The ‘flipped classroom’ is a term used for turning traditional education on its head. Taking technology and utilizing it to ‘humanize’ (according to Salmon Kahn) the classroom. Ideally, online lectures (video namely) are actually the students’ ‘homework’, than students come into the classroom (prepared and informed) and ready to interact with the other students and the teacher for best practices.

As a teaching faculty in the University setting, I have been teaching online classes using this very methodology. My students get the lectures, podcasts and visual materials to review at their own pace, then have weekly assignments via discussion forums. This allows students to share ideas, interact and comment on each other’s work. It also frees up 90% of my time to interact with students, giving them more feedback, structure and evaluation – which is what a teacher should be doing, rather than spending all of their time doing administrative work, marking/grading and lesson planning. This is value-added education. By planning all lectures in this way, the students can learn at their own pace and not feel pressured to perform in a ‘one-size-fits-all’ paradigm of traditional classroom teaching. If this type of learning module works well in the university setting – imagine what the future will look like when they come to university already having the experience and knowledge of this learning method from their higher education experience! I probably spend 50% of my time just training the students how to utilize the technology, rather than the subject matter. It’s about time to make a major paradigm shift and arm students with this technology and learning so they can compete on a global scale after they get through college.

I have taught both live and online classes, and it is definitely the online classes with remote and/or classroom follow-up which I believe offers the student’s the best opportunities to learn, solve, and grow; in turn, they also gain valuable leadership and enterprise skills by not passively sitting in the classroom while the lecturer ‘spoon-feeds’ the material — all the while they are texting their buddy who is sitting right next to them …

Here’s a great infographic (by Knewton)

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

This is a great article posted by Brian Solis on his blog and I wanted to share it with my readers, because we must dream big; to accept life’s challenges, to change with the tides and to have the courage to make it stick to the sticking point. Read on…

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It’s inevitable that I will get the question. You’d think by now that I would learn to expect it…that I would prepare for it…or have a response that would be purely second nature. But I don’t. I’ve no standard answer that automatically inspires anyone in the moment to take action. And, to this day, I neither expect the question nor do I have a rehearsed or standard riposte committed to memory.

So what is “the question?”

The question faces those who see disruption all around them. They believe survival requires change and they aspire to fight for transformation. But, at some point in their quest to pursue a new course, a direction in which they deeply believe, they will ask reluctantly, even desperately, “How do I convince others to see what I see” or “how can I get those in control to recognize the importance of what’s happening around us so that we can move forward in the right direction?”

While my response in each moment always attempts to zero-in on the individual circumstance, the truest, most genuine answer that I can share is that…to bring about change does not take technology, it takes courage. And, this is why change is not a commodity. Change is not easy nor is it formulaic. But I can say this with the utmost conviction, change.is.inevitable and it is yours to define.

We live in disruptive times. As such, everything we know transcends into everything we once knew. How we communicate, connect, discover, learn and share is changing. New and emerging technology is becoming increasingly relentless and it is forcing evolution or complete transformation. And, it touches your personally and professionally. In our own way, we each are gravitating toward dissonance or disarray and it can be distressful. As students, parents, role models, employees, managers, entrepreneurs, artists, or some or all of the above, we will at some point collide with disruption. And in that moment, we will have a choice to make. We either fall down, choose to embrace change, or we will see the possibilities beyond what’s immediately apparent to pave the way toward a more meaningful outcome.

But again, it takes courage. It takes courage to see what others don’t or do what others won’t. It takes courage to push forward when pushed back.

Courage is the ability to do something that frightens one, yet it is the very thing that all leaders share. See, courage takes great strength to stand in the face of pain or inevitable grief and without it, your vision, no matter how brilliant or essential, is merely a masterpiece painted on a napkin—a promise that is never fully realized.

We stand today upon a foundation of uncertainty and apprehension. Everything is changing. What is constant however, is the absence of clarity, direction or answers. To tell you that there is an easy path toward transformation or that there are a series of “top 10 ways” to help you change the perspective of leadership or those around you is, well, misleading or a complete falsehood.

