Showing posts with label Guest Speaker Series. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guest Speaker Series. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Guest Speaker: Steve Wellington

After our first two guest speakers (here and here), one of my students came up to me. "You know, my dad could be a guest speaker too." As it turns out, Mr. Wellington lives and works in the tech world, so we had him come in for a visit.

Steve Wellington is Senior Multimedia Producer at Paycor, a company that handles payroll for companies. In fact, they manage my paychecks, so this presentation was very near and dear to my heart. His specific role is to create videos that can be used for external or internal use.  The videos created for clients give information about periodic software updates.  Since people stare at text all day long, it can be helpful to watch a video instead of reading about the updates.  The internal videos tend to be more motivational and fun in nature. He showed us two internal videos, both of them being music videos of your typical cubicle workers having fun together.

In essence, he is the media department at Paycor. This means that he does it all. He will sit in meetings with the creators of the software to boil all update information into something digestible. He will then write the script and create the set and lighting before bringing a coworker to film the video. During the filming process, he is the producer and cameraman. Then, it's time to go back to editing the video before it is finally published.  He explained to the students there is a lot of "butt in chair" time in his job.

Since we already had a video producer come visit us, Steve took a different look at how the job is done.  He took us into the software to show us how the video is put together, using a video he is currently working on. If you have ever created your own video in iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, you may be familiar with the different layers in the production process. However, the videos he works on are a bit more complex than what I'm used to from making little family videos.  He was able to go in and show us how the video, speaker's words, background music, and graphics were all different layers.

Mr. Wellington explained to the students that learning never ceases. He didn't stop learning when he got his degrees in Television and Media.  There are constant changes in media, and he needs to stay on top of the game.

As we talked before and after class, I was amazed that we see similar changes and causes for concern in our separate fields.  For instance, there is a huge need for digital courtesy. Your face doesn't always need to be glued to a screen. While times are achanging and people are consuming media differently than us old-timers, we also see that using technology for technology-use sake is not always a best practice.

I always enjoy my chats with Mr. Wellington over the years, and I'm glad he came to share with the class!

Oh, and here's my Twitter feed from the presentation:

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Guest Speaker: Jessica Ross

As a middle school technology teacher, I'm starting to see that my students need to see how technology will drive their career choices. Certainly, not every student I have will be an engineer for Google, but a fair amount of them will use technological devices every day for the rest of their lives. I want them to realize that using technology is more than playing games or doing homework. The real awesomeness of tech use is being the person who creates things.

So, I invited Jessica Ross to talk to my students about video production.  As you probably know from Jessica's 20 Year Profile, she is the head of media at Kona Ice, working to create all their videos.

Jessica did a great job connecting to my class of 10 boys and 1 girl while showing them the progression of her video production. One of her main points is that technology is always changing. She demonstrated that by showing how her videos have improved over the years because of the cameras and other tools she has at her disposal.  In only six years after graduating from college, she has upgraded cameras three times to keep up with the changing technology.

I found it interesting that Jessica started video production while in high school.  She had tons of practice in her field before she ever went to learn it at college.  This continues as a resounding theme of people in the world of technology. They didn't wait to learn it in college or on the job. The seed was planted years earlier.

Jessica pointed out to the students they have a leg up on the world of technology because they have grown up with it. Since they live in a world inundated with technology, they are able to do so much.  The key is to leverage that power to become an awesome creator, not consumer, of technology.

Here is my Twitter blow up of the presentation.
  1.  Retweeted by 
    I had an absolute blast talking to 's technology class today about my job and why technology is important. Hooray technology!
  2. How do we market to millennials? No commercials. 90% of time online is thru app not web browser.
  3. You have a leg up because you are growing up with technology.
  4. Now @janedeckersmith is showing on our big screen in class. is bringing them all to the room.
  5. "You guys have some really fast internet here."
  6. has given back over $13 million to communities.
  7. "I started creating dumb little videos while in high school."
  8. "I realized that people create TV shows for a living and get paid for it. I wanted to do that too."
  9. Showing off her videos to show progression of her cameras and software. Great stuff!
  10. "One constant in technology is that it is always changing."
  11. Guest speaker in T4T today:

My students wrote up a summary of the presentation, and I thought I would quote some of my favorite lines. 
  • She started editing in high school. She edited small random videos at first but she started liking it. 
  • She also makes (or at least made) storyboards and scripts. 
  • I cannot say I have had Kona Ice but I am definitely looking forward to. They raised 13 million dollars and then gave them away to people in need. 
  • She first started just making fun videos and started getting better tech and made even better videos so she started to work at Kona Ice and worked on the videos and video editing.
  • What surprised me is that she didn’t start filming and editing sooner than high school.
  • One thing that surprised me was how good cameras are today.
  • I was surprised that she could make a job by creating videos of her friends and could get paid for doing it.  
  • I learned that it is very fun to have a videoing job. You can make a lot of different videos with the job she has. If I were to be offered the job she has… I would definitely take it.
I truly am enjoying this guest speaker series and hope to add one more to the roster before the end of the school year.