Recently in teaching tools Category
Interested in television writing, the BBC's Writer Room is a great resource, even for writers outside of the UK. The site contains tips on writing for television, up coming opportunites, a blog, sample scripts and heaps more.
Wouldn;t it be brilliant if the ABC or SBS had something like this?
Wouldn;t it be brilliant if the ABC or SBS had something like this?
My current five favourite blogs are as follows;
TV Tonight
David Knox was formerly at Screen Industry subscription site, Screenhub. This new blog has the latest news, inside word, breaking news and observation on the local television industry. From the latest ratings, to critque of network programming and audience spoilers - it's a very juicy collection of information.
The Lamp Water Cooler
From the New Media section of the Australian Film Television and Radio School, this blog site covers a wide range of topics from the insightful to the just plain fun.
Wishful Thinking
I've only recently added this to my reading list. Mark McGuiness is a UK based expert in coaching for creative people, his posts on both creative process and business coaching are very insightful.
Idents TV
John Beohm has an interest in a very niche area, he's interested in TV idents, those little station ID's that brand a network. An indepth look at titles, logo's and promotion. He collects samples from all over the world. There is some amazing stuff in here and it's interesting how different networks in different countries tackle similar challenges so differently. My favorite thing he's recently posted was the adds from Channel 4 in the UK that encourage people to take up digital TV, they used 80's icon Max Hedroom - (now in an old people's home) - to get the message across.
Tama Leaver
UWA's Dr Tama Leaver always finds the coolest stuff online, with a healthy interest in censorship, Web 2.0, Digital Culture, Education and Battlestar Gallatica, there is always an item of interest.
TV Tonight
David Knox was formerly at Screen Industry subscription site, Screenhub. This new blog has the latest news, inside word, breaking news and observation on the local television industry. From the latest ratings, to critque of network programming and audience spoilers - it's a very juicy collection of information.
The Lamp Water Cooler
From the New Media section of the Australian Film Television and Radio School, this blog site covers a wide range of topics from the insightful to the just plain fun.
Wishful Thinking
I've only recently added this to my reading list. Mark McGuiness is a UK based expert in coaching for creative people, his posts on both creative process and business coaching are very insightful.
Idents TV
John Beohm has an interest in a very niche area, he's interested in TV idents, those little station ID's that brand a network. An indepth look at titles, logo's and promotion. He collects samples from all over the world. There is some amazing stuff in here and it's interesting how different networks in different countries tackle similar challenges so differently. My favorite thing he's recently posted was the adds from Channel 4 in the UK that encourage people to take up digital TV, they used 80's icon Max Hedroom - (now in an old people's home) - to get the message across.
Tama Leaver
UWA's Dr Tama Leaver always finds the coolest stuff online, with a healthy interest in censorship, Web 2.0, Digital Culture, Education and Battlestar Gallatica, there is always an item of interest.
Yesterday at the 'New ways of Working in VET' Conference in Brisbane Dr Victor Callan from the University of Queensland Business School discussed some of his recent research and observations about Australian's vocational training industry.
Dr Callan noted that as the workplace and industry needs are changing so are our training organizations and a new set of capabilities are required from organizations, their managers and leaders.
Change in the workplace is being driven by globalisation, increasing competition, information technology, communication, the demographics of an aging workforce and increasing connectivity. While in the VET world change is being driven by both the agendas of state and federal governments, needs for rapid skill uptake and pressure for effective Recognized Prior Learning (RPL) processes.
Dr Callan highlighted that nationally in Australia only 4% of qualifications are issued through RPL processes, for a fundamental part of our vocational training structure - this is an incredibly low number. At FTI we would predict that the level of RPL in the screen sector is even lower - and the action learning we have been undertaking through the 'Reframing the Future'; project this year certainly backs that up.
The training professional today also has increasing demands that require them to deliver to a diverse range of customers, requiring Training Organizations to develop strategies that allow them to provide services in full time and part-time delivery, through flexible options, provide services during the day, at night and on weekends and often this change is coming too fast for the staff within these organizations.