Contrary to popular belief, there are no rules for revolutionaries…just as there are no leaders who don’t continually strive to earn a position of leadership. It takes courage to be a change agent, to rise up and lead the way when others are filled with fear. It takes courage to walk in a different direction when others walk along a contrasting path. Most important, it takes courage to drive persistence to overcome resistance…to find comfort outside your comfort zone when the promise of reward is ambiguous. For, it is the vision to see where you need to go and the conviction to shepherd the march toward relevance that earns the greatest rewards of all, leadership, significance, and advocacy.

This is your time…

“Courage is grace under pressure.” – Ernest Hemingway

reposted from Brian Solis

E.M. Taboada

So you’re planning a web series.  Do you know what demographics you’re going for?  Have you figured out the perfect episode length that will keep viewers coming back for more?  What about sponsors, how are you going to pitch the concept to them?  In a rousing interview with Film Courage , filmmaker and Vampire Mob web series creator Joe Wilson explains why none of this matters and why you  need to focus on the passion:

Here’s the interview, it has lots of great advice and insights.  (I should also mention, the language is NSFW so don’t go blasting this on your speakers at the office):

The on-line content creation industry is in its infancy, and there is a plethora of experiments to be done in figuring out how to best monetize this content.  I’m not going to lie, that in itself can be a fascinating activity, and with more and more analytic tools at our disposal, along with resources like the YouTube Creator Playbook, it’s easy to get caught up in the numbers game.  But for most of us who are filmmakers and storytellers, that isn’t why we got into this in the first place.  At the end of the day, it’s the desire to tell a story, and to express an exciting idea, that gets us and our criminally underpaid cast and crew to get up at 4am and shoot a sunrise shot.  If the passion is there, it will come through in the end product, and if it comes through in the end product, the audience will sense it and reward it with their own passion.

So what do you think?  Are you planning a web series?  Have you thought of sponsorships and or demographics?  Do you think there are better episode lengths than others?

[via Film Courage]

March 30, 2012

After two failed attempts and 80 years of on-and-off efforts, the members of SAG and AFTRA have voted to merge. The new organization, called SAG-AFTRA, was born Friday afternoon.
The crowd at SAG headquarters in Los Angeles broke into song after the announcement, singing, “We have overcome.”

The vote among SAG members 82 percent in favor – a stunningly high number — and among AFTRA members, it was 86 percent in favor. Sixty percent approval by each union was required. SAG-AFTRA national co-presidents Ken Howard and Roberta Reardon announced the results at 1:35 p.m. PT.

More than 55,000 SAG ballots and 37,500 AFTRA ballots were returned.
Approval by AFTRA members was never in doubt: They had voted “yes” in the 1998-99 and 2003 merger attempts. But SAG members had voted “no” both times. In 2003, SAG’s “yes” votes fell about 2 percent short; 640 votes would have swung the result.

Ballots were mailed to 131,000 members of one or both unions Feb. 27 and were due back at the Seattle-area offices of Integrity Voting Systems by Friday morning. The results of the merger vote were live streamed at 1 p.m. PT at sagaftra.org, a campaign website that presumably would have become the online home of the new union. More than 6,000 viewers watched the announcement online.

The merger campaign was hard fought and included a lawsuit that sought to block the vote count. A federal judge denied that injunction Wednesday, but the lawsuit lives on, as does a threat of a class-action suit a year or so from now.

The merger process began in late 2010, or mid-2008, if measured from the initial formation of SAG’s pro-merger Unite for Strength slate — or in the 1930s, if measured from the formation of SAG and pre-television AFTRA predecessor AFRA, both of whose creation independent of Actors’ Equity even then raised questions as to whether performers ought to be represented by a single union, not two or three.

SAG represents more than 125,000 actors who work in film and digital motion pictures and TV programs, commercials, video games, corporate/educational, Internet and all new-media formats. AFTRA represents more than 70,000 performers, journalists and other artists working in the entertainment and news media.

- The Hollywood Reporter

Post by Jodi Nelson

I recently attended the Vitae’s March 2012 Leadership in Action symposium in Windermere, England to find out just what constitutes a leader. Was I a leader? If so, how good was I as a leader? What could I improve upon? How can I get more people to follow me? What did I learn?

