Posts Tagged computer training courses
Touch Screen Apple Computer in the Works! Hold on to your mouse cables!
Digital Media Academy News + Events | March 10th, 2009 by Philip Harding
I love some good Apple rumor news as much as the next guy, and this is some news I can really sink my teeth into…
Apple has been staying away from the Netbook market for a while. The MacBook Air comes close, but is not totally a “Netbook” by definition. I just came across a “hot news” Apple article from CNNMoney.com blogs, and it has me getting all butterflies-in-the-stomach-like. As fast as technology seems to move, sometimes it doesn’t seem fast enough to me. Here’s the article about the rumored touch-screen Mac.
I have been screaming for a larger iPhone, or a laptop without the lap part – just give me the top. You have to love the iPhone interactive experience. Let’s face it, the keyboard and mouse are sooo… 1980′s. Let’s go everybody! Let’s put the old-fashioned keyboard and mouse to rest and move forward!
I just had this conversation last week with a few of DMA’s top and award winning instructors: Tom Wolsky and Beth Corwin. I can hear the conversations with the next generation asking us to explain how a keyboard and mouse worked. “You mean you used to have to type everything in manually? All the graphics were on a flat surface? How did you work without holographic interfaces?” Kind of like floppy disks or computers taking up a whole room? What a crazy concept.
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Video Compression Class at Stanford University : by Ben Wagonner
Digital Media Academy News + Events | March 9th, 2009 by Philip Harding
Written By Ben Waggoner
Wow, the year just keeps skipping past; this post has been on my to-do list for a month now. And my video compression classes are approaching at a rapid pace, with signups for Digital Media Academy @ Stanford University already open!
These classes are among the highlights of my year. I never learn faster than when I’m teaching, particularly when I get the great students that attend the sessions. Skill levels vary widely, and the course is designed to accommodate that. But everyone’s got something unique they’re trying to do, whether it’s a supervisor of a high-volume compression department getting up to speed on new formats, or an educator incorporating videos of marine animals into the classroom. And it’s those real-world projects where the rubber meets the road. The focus of the classes is on hands-on art, science, and craft of video compression. It’s all about how to get the best results out of real-world content with real-world workflows, within all the real-world constraints we have to operate under.
When Microsoft was recruiting me back in 2005, one of my top requirements was that I keep on teaching these classes, with full freedom to cover the formats and technologies that matter, even if competitive with our own. It was an easy sell – they understand the value of me understanding everything. And of course, now that VC-1 is a SMPTE standard and Silverlight is getting H.264 support, the era of proprietary media formats is over anyway. So while we’ll certainly spend time with VC-1, WMV, and Silverlight, we’ll also cover MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Flash, DVD, Blu-ray, Ogg Theora, and other formats and players based on class interest.
Class time is roughly split between lectures/demos and hands-on time doing projects. Each student gets their own workstation loaded with the latest and greatest compression software and related tools.
And I really encourage students to bring along some of their own content and projects, particularly one’s they’ve been having trouble with. Nothing beats that kind of variety of real projects to teach the tips and tricks of our craft.
DMA computer training classes offer Stanford Continuing Studies academic credit, and so are generally covered by corporate education benefits.
Stanford University: August 10-14
Mastering Video Compression
This is the one that started it all; 2009 makes it a full decade since the very first 2-day class I did for the Stanford library science department on authoring QuickTime for education . We’ve been doing the current week-long format for eight years now. The program that ran that class evolved into the Digital Media Academy, which now runs a very wide variety of classes. My 9 year old son came along last year to take a great LEGO Robotics course the same week. He and James Clarke (who took the class) really hit it off; the three of us can deliver quite a whirlwind of nerdish intensity.
Since it’s a one week intensive, it works as a destination class; we get people flying in from around the world. On-campus dorm rooms are available (and quite nice; I stay in one), with other lodging options available, and a meal plan.
