Teaching With Databases
I’ve been spending some time the last couple of years teaching chess classes (numbering from 5 to 36 kids). I have used both major databases in support of that goal, and I’ve been getting more and more annoyed with them. They both have some drawbacks, and I’d fully switch to one that lacked those drawbacks.
Here is my list of the top annoyances and how Chessbase, Chess Assistant, or both, fail to deliver:
- Illegal Positions. Both allow me to create a position, but neither allow me to create either a fragment of a position or a position that lacks one or both Kings, something that is useful especially when demonstrating the essentials of a tactical sequence or the characteristics of a pawn structure. Chessbase comes the closest, as it will allow me to create such a position in a text file in the database. Maybe it’s just my installation, though, but I am unable to print those positions with the text file to create a handout for my classes. Not all of the classrooms I work have video projectors, and not all of the students have computers, hence an electronic-only version doesn’t cut it. So far, I’ve had to create the positions in the text file, convert the text file to html, then export the text file to RTF, load it into a word processor and copy/paste the diagrams into the word processor (because for some reason known only to CB, it doesn’t export the images). It’s even more tedious than it sounds.
- Homework Diagrams. This is one that CB does much better than CA. You have to make a training annotation on the first move, but once you do so, you can select a sequence of diagrams, tell CB to “Print Multiple Training” and hey, presto! Out of the printer come pages of diagrams, sans moves, followed by a list of answers for each. But the problem is CB only prints out the first move as the answer, not the entire answer. Give it 6 out of 10 for that. CA can’t do even that much. If you want to do this in CA, you have a few workarounds, but none of them are really practical: You can create a second database of just the positions, without answers, or you can export to an RTF file and delete all the moves before printing, or you can make the answers a variation rather than the main line and print with variations disabled. Eew.
- Export Graphically Annotated Diagrams. This is a feature that makes me think CB has a much higher estimation of their printed output than I do. CB will only do this directly to the printer. CA will export these diagrams to RTF files as well as print them. Personally, I think CA’s output is friendlier to print publication efforts while CB’s is friendlier to the web, but classroom work is printed. So, yes, CA does this one at an acceptable level.
Full Disclosure: I am affiliated with neither company, but I have much more familiarity with CA than CB, so there may be ways to get CB to do what I want that I have yet to discover. Over the past year or two I’ve used CB more than CA in the classroom because of “print multiple training”, but recently I’ve started to prepare more complete homework packages, and I’m starting to switch back, because of CA’s flexibility.
March 25th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Boy, is this the truth. I teach around 15-20 kids, none of whom have computers, noe of whom can read chess scores, and I have to make up my own curriculmn, with little help from databases. HOw nice it would be to be able to print and handout chess problems of varying degrees of difficulty. And the illegal postitions, insisting on two kings, means you can’t have simple checkmate with queen and a rook just to demonstrate principle. Chess is confusing enough without having an extra piece in the puzzle to confuse beginners. Fritz does allow you to establish, and save, then print from Microsoft word, but it is a tedious process, expecially if you want several problems on one page. Glad I am not the only one struggling with this.
April 5th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
The latest version of CA lets you print out positions without moves. You can set up the position and then specify zero moves in the moves to be printed portion of the printer setup. You could do this in versions prior to CA10, but they would still insist on printing out 1 ply. CA10 now prints just the diagram. Since CA’s classifiers beat anything CB has all hollow, I’m setting up my teaching positions there, these days.
The one issue I have is CA doesn’t seem to have mastered the art of rows and columns; when I print in two columns, the diagrams don’t line up. But that may just be some tweaking. It’s early days for me in setting these up, so if/when I solve that issue I’ll post on it.
CA’s school training programs are excellent, but they won’t let you print lessons from them, so they’re useless for that purpose.
The best solution I’ve come up with for those simple “fragmentary” positions so far is a template I’ve built in Pages, my word processor. I’m using one of the Alpine chess fonts (cheap as they are, they’re a great deal for quality chess publication) and just creating the positions by hand in it. Tedious, but luckily there aren’t many of those diagrams I use.