Over the years in my professional and personal experiences, I have always tried my best to exemplify leadership in excellence. I pride myself on being a positive role model and raising the bar for every situation in which I am involved. I expect no less than the best from myself and my team. This stems from my high school basketball years, to my challenging (early 20′s) undergraduate years at the University of Oklahoma, my conservatory performing arts years at Cal Arts and now in my final year as a media/film critical and creative practice PhD at the University of Sussex. But, what is a leader? And how do I improve upon the skills I’ve learned thus far?

This past weekend I went rowing for the very first time in my life! I was terrified. Not only of being on the water, but being thrust into a group sport where I didn’t know the bow from stroke side, to the coordinated moves, to who my fellow teams members were. But the previous week, while at the Vitae symposium, I learned some valuable lessons that engaged my heart and mind and got me through this experience. More on the rowing analogy in a minute…

Vitae is an amazing organization in which bridges the gap between university doctoral departments and the professional academic industry by preparing researchers on all aspects of being a professional researcher. I recently blogged about my experience at the one day Digital Researcher 2012 where I engaged in social media and learned a whole host of digital scholarship knowledge and how that bridges my work with best industry practices. The Leadership in Action was different however, in that it brought together sixty researchers from all disciplines, backgrounds and universities across Great Britain for a week of motivational insights, coaching sessions, group workshops and individual tasks that would challenge even the best leaders – as I found out first hand.

The overall theme of the week was ‘Who are You?’ and ‘ What do you do?’ to get people to follow you? Interesting questions that provoked food for thought. Day one set the tone for the week by getting the group to think about these questions in our daily lives, understanding how to give/receive feedback, word association with leadership and success and then putting these things into action. Followed by activity sessions, which took groups of six people and throwing them into real life situations, one person being the leader, the rest the team; putting their skills to the test. Words like timely, decisive, inclusive, direction, commitment, purposeful, diplomacy and alliances were words used to describe a good leader.

So what did I personally learn? Well, the third and final day was my day to be the leader of my group. I was nervous, I was intimidated by the instructions and the personalities of some of the team members; as each had their own strong personalities, diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and academic disciplines (a scientist and an artist do NOT think from the same sides of the brain). Our task was to accomplish the goals set before us in the time limit provided. What’s important to note, is that the activity was not the focus of the team work, but rather how I lead the activity, how the other’s followed and then the feedback that would ensue.

After thirty intense minutes, the time had come to see how I fared. As instructed, positive feedback came first; things like ‘I was a born leader, charismatic, funny, inclusive and calm’ were all great things being said to me (sigh of relief!). BUT…then of course the constructive criticism came next and the things that were pointed out to me – albeit however painful – was an epiphany. Things like ‘I was controlling, I didn’t trust the group to follow through on items, delegation of tasks to individuals was a struggle for me’ and so on. While these aren’t earth-shattering things, to me they were the final lifting of an albatross around my neck that has kept me ball and chained over the past few years following some tragic personal experiences in my life.

Trust and delegation were very difficult things for me, because as a survivalist, I swore I’d never be betrayed by another, get on with the business of doing what needed to be done…essentially not needing anyone. But this is a facade. No one in this life ever makes it on their own. (Read Malcolm Galdwell’s book ‘Outliers‘ and you’ll see just how skewed our picture of ‘success’ is and it will reveal some eye-opening facts.) It was a valuable lesson I needed to put into practice to finally overcome this choking obstacle in my life. And now comes in the rowing analogy…

So this past weekend, as I’m sitting in the boat with seven other women, I’m thinking to myself ‘Self, I’m in England, rowing with a bunch of strangers on the river, on a sunny day (weird in England); and with a team who is relying on my leadership, but also on my strength as a member of the team. If one stroke is off, the boat doesn’t flow smoothly through the water and we could all go in. Terrifying at best, embarrassment in the least, but it was a life affirming moment for me that spoke to my heart; courage, risk, leadership in action. It was yet another valuable life lesson that I learned about being an individual leader, but also trusting your team, delegating tasks, being vulnerable (not a ‘know-it-all) and being accepting of learning curves and willingness to take risks. Perfectionism has no place in this scenario.

