San Pedro Boys and Girls Club is Looking for Blender Teachers
Alex Monita wrote to us about the San Pedro Boys and Girls Club in San Pedro, California, where they are successfully teaching Blender to teenagers. They are looking to expand their initiative and to do so they need Blender Teachers!
The class currently runs Monday-Thursday 4:00pm-7:00pm inside the Digital Studio portion of the San Pedro Boys and Girls Club. The Animation room is filled with 6 20″ Imacs running Blender 2.4 and currently taught by Bill Q. The current students taking advantage of the program are all fairly young teens and pre-teens Like Sabastien Accardo (15) and Jeremy Diaz ( 12 ) which are pictured here working on their projects. Only months after opening the class we’ve already had one animation finished, one mech robot in the works, and one simple racing game to be completed among dozens of tiny projects started by other students. Our current goal is to get more teenagers involved with the program and duplicate this classroom at other Boys and Girls Club facilities around Los Angeles. I am still looking for anyone who is interested in teaching in one of these classes as our class sizes are steadily growing.
The class is broken down into three one hour sessions everyday and only one of those sessions is full, we are looking to create one teen class and two beginners classes but we are having trouble getting the word out to the right people.
The teaching gig here is paid hourly, $12 an hour to be exact. and I would like to have two or three different instructors for each hour session. I should probably also mention that since we are a part of a multimedia studio, every finished animation or render made in this class will be put together and shown on Time Warner television through a partnership we have under the Boys and Girls Club!
I was wondering how easy it is for teenagers to learn Blender. Alex comments:
Remarkably the students find blender a lot faster to learn than Flash! We bought six copies of Macromedia flash for our machines and taught that for two months. Then I introduced Blender to a couple of students that were interested in game creation. Within a week they were moving around in 3D space and utilizing all the major tools for modeling. Blenders interface just makes more sense they said. We teach blender as if it were a game, first we show them the controls, then we show them their tools, last we give them objectives like model a tree, christmas gift, dog, and so on.
I think this is an ubercool project and I love reading stuff like this! If you want to get in touch with Alex, here’s his contact information:
Alex Monita
Video Studio Director
1200 S. Cabrillo Ave.
San Pedro Ca, 90731
sphandro(at)msn.com
1 (310) 833 – 1322 ext 246
www.subculture-studios.com
Ah, I’m going to start my own ‘blender school’, but just for ‘cool kids’ — j/k
Nah, I’m going to finish my movie project I keep promising my family and friends I’ll do… ;)
Just to far a ride, otherwise I would.
Let’s see… driving from Raleigh North Carolina to LA would take… one day, and fourteen hours. I think i’d be late for work! :3 Have fun getting lots of mail about this. It’s exciting.
This is aweome! If ours here in Bryan, TX would offer this I would surely teach it!
The Boys And Girls club is a great place to be. It’s where my interest in computers first began to flourish. I wish all the students there the best of luck on their journey.
If I lived in that city, I really would join up to help teaching. I honestly would do it for free.
i tried teaching blender in school with much success i assure you (ex-computer teacher g1->12 speaking ), i tried with several majors and different ages, i found it for example to be easier to teach to 6th graders, although it was tough for most and exilerating for smarter kids, 11 graders were more interested in flash (it was a course i specially designed for them since they would have an easier job getting an internship in flash than blender once they graduate high school ) grade 12 students seem to struggle more than kids to be honest, science major responded well.
while math majors struggeled trying to grasp 3d vectors and coordonates, i felt science student just accepted it (off course, i don’t mean to bulk all the grade as one individual) economics majors were so uninterested that i was short of dangling candy in front of them to get them to work… excel seemed more their alley (but excel is taught to 7th graders OMG)…
that is in short my experience, wait for my book to find out more (i’m kidding, no book, just ping me on mynick @ yahoo.com if you’r really interested… )…
-max
San Pedro is a port city and is located is just North of Long Beach and West of Los Angeles.
San Pedro must be less than a 2-hour drive for me… but I couldn’t be a teacher.
I wish they would teach that at my school! I currently am teaching blender to my technology teacher.
To get some students or another intrested people, you have to do some advertising. The best way would be going to a several schools close to the place where you’ll be giving some lessons. Give some presentations, show some artwork and tell them what exactly those lessons will learn them and show them some results of another students. Maybe give a few free lessons at a school to get them intrested and afther that show them what else you have in mind and that they can take lessons from you for a little fee.
It’s selling yourself without money, which can be done with enthousiasme, mood, and talking to the right people which are instrested. Also going to liberaries and giving a workshop there can be a good thing, or pc summercamps, giving away free lessons, place some advertisement in schools and so on.
Don’t make people search for you, because they’re never going to find you. How do you think that Microsoft and Apple got there customers? presentations, showoffs, demo’s, use experience of people to let them tell another people what there findings are.
Anyways, really cool that you’re doing this to make a job of your hobby I guess. Also think about it that such lesson you’re giving could be handy for people who want to go to Art schools and do 3D, in this case they can take a look what exactly it is.
Cool :) Alas, the commute would be too long for me (as others have also mentioned) but I’m sure there are blender experts in the California area. Groo and the others who tought blender at the Redhat organized summer school also noted how amazingly quick young ( early teen I believe ) kids are at picking up blender – that’s interesting not just for blender, but maybe as a challenge to designers of interfaces “for children”
maxwildcat Interesting observations! I could’ve guessed about the econ students not being interested, but I’m surprised math students had a hard time. Perhaps they would be more comfortable in a straight CAD package than an animation suite targeted at artists.