Dr Callan highlights that many successful organisations now have a 'Shamrock' structure - three leaves incorporating a central core of staff, independent casual contractors and a mix of temporary hires for specific projects. An incredibly flexible workforce.
To be success a training organisation needs to have an effective balance of operating environment, strategy, workplace culture and effective leadership.
As Dr Callan noted "It's no longer 'know how' that is essential, rather the 'know why' and 'know whom' is more important and developing the essential internal and external networks of communication between the training world and the wider industry.
Dr Callan proposed that an effective VET Manager would need the following skills;
The ability to develop people's skills and abilities
The Ability to manage people's performance
The ability to manage an organisations financial performance
The ability to undertake strategic management
The ability to implement and manage change
When it came to change management it didn't matter which model of change management you followed or which school of thought you subscribed to or how many stages were in your change management model. Whatever works is what is required. Every situation is going to be different and a wide variety of approaches to change management will be needed. So it didn't matter if you specialized in collaborative or coercive change - whichever is appropriate for the situation is probably the best one to go with.
The clear thing is that VET Managers should be planning for chaos and uncertainty. The unexpected and unpredictable will be the norm.
It is essential for training organisations to remember to effectively develop their own staff, while facing the growing challenge of addressing the skills shortages of the outside world.
There are common barriers to effective development in this area as well. We are too busy, their financial barriers, Human Resources in training organisations are often described as outdated, organisations lack strategic planning, effective induction processes, retention of existing staff and fail to undertake succession planning and face a growing casualization of their staff and the ever aging VET workforce.
Read more about Dr Callan's research here.
Dr Callan noted that as the workplace and industry needs are changing so are our training organizations and a new set of capabilities are required from organizations, their managers and leaders.
Change in the workplace is being driven by globalisation, increasing competition, information technology, communication, the demographics of an aging workforce and increasing connectivity. While in the VET world change is being driven by both the agendas of state and federal governments, needs for rapid skill uptake and pressure for effective Recognized Prior Learning (RPL) processes.
Dr Callan highlighted that nationally in Australia only 4% of qualifications are issued through RPL processes, for a fundamental part of our vocational training structure - this is an incredibly low number. At FTI we would predict that the level of RPL in the screen sector is even lower - and the action learning we have been undertaking through the 'Reframing the Future'; project this year certainly backs that up.
The training professional today also has increasing demands that require them to deliver to a diverse range of customers, requiring Training Organizations to develop strategies that allow them to provide services in full time and part-time delivery, through flexible options, provide services during the day, at night and on weekends and often this change is coming too fast for the staff within these organizations.
Dr Callan highlights that many successful organisations now have a 'Shamrock' structure - three leaves incorporating a central core of staff, independent casual contractors and a mix of temporary hires for specific projects. An incredibly flexible workforce.
To be success a training organisation needs to have an effective balance of operating environment, strategy, workplace culture and effective leadership.
As Dr Callan noted "It's no longer 'know how' that is essential, rather the 'know why' and 'know whom' is more important and developing the essential internal and external networks of communication between the training world and the wider industry.
Dr Callan proposed that an effective VET Manager would need the following skills;
The ability to develop people's skills and abilities
The Ability to manage people's performance
The ability to manage an organisations financial performance
The ability to undertake strategic management
The ability to implement and manage change
When it came to change management it didn't matter which model of change management you followed or which school of thought you subscribed to or how many stages were in your change management model. Whatever works is what is required. Every situation is going to be different and a wide variety of approaches to change management will be needed. So it didn't matter if you specialized in collaborative or coercive change - whichever is appropriate for the situation is probably the best one to go with.
The clear thing is that VET Managers should be planning for chaos and uncertainty. The unexpected and unpredictable will be the norm.
It is essential for training organisations to remember to effectively develop their own staff, while facing the growing challenge of addressing the skills shortages of the outside world.
There are common barriers to effective development in this area as well. We are too busy, their financial barriers, Human Resources in training organisations are often described as outdated, organisations lack strategic planning, effective induction processes, retention of existing staff and fail to undertake succession planning and face a growing casualization of their staff and the ever aging VET workforce.