These experiences have allowed me to put together more tasks to accomplish my future endeavors in art, entrepreneurialism, academic teaching and research and especially in my personal life. I am truly thankful for Vitae and for their engaging, rich and diverse workshops that have been a part of my growth as a leader, artists, teacher, researcher and woman. I’ll be rowing again next week.

REPOST

I know, collective groan “yet another social network to keep up with?” Seems like there is a new one born every minute and many of them fail to get off the ground. But here is why Pinterest might be a site you should consider using for your production.

• In just one month (December 2011-January 2012), Pinterest saw traffic increase over 155% and over the last 6 months, traffic increased by 4000%. As of this month, they had over 11 million unique visitors to the site and over 10 million registered users from all over the world.

• Statistics show Pinterest drives more referral traffic on the Web than Google+, YouTube, Reddit and LinkedIn combined. The beauty of pinning photos/videos is they link back to websites, thus driving traffic. They are no follow links, so it doesn’t help with SEO, but any link that drives traffic to a site is good for awareness and conversion.

• Mainly, the site now attracts women in the age range 25-44 who love fashion, home decorating and family related products. As it gains more of a following, this is bound to change. Still, if that is a target demographic for your film…

• Activities are based on images so rather than having to write a lot, you can simply post photo collections and they don’t even have to be your own photos! I think this is the highly attractive thing about Pinterest, in fact I am hearing about Pinterest addiction. Users typically spend 11 minutes on the site each visit. User scanning pictures is a lot more enjoyable than scanning status updates on Facebook clearly. Plus there is no EdgeRank to deal with. Once someone decides to follow your boards, they continually see new additions you make in their stream whenever they log in.

• The key for users doesn’t seem to be gaining followers, but gaining repins meaning they want to have people think what they pin is cool (or hot, or whatever). They strive to be INFLUENCERS and that is exactly the people you want to find and connect with. Because people can follow boards they find interesting, it is possible to have many more followers on your boards than you do on your account profile.

• It integrates with your other social accounts like Facebook and Twitter and hopefully Google Plus is coming. There are embed badge widgets you can install on your website to integrate all of your social channels. Word of caution, at the moment the site only connects to Facebook PROFILES not business or professional pages, so you probably shouldn’t opt to sign in with Facebook if you are using this for your film, just sign in with your email and don’t connect to Facebook. If you want to tie Pinterest to your Twitter account, make sure it is the one you use for your film and when G+ comes online, make sure you have signed up using a gmail account for the production, not for your personal gmail account. However, other users can sign in with their social accounts and things they pin show up in their Facebook or Twitter stream, very handy for word of mouth to be spread about you and your film.

There is a “scoreboard” of sorts showing how many boards and followers you have over all, as well as followers of only certain boards and repins of your pins. The site also allows you to glean from others what they are interested in. You can start to “listen” to what your potential audience thinks is interesting by viewing what they select to pin. You don’t follow people as much as you follow things, ideas, topics on Pinterest. You can repin something someone else has posted and this can open the door to a conversation. They can do the same with your pins and you are alerted via email when someone does this and it shows under that image on your board. This is an enormous help when you are trying to figure out what to post, what boards to create, what resonates most?  While Facebook is about people and brands, Pinterest is about things and interests. You can only post images or video and some comments and tags in text on your boards.

I only recently started using it for the Joffrey project I am working on which is why all of my boards are devoted to that. Looking at them gives a good idea on the kind of thing you could use it for on your production. In my workshop presentations, I talk about posting regularly on your social channels and not just information directly about your film, but also about the interests of your audience; those who would be a fan of your film and of yourself as an artist. I am using the boards to show Joffrey history through pictures and videos; the ballets they created, the ballets they revived, their alumni dancers, Robert Joffrey through the years as well as photos of the merchandise available to buy through our site. It’s a balance of audience interest and promotion for the film.

I noticed Ted Hope is using his boards to express his personal interests , things and people he admires and wants to draw more attention to, his artistic accomplishments and resources he uses that he thinks would be helpful to his connections. All of these things help in attracting an audience both to his films, but also to his professional life as a producer. His personal tastes are reflected in all of his boards and none are devoted to posting family vacations! The point being, we can get to know Ted as a professional person without his having to reveal too much private information.

