David's Crit

Once we changed up the protocol and stopped doing semester reviews by class and started mixing things up we pretty regularly come out with an empty board or two in each session.  A while ago I had the thought that it might be interesting to have instructors fill those slots and talk about what they did that semester.  We often don't know those things as a faculty, let alone get that information downloaded to students.  So it seems like a nice community building exercise.  I've never formally suggested it because the only thing that might be an even bigger motivator is doing anything that would make a given session shorter.  Instructor presentations would not do that.

Today was the first day of reviews, and by the time we got to the end of the day we did have a session with a free board.  I started to think about what I might say if I were the one to fill it.

Fall presentations normally start with what people did over the summer.  This past summer I returned to my role as Drama Precollege DP Coordinator.  I also taught Drafting and Technical Production and I did a slot in the "Applying to College" workshop.  The only significant change to the program this summer was a shift in how we handled Parent Weekend.  In the past we'd really done nothing substantive which has generated a smattering of complaints.  So this year we did a series of demonstration classes where the parents could take part as participants rather than only as observers.  It seemed to be relatively well received.

Also over the summer Kevin and I managed to get in a trip to visit several TD alums as TAIT Towers in Lititz.  The trip also let us tour Rock Lititz and get our hands on some new Navigator gear.  The visit went really well and left us to wonder if in subsequent summers we should try to get to Scenic Route in LA or make somewhat wider rounds in NYC or Chicago.  Food for future plans.

After talking about the summer students usually talk about classes.  My fall slate of classes remained unchanged: Technical Direction 1, Technical Direction 3, and PTM Professional Practice.

TD1 came off pretty much the way it has for many years.  That content is really well defined with the biggest challenge being actually getting to the content rather than spending the entire class talking about current production issues.  I believe both are equally important, so it is actually a fairly tough nut to crack.  The only significant change this semester involved my putting my thumb on the scale of the "Shop Layout" project.  Normally I have the teams pick out five issues on their own.  This year I changed it up and mid-project instructed them than one of their five issues had to be providing adequate volume for the storage of recovered material.  In the end the results of that change were muddy, but I think I might keep it in the future.

TD3 changes every year based on personnel and production trends.  I kept some of the projects and subbed in some new stuff.  In here the biggest changes were probably the "Green Fabrication" project and the way we handled embedded electronics.  Instead of dedicating 6 class sessions to the electronics content this year we did two long Saturday workshops and cancelled class six times.  It seems like this was a favorable change and it will likely remain.  The "Green Fabrication" project was a long footprint research project trying to quantify the impact of process and materials changes we might institute in order to make our process more sustainable.  The process was confusing and through the course of the thing the students were really unhappy, but by the end of the thing I believe we actually did learn something.  I'm not sure we will do the project again, but it is possible that the life of this project may not be over.  I've discussed doing a one day workshop with these students along with the school sustainability committee and the scene design students and maybe the PM students as well.

The only significant change to PPP was that I FINALLY managed to actually get an attorney to come in to talk about liability and LLCs and IP.  It turned out to be both a little shallow and a little wonky but I think the students did get something out of it and if they'll do it again I will probably keep it on the schedule for next year.  One again I mused about dropping the "Elevator Speech" assignment, but after kicking it around with some students and faculty it seemed like there was appetite to keep it, so I did.

I haven't gotten to production, service, or development and I would fairly certainly be out of time (although I guess without faculty response there would be more time for talking).  Maybe I'll do the rest in another post.