Read more about Dr Callan's research here.
Yesterday at the opening of the 'New Ways of Working in Vocational Education and Training' conference in Brisbane, Carol Webb, the Assistant Director Director General, Industry and VET Policy from the Department of Education, Training and the Arts in Queensland gave an engaging presentation about the effects of technology and the importance of change management skills in the modern training workforce.
To illustrate her point Carol payed a video that highlighted how technological uptake is getting faster and faster, the film showed the amount of time it took different pieces of technology to gain 50 million users. Beginning with the telephone, which took 74 years from it's release to finding it's 50 millionth customer. For radio the uptake was a much shorter 38 years, computers took only 18 years and television was just 13 years. The internet took just 4 years to reach 50 million people and the most recent technological uptake is the I-Pod, which has taken just 1 year to find 50 million users.
Australia's current level of training is 24th on the list OECD countries, well below the average and there is no denying that in today's booming economy their is a significant skills shortage.
This morning in his keynote presentation Jim Davidson, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Education, Science and Training highlighted that if Australia maintains it's current level of vocational training success - within around 15 years we will be 200,000 workers short of industry requirements - a massive short fall. To meet the requirements of our growing economy and workforce the number of successful graduates each and every year must increase by 1.2%.
Side by side these two statement present a challenging scenario. A huge undertaking to train many many more workers, with a growing level of success - in a n environment that is rapidly changing and developing. In fact the pace of change is becoming so fast that often training programs now require to be rewritten while they are in progress to keep up with industry developments.
Effective Trainers don't just have to be industry experts and learning experts, they also need to be rapid change experts, learning new techniques, new technology and new ways of working almost instantaneously. Forever chasing a moving target.
Carol Webb noted that organizations can no longer be working to static 5 year plans - because no-one is able to accurate predict where we will be in 5 years and what the priorities will be. Effective workers and organizations need to be in a state of constant flux, continually changing, developing strategy and responses and the run, and making rapid but effective implementations.
This is certainly a theme that we have also seen this year through our participation in 'Reframing the Future' a national program that aims to assist vocational education professionals with the essential skills required to operate effectively. The training team from FTI has been focusing on change management and strategic planning abilities and the theme of constant change, and constant adaptation has shone through.
The terms 'education evolution' has been used to mock the calls for an 'education revolution'. A clever play on words - certainly we need to maintain the things that work in our national training system and not throw the baby out with the bathwater but the evolution we need though is a fast paced one featuring rapid adaptation and a desperate need to jettison the outdated points of view, redundant skills, or bureaucratic requirements which no longer serve a useful purpose.
To illustrate her point Carol payed a video that highlighted how technological uptake is getting faster and faster, the film showed the amount of time it took different pieces of technology to gain 50 million users. Beginning with the telephone, which took 74 years from it's release to finding it's 50 millionth customer. For radio the uptake was a much shorter 38 years, computers took only 18 years and television was just 13 years. The internet took just 4 years to reach 50 million people and the most recent technological uptake is the I-Pod, which has taken just 1 year to find 50 million users.
Australia's current level of training is 24th on the list OECD countries, well below the average and there is no denying that in today's booming economy their is a significant skills shortage.
This morning in his keynote presentation Jim Davidson, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Education, Science and Training highlighted that if Australia maintains it's current level of vocational training success - within around 15 years we will be 200,000 workers short of industry requirements - a massive short fall. To meet the requirements of our growing economy and workforce the number of successful graduates each and every year must increase by 1.2%.
Side by side these two statement present a challenging scenario. A huge undertaking to train many many more workers, with a growing level of success - in a n environment that is rapidly changing and developing. In fact the pace of change is becoming so fast that often training programs now require to be rewritten while they are in progress to keep up with industry developments.
Effective Trainers don't just have to be industry experts and learning experts, they also need to be rapid change experts, learning new techniques, new technology and new ways of working almost instantaneously. Forever chasing a moving target.
