Common Craft and Teaching

Common Craft is a great site for figuring out what the basic message is that you need to take home about this that or the other thing. They posted a “what they learned in 2007” list this past month, and I’m thinking that it is something that is very similar to what you need to think about when teaching or preparing a course.

• Video works. Text, graphics, audio, they all have a place.  But video is a different animal.  Nothing engages people like the dynamics of a video.  Ever read about a car chase? It’s not as fun.
• Simple is better.  Approach an explanation by removing information instead of adding it. Remember Occam’s Razor.
• Production values and ideas are often at odds.  Flashy graphics and cool music are sometimes a poor replacement for a good idea. Spend time focusing on the message.
• Constraints facilitate creativity.  Jazz great Charles Mingus once said, “You can’t improvise on nothing, man.”  Bring focus to your work by creating rules or constraints that give your creativity a starting point.
• It’s not always about how it works – it’s about why anyone should care.  The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference (Elie Weisel).  The path to a solid explanation is making people care as a first priority.
• We all need a little more levity.  Unstuff your shirt and make people laugh. Look foolish.  Defy convention and do not take yourself too seriously.

So what is my version for teaching?

• Multimodal works – Additional media help to create novelty and novelty is great for helping people to learn.
• Simple –  There are more than enough ways to obfusticate a topic, cut out everything that you would not need to support an abstract. This way, questions from the class will fill out the time that you might have filled with things that are only going to confuse the students.
• Flash fizzles – Content is king, be sure to focus on the message and don’t get caught up in the media. If you are lucky, there are people available to  help you out with that.
• Stick to the point – If you keep the the message that you want to deliver in class, then you will find creative ways to cover it more than once. This is often at odds with trying to get through curriculum, but with the resources available for moving content online, you can use face time with students to start conversations, this keeps things simple.
• Relax – Know that you are not the most important part of your student’s life, you don’t know everything that there is to know about any topic and even if the content is massively boring, there is aways something that you can find to be curious about. Reveal that to your students and that should help everyone enjoy the experience much more. Have fun with the content and don’t take yourself that seriously.