[PD] teaching PD to newbies [WAS: Re: [GEM] GEM users request ]

[derek holzer]

chris,

after this big workshop in Amsterdam a few weeks back, i noticed that 
one of the things that is still really under development in the PD/GEM 
world is a way of teaching it coherently to non-programmers. starting 
with the message patches in the documentation and telling everybody 
about triggers, bangs, floats and dollar signs works if they can think 
in terms of abstract symbols already, but doesn't work at all if they 
are coming from the other side of it... i.e. they want to know about 
signal processing, making big noises and pretty pictures. an approach 
which goes backwards from said pretty pictures and big noises could 
teach them the very powerful message-handling side of PD "retroactively" 
so-to-speak. sneak in the data-stuff without them even realizing it, 
instead of slamming them up against all these abstract numbers and 
symbols first thing.

so your application-based tutorial is a great idea! IOhannes zmoelnig is 
also working on such a tutorial. i saw the beginnings of this at our 
workshop, and it looked good. perhaps you should join forces?

please keep me up to date on this, as i am sure i will find it very 
useful in my own educational excursions.

cheers,
d.

chris clepper wrote:

> Hi all
>
> Over the past two weeks I have talked with a few people about GEM and 
> most people found that the GEM distro lacked any patches that really 
> showed off GEM's capabilities.  So rather than write up some lame demo 
> patches made by the developers, I thought maybe some of the GEM users 
> could provide a patch or two that either does something very cool or 
> just demonstrates some of the possibilities of GEM.  This patch could 
> be a live performance video mixer or something made for an 
> installation that uses live video input, anything is really welcome.   
> If you have something you would like to share with the world, please 
> post a URL where the patch can be downloaded, and be sure to include 
> comments, abstractions, and a proper credit for yourself!
>
> also, i am also starting on a tutorial for GEM and if you want to help 
> out with that effort let me know.
>
> thanks
>
> cgc
>
>
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