Carol Webb noted that organizations can no longer be working to static 5 year plans - because no-one is able to accurate predict where we will be in 5 years and what the priorities will be. Effective workers and organizations need to be in a state of constant flux, continually changing, developing strategy and responses and the run, and making rapid but effective implementations.
This is certainly a theme that we have also seen this year through our participation in 'Reframing the Future' a national program that aims to assist vocational education professionals with the essential skills required to operate effectively. The training team from FTI has been focusing on change management and strategic planning abilities and the theme of constant change, and constant adaptation has shone through.
The terms 'education evolution' has been used to mock the calls for an 'education revolution'. A clever play on words - certainly we need to maintain the things that work in our national training system and not throw the baby out with the bathwater but the evolution we need though is a fast paced one featuring rapid adaptation and a desperate need to jettison the outdated points of view, redundant skills, or bureaucratic requirements which no longer serve a useful purpose.
Marshall McLuhan seems to be popping up everywhere again, in THE GUARDIAN, Nick Carr is writing about him, and more indepth on his blog. Finding new love for McLuhan in the internet age is nothing new though, he's been the 'patron saint' of WIRED magazine for ages.
A recent hit YouTube video on the modern educational experience also began with a McLuhan quote.
"Today's child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century environment that still characterises the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified pattern subjects and schedules" - McLuhan 1967
Effective education in today's world is far removed from the classroom experience that our parents, or even we oursleves experienced. An effective educator needs to be able to teach for a vareity of learning styles, lifestyles and individual students needs. From this outside this can look disorganised and unstructured, chaotic and undisciplined. But from the users experience, it is education that is engaging, personalised and incredibly effective.
One of the things I love about working at FTI is that we often try out new ways of teaching, experiment and adapt. The team make constant change to our programs, they are living creatures, adapting and transforming as the world and industry around us changes at a rapid rate. There has been much debate about how McLuhan's theories and writings apply to the internet age, but I wonder if they can also been used to guide approaches in learning and eduction?
This week I had the great pleasure of being a guest at a very forward thinking, modern, public high school in Perth. I was visiting a group of 60 or more Year 8 students who are making a series of documentaries during this term. Over the course of a few hours we talked about stories, the concept of the truth in documentary, the history and future of documentary films, tips for filmmaking, audience interest and so many other things about the filmmaking process.
I asked the students, how many of them had a video camera at home, it was about 80 percent.
I asked how many had a mobile phone with a camera, it was nearly everyone.
I asked who had made a film already, again it was around 80 percent.
I asked who had posted a film to a share site such as YouTube, 60 percent responded in the affirmantive.
When you stop and think about it the average age of the emrging filmmaker is dropping fast. No longer is the up and comming new filmmaker a 25 year old or even a 20 year old, at FTI we see talented 15 year olds trying to get a look in. Now if you think about funding schemes, training opportunities, production initinatives and entery level industry jobs, how many of these doors are available to the youngest of filmmmakers?
As students progress through primary and secondary education now they are regularly exposed to vision editing, using video cameras, and flash animation. Each year the level of expertise held by an average Year 12 student will continue to rise. So should we make all the restrictions on funding programs, courses and the rest be removed? There is a certain logic that says 'Yes'.
However, there is another more obvious challenge. Do 15 year old filmmakers have anything to say? This is debatable, as many 20 year old filmmakers often make a plethora of angst filled films about tortured souls. Maybe the real question is how do you challenge a young filmmaker to think beyond the norm and to present ideas and thoughts in a more creative context.
This is going to be one of the big challenges for screen educators and support agencies in coming years, finding the methodology and tools to work with the youngest of filmmakers and bring out the best in them.
One great opportunities for young filmmakers that is specifically for them and already in existence is the 'Document Your World' competition at the Australian International Documentary Conference. Teams of young filmmakers get a chance to pitch their ideas to ABC's JTV, in front of an audience of experienced filmmakers and a panel of esteemed filmmakers. I got the chance to see this in action at AIDC 2007 and the ideas put forward by the different teams were great. It's brilliant to see that it will be back for AIDC 2008 which is being held right here in Perth.
I asked the students, how many of them had a video camera at home, it was about 80 percent.
