Like many technology-oriented people, I consider myself to be a bit of a perfectionist. There’s something about the crisp, exact, digital world that makes me want to fuss over every pixel, every detail. To be clear, I’m not saying this in a braggy, interview way (“My worst fault? Well I guess you could say I’m a perfectionist!”), but more of a confessional way (“Hello, my name is Don, and I’m a perfectionist”). Yes, I do think that this personality trait has driven me to produce good quality work. However, I suspect it also often leads to procrastination.
A good example is related to my intention to start using video capture software to create online software demos for my students as a way of introducing them to a new practical assignment. I have had this on my “to do” list for at least a year, but two things kept holding me back: 1) I was afraid of the time commitment required, since once I started doing them I assumed students would come to expect them all the time 2) I wanted the demos to be perfect. I bought a copy of Adobe’s eLearning Suite 2, and pecked away at it over a few months, but kept putting off actually creating a demo. Then, last week, I was going over the lab assignment I was about to give to students on some basic remote sensing principles, using ERDAS IMAGINE (why do they insist on all caps?). All I wanted them to do was use the spectral profile tools with a small Landsat Thematic Mapper image to explore the digital numbers for various land cover types in different spectral bands. I have used this assignment before, so thought I would just give it a quick once-over before distributing it. Then I realized that I hadn’t really spent much time with the new 2010 version of IMAGINE and realized that they had “improved” the interface (if you can call adopting Microsoft’s “ribbon” an improvement, although the old IMAGINE interface did need a big overhaul). I spent at least half an hour rediscovering where everything was, and quickly realized my students would be pretty lost trying to find their way around the interface, for what was meant to be a brief introduction to IMAGINE. So, I thought I would try putting together a quick video demo. I didn’t have much time, so I opened IMAGINE, sized the various windows, started Captivate, and recorded the demo. It was pretty rough, but I thought to heck with it, just get it out there, so I did. You can have a look at it here (link no longer available due to Flash being ancient). It’s not very good – I would like to add a title slide, delete some of the extra captions that come up when I was unnecessarily clicking around window title bars, possibly resize it, and maybe actually have a script (if you have any suggestions, please let me know). The point though, is that it got done, I gave it to my students and, so far, I have had very positive feedback. The fact that I didn’t spend much time on it really addressed both of my concerns: I don’t mind if they come to expect them, since I can now do them in a short amount of time.
Just to add some irony, I thought about blogging about this, then hesitated, as I thought I should really make a new, better version, and do all those edits first. Then it dawned on me: my new approach to teaching and blogging is going to be “quick and dirty, learn as you go” or QADLAYG (I haven’t Googled this phrase, so please allow me to continue to think that I am the first person to ever come up with this idea and acronym). For me, this has been a useful lesson. I have to push myself sometimes to get beyond the planning, perfectionism, and someday-I’ll-get-around-to-it phase and just start putting something out there. Of course, I definitely plan to improve, but I no longer plan to wait until something is perfect before I distribute it. I’m guessing I will be better off getting feedback and learning as I go instead of waiting.
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