24 of the 25 White belt video lessons are completed – just need to figure out where I am going to record the lessons as I need to include a chair in the frame, but most places don’t use chairs, or the one’s which do won’t allow me to use the chair on the dojo floor. I’ll see if I can get something done at home or at the office. I’ve also got to get the lessons’ 10-23 text material up to the website, but converting all the notes and teaching material into proper instructions that work well in the online format is proving to be pretty difficult. Each lesson article should stand on its own and cover everything in the video in more minutia and details. The curriculum is finalized, it’s just a matter of converting everything I’ve been doing as a remote lesson now into a recorded format.

I am also so looking forward to creating the 9 kyuu lesson videos – once the students have finished of the fundamentals and basics as white belt, it becomes a lot easier when we start talking about the rest of the materials. The challenge with white belt students is that everything is new and they understand relatively little. By the time the make the next rank (9 kyuu), they have enough of the basics behind them so that they can really start focusing on learning the material and getting to that theoretical level of proficiency.

Although there are a lot of kenpoists out there who would love to see a Long Form 8 Instructional video, I haven’t gotten much feedback from the students. Since we are getting a lot of new students into the mix, I think it’s best to focus the efforts on getting the material for the under belts up and away before circling back for the black belt material. I’ve got a lot more under belts than black belts currently in the system. I’m also looking to get a better camera with a wider lens so I can get more movable area into the shot, right now I’m pretty constrained to what I can and can not do in the videos, and it’s going to become pretty limiting here very shortly. Once I get to Short 3 I need a lot bigger area for the form than the small space currently used in the current video framing.