Filming lectures before becoming a professor
An idea from my roommate Matt:
I was thinking about how awesome it is that you’re taking such an unconventional approach to training for professordom, and I hit upon another idea- videotaping math/engineering lectures OCW-style and posting them on one of the new open-source learning sites with requests for extensive feedback. It would be a many year project, but you’d eventually have a devoted (and highly visible) fan base and extensive data set on what seems to work. When it comes time to actually apply for professor positions, it will be a huge differentiator. Essentially, you can say “hire me, because I’ve already been a professor for 2 years, and can prove that people love my teaching style."
Definitely don't have the bandwidth to do this as a separate project right now, but next time I find myself teaching something I really should make a point of documenting it online, trying to teach it publicly to other people. I've seen video lectures before, but they're usually of actual in-the-classroom lectures of people who are already professors, which makes me wonder - who else does this kind of thing? Are there best practices (neat tools, good shortcuts) I can learn from them?