Good Teaching

Over the years I have come to appreciate the difference a good teacher makes. A good teacher is someone whose teaching affects the way you think and one you remember for life.

Recently, I had to create a mashup of photos and video. Previously for this type of task I used iMovie 9.0.9 (or was it iMovie ’11). Anyway I fired up the latest version of iMovie and, ughh, the interface had changed once again and become super simple, hiding or removing some useful functionality. I was too hassled to try and ‘discover’ it.

So I went and bought big brother Final Cut Pro X. Mainly because I already had bought some books on special and had a premium subscription to lynda.com

So I did the right thing and started working through the Final Cut Pro X 10.2 Essential Training with Ashley Kennedy. And this is the course that has inspired me to write about “Good Teaching”.

The thing about teaching a complex course is

  • the teacher has to have a thorough understanding of the material so that they can provide context, then drill down into the detail and then jump back out to an overview to provide context.

  • the course has be presented in a structured manner so that we can see over the overview and get to the actual detail quickly.

Not only does this course cover the details of Final Cut Pro X, but the way that Ashley does it is amazing. She works on two different video presentations, Chocolat and Letterpress. The primary aim of the course is to teach you how to use Final Cut Pro X. However the way she works on these two videos not only shows you how to use Final Cut Pro X, but also gives some insights in how to produce a video.

From coming up with a storyline, organising supporting material and then assembling the pieces together to provide final impact.

To cap it off, the actual video of the course is also fantastically done. If you want to get going quickly, Chapter 2: FCP X QuickStart provides this quick overview showing how one can get a video produced.

As a keyboard junkie, another hightlight for me was the extensive emphasis on keyboard shortcuts. Whenever, an action was done, the keyboard shortcut was mentioned and a flyout would show what key was being used.

The course is well structured and the transcript is also provided in the web version.