For many years our gold standard for
a teaching area was mirrors on three walls - perhaps even on
four walls - so that no matter which way the set demanded that
a student turn a reflection could always be seen. We
experimented with projecting one video of Grandmaster Chen
Zhenglei. Later, this expanded to multiple projectors showing
the same image so that students - even on the long dimensions
- had an immediate image of him to compare their own movements
to. Having mirrors effectively meant that weapons had to
be stored elsewhere so as to avoid interfering with
reflections of the student or images of the grandmaster.
Then we encountered three serious problems: (1) students
studying at home or in a location that was not a full-time
school might not have access to walls full of mirrors and (2)
cameras to record the students encountered all sorts of
problems with mirrors and (3) one mishandled kwan dao and
there is broken glass all over. One solution we like
is to have students wear smartglasses and project one image
of the grandmaster and one image of the student. But we
are not sure how many students will tolerate wearing
smartglasses and how effective they are for teaching |