review and crits. If any of you have any experience teaching Blender and want to add any insights into the teaching workflow, please let me know. I would love to be able to create this resource in San Diego, and I would love if the community had some say in it…as there isn’t really a formal training routine for Blender yet.

Sorry for the flurry of words, but I felt this is a worthy topic to bring up- please, all thoughts and input are welcome on this matter!

Thanks in advance.

CJ

2

First off, congrats.

Here’s a good resource for teaching Blender -> http://www.blender.org/education-help/

I think there are some others as well. It even has some lesson plans in there.

On the whole experience level thing: As a student I hate going to a class where I feel like I know more than the teacher does (whether its because I do or the class is too slow). I think if you make it clear that its an introduction/beginners course and will be paced as such, I think you should be ok. You should be prepared to answer fully any questions students might have, and you should be ok. I doubt @ndy, RobertT, Basse, Mr_Bomb, or any of the other Big Boys are going to show up and show you up (but you never know ;)).

Cost I would say to undercut the other courses enough so that you could fill Blender classes over others (not sure how much competition there is between their other courses and the Blender course, though).

Good luck…

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Yea! I wish someone in Atlanta would get the bright idea to teach a Blender course!
Yes, having a good overall knowledge is enough to teach an Intro Blender course; it is all scripted out, and what is obvious to you regarding Materials for example, is amazing stuff to students.

4

Cool! Thanks to both of you for your insights…

forTe- I had never even seen that page of blender.org- thanks, it gives me a good starting point to work from (from the masters no less), and PapaSmurf, thanks for the reassurance, I do understand exactly what you mean- it’s the same as teaching someone Premiere or AFX the first time- they get so excited over concepts that have become trivial for the long-term user…

Also, as promised before, I will post as much of the lesson plan as I can, for review- make sure I haven’t missed anything…

Thanks again you guys!

5

I wish I would have spotted this earlier. I live in San Diego, but I am looking more
for a Blender user’s group in the area. It would be so awesome to have monthly
meetings or something were all the local Blenderheads could come together and
discuss projects, troubleshooting and maybe each one could have some sort of
challenge or exercise.

I don’t know how it would look. It would just be cool to be able learn from others in
person and maybe share tips and tricks back and forth to help the community grow.

I’ve been using Blender for 5 years off and on and am still stuck with the same hand-
full of problems. Too many tutorials have left me hanging with too many important
details left unmentioned.

Any thoughts on this CJ Maynard? And how are the classes so far?

6

Hey Ghost Train!

Wow, I remember this thread…unfortunately, the classes have been put on hold to due some other large projects that have been taking up a lot of my life! It’s just been a matter of coordinating it with the schools and preparing the lesson plans…and time, of course. Not gone, but definitely back-burner for now :frowning:

As for the user’s group, we should definitely talk. I have been thinking it would be nice to know a few local Blender users. I think Sarah (from BA) lives down here as well, so there are a few of us. I’d be interested. Send me a pm, maybe we can get something set up. The above CAD school wouldn’t have a problem with a group using the computers during off-times, so we might even have a reasonable facility to start a group with. Definitely interested. Anyone else here from San Diego?

7

A Community College just up the street from you (El Camino in Torrence) is offering a six week summer course in computer animation (basically an intro to 3dsMax) for around $100, which includes parking. Four hours each afternoon, four days a week, so it’s 24 hours of instruction and lots of computer lab time. A good half the instruction consists of showing short animations to inspire the students.

Chances are someone in the San Diego area is offering classes in Maya or Max that you could use for comparison. If some of the community colleges there offer computer graphics they might be a good place to put flyers up, too, especially before the term ends.

$350 for one class sounds like the student’s employer is paying the bill. People who don’t expect to earn a living with the skills they acquire don’t generally pay as much.

Whoops! Old thread. I really should finish my coffee before posting…:o

8

San Diego based, 3D enthusiast, member of the local Lightwave and modo user groups, have taught in the Community Colleges, would welcome some Blender classes and a user group in San Diego. I am cross-training with Blender to fill in the gaps, and enjoy some of the features that it has that aren’t matched in the other apps. Keep us informed on all aspects of this development.
Paul

9

Yeah it seems an old thread. But the advice has been wonderful recently.

10

Well, as said previously, this is a dead thread…however, the idea of a local Blender user’s group seems to be gaining hold. I’ll start a new thread for it, so this one can go back where it belongs :frowning:

On an interesting note, Orinoco- I doubt they are still getting those prices with our economy the way it is. I haven’t talked with them for a little while, but I’d bet they’ve had to come down now, or else they wouldn’t even fill the classroom. It’s amazing how quickly things change here, isn’t it…if I were to launch a Blender class now, it would likely have to be very cheap to survive here (another part of why it is on the back burner). Anyhow, that said, I will make a new thread for a possible user’s group, and let this one slip silently away into the archives :slight_smile:

11

Sweet!

Hey if anyone else wants to comment on this, here is the new thread:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=125033