Other artists in the indie film space currently starting to use Pinterest are writer/director James Gunn; transmedia educator/artist Christy Dena who uses her boards to showcase ideas about narrative, interactive and game design ideas she has discovered; filmmaker Erik Proulx has created boards that show his advertising and design background and what he finds inspirational for this. You may remember his short film Lemonade about those who were laid off, particularly in the advertising industry, and found inspiration to reinvent their lives completely. I think Erik into these inspirational, motivational, life changing stories which is why he is making another film called Lemonade.  Detroit about a city that is reinventing itself. Filmmaker Gary King uses his boards to show his inspirations, showcase actors and actresses he loves and his career accomplishments. Film blog Film School Rejects uses their boards to keep readers updated on this year’s Oscar contenders, interesting movie posters their readers might like and films they are watching.

Pinterest is just getting started so don’t be alarmed that you have missed the boat. You still have first mover advantage here. You must join by invitation only, but those invitations aren’t difficult to obtain. You can request one on their site.

A word about self promotion
As with any social network, you should be using Pinterest to directly connect with audience on a personal level, not as a one way promotional channel. Use creative ways to showcase your personal identity and vision and use it as a magnet to attract those most interested in what you, as an artist, have to say. You will find your audience is much more willing to stay with you across projects when you are mindful of their interests. Show us your style, the way you see the world, the way you tell a story, not just “buy my DVD.” Contribute something of value to the community, and they will keep coming back.

Populate your boards before you start trying to add followers. As with any new endeavor online, you need some interesting content first. You wouldn’t promote a website that only has a landing page that says coming soon, so start by thinking through what you want to say about yourself and your work, who are you trying to attract (this could be different types of audiences, which is fine), and analyzing visuals you can use from your own assets. Also, the account can have more than one contributor, which is good for sharing the responsibility of board maintenance with your marketing team.

As with anything you do online, track referral traffic coming to your site via Pinterest. If you use Google Analytics, you can find out how to do this here.

 Pinterest is dead easy to get started on, but if you like tutorials, watch this video.

Here are some helpful Pinterest jargon, for all you beginners out there:

A Pin–an image added to Pinterest by a registered user

A Pinner–someone who is a registered user of Pinterest

Pinning–the act of sharing an image on Pinterest

A Pinboard–a collection of pins usually categorized around a topic, interest or theme

Repin–sharing some else’s pin on one of your own boards

Pin It Button–a widget badge one can embed on their website to let others know about a Pinterest account. Also a bookmark shortcut one can add to a toolbar to easily pin something seen online to one a board.

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Sheri Candler is an inbound marketing strategist for independent films. Through the use of content marketing tools such as social networking, podcasts, blogs, and online media publications, as well as relationship building with organizations & influencers, she assists filmmakers in building an engaged & robust online community for their work that will help develop and sustain their careers. Currently, she is working with Hybrid Cinema to release the documentary film Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance, a history of the Joffrey Ballet. She can be reached on Facebook: Sheri Candler Marketing and Publicity, on Twitter @shericandler, on Google Plus Sheri Candler

On February 3, 2012 at the British Library in London, over 150 researchers from the UK gathered to find out how social media is influencing research, publication and academic rigour. Vitae hosted a Go Digital 2012! event which helped researchers engage in the social media landscape. Keynote speaker, Martin Weller, who has a new book out entitled ‘The Digital Scholar‘, brought a wealth of experience and insight into blogging and publishing with social media. Along with the 150+ participants who were physically at the event, hundreds of virtual participants, logged in to listen to the live podcast and used Twitterfall to follow #dr12vitae during the day’s events tweeting ideas, feedback and questions for all to interact and comment.

The topic of the day was how to engage researchers in four key areas of social media. These were Creating Knowledge, Identifying Knowledge, Quality Assurance of Knowledge and Dissemination Knowledge. These four key areas were explored in mini-sessions amongst the session leader and researchers where they could debate, discuss and share their thoughts and experiences of how social media is effecting their research – or even if they were using it at all. Statistics show that only about 28% of researchers are actually using social media in their academic research.  There is a wide debate about the authenticity of using social media in academic research and how valid its purposes are, especially when it comes to REF (Research Excellence Framework) and publishing research data online.

