How to Write Your Tutorial

Tutorials can be found in tutorials.md.

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Overview

Once during the semester, each student will be asked to produce a brief technical tutorial, the purpose of which is to help other students get some device or software package up and running quickly. Tutorials will be assigned to students through a negotiation process that takes the student's interests and abilities into consideration. In this way, students will develop and share expertise with the course equipment.

The effort involved in producing these tutorials will be necessarily inhomogenous. In some cases, it will merely be necessary to create a YouTube video and write some nice clear instructions. In other cases, the student may also be expected to create a custom data parser (e.g. in Python), or develop some code to communicate with a novel device from an open-source arts-engineering toolkit (such as an openFrameworks Addon or a Processing library).

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How to Write Your Tutorial

Your job is to create a brief (1-2 page) one-stop-shop explanation of how to get some piece of kit working. The intended audience is the other students in the class. Pretend you have to quickly get your BFF up to speed on the equipment.

You will need to find or create media such as the following:

Annotated screenshots of key software UI's and control panels.
Screengrabbed videos showing how the device is used.
Hand-drawn sketches, photos, and/or technical diagrams
Links to more information, especially PDFs of online manuals
Scripts (e.g. Python, Processing) for parsing data from this device.
Custom code (on Github) and/or links to the manufacturer's drivers/executables for interfacing to the device (e.g. over serial).

Some tips:

Use a tripod if you need to do some shooting. You can borrow a camera and tripod from the IDeATe Lending Desk.
Here's an index of techniques for screengrabbing.
If you need to make a Processing library or openFrameworks addon (etc), don't forget to provide an example program. Always check to see if someone else has already done it!
Give credit to any media you incorporate.
Put your name and date at the top.

Issue your Tutorial as a pull request to this site.