The Skills Companies Need Most in 2020
Source: Linkedin Learning
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The skill that all others employ to communicate is ranked at #10?
As will become apparent below, we think "video production" is a meta-skill, both Hard and Soft - analogous to writing or reading - advantageous no matter the field of endeavor.
Video production is more commonly called Content.
Speaking of content, a 2014 quote from Gary Vaynerchuk has come true:
"Whether you like it or not...producing content is now the BASELINE for all brands and companies. It literally doesn't matter what business you're in, what industry you operate in, if you're not producing content, you basically don't exist. So what's your excuse?
We'd like to rephrase this for educators:
"Whether you like it or not, producing video content is now a baseline for all academic disciplines...if you do not enable your young learners to produce video/animation/motion graphics on any subject matter, at any age, they (and you) basically won't exist. So what is your excuse?"
It's the 800 lb gorilla in the room.
This fundamental everybody ignores, nobody is trained to teach, and yet is becoming the coin of the realm in all communications.
A recent example.
Recently, our clothes dryer's belt snapped. I simply Youtube'd a step-by-step repair video after finding the serial number to our machine.
After the replacement dryer belt arrived via Amazon, and while following the video on my phone, I disassembled our dryer, and put it all back together.
Voila'! Our darks were dry within minutes.
So?
A fix-it man with almost no video skills had produced an adequate DIY video.
He had to deal with long shots, medium shots, and close-ups. He learned editing, sequencing and a host of other visual communication things like narration and sound editing.
He is adapting with creativity, as per LinkedIn's infographic, to his audience's preferred medium.
Shouting at the screen:
IF DRYER REPAIR SPECIALISTS EMPLOY VIDEO AS AN ESSENTIAL - WHY AREN'T WE PREPPING KINDERGARTNERS TO SPEAK THIS LANGUAGE?
Editing on an iPad, for example, is a basic sequencing skill we've always taught in early grades, only with still pictures.
This is what old school editing looked like:
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We don't teach kids to read and write so they can all grow up to be novelists!
We don't teach kids to be filmmakers because we want them all to grow up to be Tim Burton, Walt Disney, or Steven Spielberg!
We teach it because it will serve them in all professions, brands, vocations or avocations.
We teach it so they can discern and decode media culture from a behind-the-scenes point of view, witnessing it's purposeful constructedness firsthand.
Yet the 800 lb gorilla is the skill in education that sits there on the back row at your children's future peril.
With Animating Kids, we've tested how to teach "video production" step-by-step. Through the medium of stop motion, it can happen on a table top with paper and an app or two.
150 lessons any kid can do, demonstrated by the Animation Chefs in a simple cooking-show-style format. 90 minutes of P.D. from yours truly too, for educators who've never tried or who need to up their game.