Motion Capture Crash Course
Jen signed up for Intermediate Motion Capture with me, to prevent them canceling the class for lack of students. Almost all the other students dropped out of the program. Class starts tomorrow.
We are spending today in open lab hours at the Virtual Theatricality Lab, giving Jen a crash course in one day to learn everything I have learned (minus all the practice I've had). In one day, her project almost caught up to mine.
Our learning styles differ. I push forward toward completion of the instructions. I figure that later steps will make clear why I'm doing the earlier steps. Later I'll do the process again and again, gaining more understanding each time.
Jen spent the weekend reading the textbook and other materials in advance of any hands-on experiences. Today she looked at what the software is doing under the hood. She wanted to understand every possible approach that she wasn't using. She asked "Why?" at every step before moving on.
That frustrated me at first, and I pointed to the clock a lot, given that we only had one day to finish a project that covers a semester's worth of material. In retrospect, I realized that we learned a lot about the underpinnings of passive optical motion capture and 2-D to 3-D interpretation software. I'm better equipped to deal with anomalies or make the system do unusual things. I also unlearned a lot of misconceptions which I thought I knew.
Comments
Anonymous on May. 11, 2010 9:21 AM
Sounds like you two are learning a lot about each other and it was very kind of her to join a class so you could take it.
jodybrai on May. 11, 2010 11:40 AM
Nothing like teaching somebody to really help you cement the knowledge for yourself.
desfontaines on May. 11, 2010 2:59 PM
If so many students dropped the program, will this make it difficult for the rest of the classes to run?
However, the extra learning through teaching Jen and seeing another perspective on it - that's super awesome!
matt-arnold on May. 11, 2010 9:09 PM
I heard a rumor that the class came within a hairsbreadth of cancellation yesterday. At this point, we have as many students as computers, so that doesn't seem justified. I don't know what will happen with the final class in the Summer semester, but if I don't want to be prevented getting the certificate for which I sacrificed so much, seeing the goal so close in sight.
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