I asked how many had a mobile phone with a camera, it was nearly everyone.
I asked who had made a film already, again it was around 80 percent.
I asked who had posted a film to a share site such as YouTube, 60 percent responded in the affirmantive.
When you stop and think about it the average age of the emrging filmmaker is dropping fast. No longer is the up and comming new filmmaker a 25 year old or even a 20 year old, at FTI we see talented 15 year olds trying to get a look in. Now if you think about funding schemes, training opportunities, production initinatives and entery level industry jobs, how many of these doors are available to the youngest of filmmmakers?
As students progress through primary and secondary education now they are regularly exposed to vision editing, using video cameras, and flash animation. Each year the level of expertise held by an average Year 12 student will continue to rise. So should we make all the restrictions on funding programs, courses and the rest be removed? There is a certain logic that says 'Yes'.
However, there is another more obvious challenge. Do 15 year old filmmakers have anything to say? This is debatable, as many 20 year old filmmakers often make a plethora of angst filled films about tortured souls. Maybe the real question is how do you challenge a young filmmaker to think beyond the norm and to present ideas and thoughts in a more creative context.
This is going to be one of the big challenges for screen educators and support agencies in coming years, finding the methodology and tools to work with the youngest of filmmakers and bring out the best in them.
One great opportunities for young filmmakers that is specifically for them and already in existence is the 'Document Your World' competition at the Australian International Documentary Conference. Teams of young filmmakers get a chance to pitch their ideas to ABC's JTV, in front of an audience of experienced filmmakers and a panel of esteemed filmmakers. I got the chance to see this in action at AIDC 2007 and the ideas put forward by the different teams were great. It's brilliant to see that it will be back for AIDC 2008 which is being held right here in Perth.
For more information on this exciting initiative, visit www.aidc.com.au/marketplace/documentyourworld or the Hero Project at www.directingthehero.com
The team behind the useful Squidoo site have just launched something new, SquidWho!
I've found the Squidoo website really useful, if your teaching a class something on computers and want to assemble a whole bunch of links and text and images together it's really easy to use.
The idea behind Squidoo was it would allow Subject Matter Experts to easily corral a bunch of related links across the web into one place. So wehter you want to write a killer article, get into filmmaking or knit some socks, there is someone sharing their knowledge.
It greatest value though is it's usefulness is just putting stuff in a central place. So in early 2006 when we were doing internal professional development bringing staff up to speed with Web 2.0 developments we put together this. During the Learnscope Project with the ABC we used this site to share links during a training session, when I spoke at the 'Mind Your Arts' festival about video blogging we used this one.
Now the team have released SquidWho, the idea behind this is that it allow's you to create profiles of individual people, so if you want to know about someone you just type in their name and it searches for a profile. Unlike Wikipedia, it does not matter how globally famous you are, if your famous in your own neighbourhood that's enough. For example of some good pages check out Seth Godin, or Malcolm Gladwell. If the person your searching for does not already have a page their supercomputers scour the internet for info on them and helps you to start building a page.
I've found the Squidoo website really useful, if your teaching a class something on computers and want to assemble a whole bunch of links and text and images together it's really easy to use.
The idea behind Squidoo was it would allow Subject Matter Experts to easily corral a bunch of related links across the web into one place. So wehter you want to write a killer article, get into filmmaking or knit some socks, there is someone sharing their knowledge.
It greatest value though is it's usefulness is just putting stuff in a central place. So in early 2006 when we were doing internal professional development bringing staff up to speed with Web 2.0 developments we put together this. During the Learnscope Project with the ABC we used this site to share links during a training session, when I spoke at the 'Mind Your Arts' festival about video blogging we used this one.
Now the team have released SquidWho, the idea behind this is that it allow's you to create profiles of individual people, so if you want to know about someone you just type in their name and it searches for a profile. Unlike Wikipedia, it does not matter how globally famous you are, if your famous in your own neighbourhood that's enough. For example of some good pages check out Seth Godin, or Malcolm Gladwell. If the person your searching for does not already have a page their supercomputers scour the internet for info on them and helps you to start building a page.