There is a great four-part article about publishing your thesis online and whether it should be something researchers need to think about to get seen, analyzed, utilized and eventually published under the academic structures which are currently in existence. You can read this article here: PhD2Published. One of the key issues in publishing research online is it enables the researcher to start building a brand. By initiating conversations and discourse in the social media landscape, it enables the researcher to build a following, share information and discuss topics of importance to research discovery and continue building resources that will add to academic knowledge.

Alan Cann, who led the Quality Assurance session, mentioned this about Blogs:

• Blogs – these are intellectual thought processes, an open notebook. [Researchers] don’t need to defend their positions [with their writing], that way discourse is created with other uses; multi-dimensional, works-in-progress, not a finished product – it’s a thinking space. Discovery and comments, open thoughts, discussion and disseminating information is the purpose of a blog. When you get comments back, that is the most important thing.

Other sessions were equally as engaging and provided a wealth of knowledge, online tools, activities and resources that researchers can utilizing in their work. At the end of the day, groups of researchers were brought together to sum up what they learned in each of the sessions and put together an online application, which gave an overview of the topics and its outcomes. I have provided that outcome in a Slideshare file here:

All of the mini session ‘teaser’ trailers can be found on the Vitae’s YouTube Channel .

My overall thoughts on this one-day workshop was extremely well received. I think the entire group who participated (either in person or online) gained a lot of insight and knowledge into the world of social media and how it can be utilized to their advantage. The key is for academic bodies to catch up, integrate its value into the research evaluations, and include it into the classrooms and teaching modules, especially for contemporary media studies. Not only for research methodologies, but for practical application and employability – which, in my mind all add up to best practices in education.

Please follow me on Twitter @jodinelson_1 and LinkedIn and/or comment your thoughts here.

reposted

Want to be a working Hollywood Actor? What about on Broadway? or the West End?

What is the true definition of a working Actor? Those Actors you see on TV or Film all the time, but cannot for the life of you remember their names! That must be what a working Actor is, because they are well, working all the time. Or perhaps it is the Actor who hasn’t gotten their big break yet, but spends a great deal of their time honing their craft with acting classes and business classes to refine their marketing initiatives. Working Actors who ‘act’ in all kinds of projects such as; student films, independent films, theatre, commercials, industrials, hosting gigs, web series, voice over projects, etc…the list is endless – yet aren’t recognizable and perhaps don’t make enough money to vacation in the Caribbean. Or perhaps even rent, but are they worthy enough to be considered working Actors? Absolutely!

Here are first hand accounts from professional Hollywood, Broadway and London’s West End working actors about their personal triumphs, disappointments, break-thru’s and challenges that go into being a working professional in the Acting Business.

Buy it now at Lulu.com!

How Technology is Influencing Storytelling and Film: an Excellent Panel from Sundance

Here’s an excellent panel from this year’s Sundance Film Festival, sponsored by Adobe and featuring Vincent Laforet, Rob Legato, Jacob Rosenberg, and Sharlto Copley. The 77-minute panel follows, in full, with some pulled quotes and highlights:

Sundance Video

Here are some points and quotes I found especially worthwhile:

Vincent Laforet: “The cameras are out there, they’re being used… let’s move onto the next thing, and the interesting thing about technology is how filmmakers reach out to their audience, and social media, and different ways of distribution and connection.”

Sharlto Copley: “Neil Blomkamp was a good example of… if you can do visual effects yourself, if you can composite, if you can do sound, if you can do everything, then you can force yourself into a position where people will notice you. You can’t really worry about whether Hollywood is going to give you a crack or not.”

Finally, you might have noticed that, with this website and Man-child, I’ve been pursuing exactly what Vincent Laforet talks about here:

You share what you do. You don’t hide it, you don’t horde it, we share as much of the process [as we can], because people get really interested, they learn a lot, it becomes a community, and it becomes [part of] the democratization of film… the hope is that someday, you can go back to that audience and… that it can lead to the connection at some point to help make the film better, either by donations or by people buying the film at a small price, as opposed to going begging to Hollywood, and having to adhere to their limitations, and rules, and marketing, etc. Every independent filmmaker wants to break the model — we all want to find a way around the system.

Amen, brother.

[via FilmmakerIQ]