Oh, so it wasn't just me who scratched his head over that first link.
I didn't like the corrected link.
From an educational standpoint, it sucked.
Like Ben, I understood most of it because of my previous education, but he seemed unclear of his target audience. If it was an introduction to neophytes, the information / time ratio was too great; if for folks with a smattering of hydrology under their belt, it was unnecessary.
I think the main point of his presentation was with respect to correcting the common (he said) fallacy that a 100 year flood can only happen every hundred years. This could have been done in only two minutes of a clean, slick presentation. In other words, TMI /sec.
The flashing of the various tables of information was not helpful since there was no explanation of their significance except in terms of the barely-visible captions of those tables. What he was trying to portray was the vast amount of recorded data (and some inferential data) on flooding / hydrology for specific locales, and maybe he could have just given some links. But when he put four or five sample pages at one time up on one screen for three seconds, what's the point, it was again TMI masking his (apparent) main point.
Also, his voice was unsuited to teaching, at least at that TMI /sec. Remember the old "Columbia School of Broadcasting" ads? PROJECT! In other words, he needed a little smattering of a "command voice."
Naw, from a pedogogical standpoint, I cannot give it a "like" except maybe for his remark about not needing to calculate things out to five decimal places. ("The 'constant' C is usually so close to one that we can eliminate it." :) )
Not that I didn't learn anything from it, but what I picked up "stood upon the shoulders" of what I had previously learned.
For the regular population, I can't blame them for awarding dislikes.
For the fairly well-trained engineering-mind.... meh, we already knew that 100 year floods don't necessarily happen only once in 100 years.
So it all kinda came across as a failed attempt at a mini-NOVA presentation on PBS. (Not that I haven't cringed at some of their stuff, too.)
So let the yeah buts begin.
Terry, 230RN
