Video About Analysis and Learning
As you may know I’ve written a book about learning called Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar that will come out in September. It’s about learning in general, not just testing. I have a site and blog devoted to just that stuff.
As part of developing the ideas in the book, I’m also publishing videos. The first one was not related so much to testing, so I didn’t post here about it.
The video I just posted, however, does relate more to testing. It’s a video about describing things, and seeing things in terms of systems, connected to the world around. You may find it relevant. This is all part of my strong philosophy that testing is not just a little task. To test well is to behave like a scientist. Testing is science by another name.
Here’s the link.
I hope you will notice that this is an experiment in how we might create entertaining, yet informative teaching videos about otherwise dry intellectual subjects.
April 19th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Sometimes I do wonder how much influence you have on my life. No question about your influence on my testing work and my stance on certification but now it’s affecting more.
My partner’s seen your first video…by pure chance. I was watching it and she asked me what I was watching. So I told her and she said she wanted to see it too. Well…. just add video and you got a new convert. She’s using your (and not your brothers
practices on how to get more reading done. She has always been a compulsive reader and that has sometimes come in the way of progress. She reads EVERYTHING! I also need to mention that she has a phenomenal read rate that I can just dream of. But she still can’t read everything she wants to read and is therefore disappointed. Your method convinced her that there is a practical way to sort (book)information and dwindle it down in a sensible way without having regrets. Now my little “brainiac” can go and process even more information! …sometimes that scares me. 
Anyway let’s see what she makes of #2. She’s not a tester but as I’m convinced that most testing is just better critical thinking she should be able to process that too and convert it for her needs. This might even be an experiment in how to convert an acupuncturist into a tester. Maybe I can even back-port acupuncture lore into testing…. *hmmmm*
[James' Reply: Cool! I've got lots of ideas for the next video, too. But I'm on the road for a few weeks, so it will have to wait.]
April 23rd, 2009 at 4:00 am
in a way, an acupuncturist is a tester in reverse….a tester would say \what happens if i stick the pin in here?\
May 13th, 2009 at 12:51 am
This is a great way to show how to analyse or more importantly how to ask questions. In my view asking the right questions thrives us to seek the answers (that usually lead to more questions).
We are using the rapid testing - exploration based testing - and i’m sure this is one of the best approaches. I’ve modified the general idea to fit into our needs and created online based tracking system for that.
I have used some of your ideas about learning and figured I’d like to try a different way for educating my testers (and myself).
This is what I came up with : http://wtquestions.blogspot.com/
It would be great to have your answers there too…
[James' reply: Coool!]
May 13th, 2009 at 12:55 am
I noticed that the “To Describe a Stone, Part 1″ video has been published on mistersmeee’s youtube channel, but not on blip.tv. The “Competitive Swashbooking” video has been published on blip.tv, but not youtube. Are you guys still trying to decide which service to use? I vote for blip.tv, but it would probably be a good idea to publish all the same vids on youtube for additional exposure.
[James' Reply: I can't post the swashbooking video on Youtube because it's 17 minutes. I can't post the Youtube video on Blip because of some sort of formatting incompatibility. I'm going to go with Youtube from now on, though. More people are comfortable with it, and it downloads faster, I'm told.]