Now teaching ActionScript at the Academy of Art MFA Program
Well, it’s official; I am now faculty at the Academy of Art University. More specifically, I’m teaching a group directed study in the Academy of Art San Francisco’s School of Digital Arts + Communications MFA program.
Last Friday, I taught my first ActionScript class to graduate students working their way towards a Master’s degree at the Academy of Art. I must say, I’m very excited about the class of students that I have and the class of projects they are bringing along with them.
The class is diverse, offering a rich variety of projects and cultural perspectives. Yet since it is a group directed study, it is also small and intimate (8 students), a nice quality for any academic environment. All of my students want to learn ActionScript and programming in Flash, and for the most part they are all daunted, or at least put off in some sense, by the prospect of learning ActionScript 3. I look forward to helping them learn to love the joys and rewards of adhering to best practices (most of all, keeping it simple) on the way to developing fun, interactive applications in Flash.
If any Flash superstars or evangelists are planning to be in the Bay Area anytime within the next 14 weeks, and have an interest in stopping by the class to inspire the next generation of Flash developers, by all means drop me a line so that we can plan accordingly.
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February 4, 2008 - 6:58 pm
Congrats and welcome to the mill,
I teach the actual ActionScript class so you’ll suffer with all my students now. I expect most of them
are stillfrom a couple of semesters back so their all fresh into 2.0.
Teaching is fun, it’s hard to remember when they node their heads and say “yes I’ll do that” they have no idea what your talking about even if you’ve explained it like 100 times before.
If you give them a small assignment in class and they can’t handle it you’ll learn more then they every will tell you.
And give them psuedo-code to build if they can’t build from psuedo-code it becomes another clear sign of what they learned/remember.
Mark Badger
February 5, 2008 - 9:40 am
Teaching is a real challenge. You will probably find success, but no matter how good you are, you can always improve. Pseudo-coding is great of course… though once I had a student say he didn’t “believe in it”… and he actually did pretty well. The biggest thing I’ve learned from teaching (for over 10 years) is that no matter what you plan, you’ll get to much less–assuming you cover it well. The best is when students go on to build great things. The percentage (however small) of students who you’ll never reach is less of a problem than you might think. That is, while it may sound bad, the truth is (for me anyway) you’ll always get a student or two or three who will never succeed in the class. I guess it depends why they’re taking the class. But, the hard thing I guess I’m saying is that it’s okay to write off students when it’s necessary.
Good luck!