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Audio Education
Nov 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Tom Kenny, Editorial Director
A couple of months ago, Mix conducted a focus group at Ex'Pression College for Digital Arts (Emeryville, Calif.). We were looking to find out a couple of things. First, how do students coming up today — the “digital natives,” to borrow a term from Apple — receive technical- and application-based information outside of the classroom? And second, what do they expect out there in the world when they go job hunting; what is it they are looking for? The answer to the latter was pretty straightforward: While some were expecting to strike out on their own, most just want a job, any job. The answer to the former was a bit more complicated.
In a nutshell, students are less Twitter- and Facebook-oriented in their budding professional life than one might expect. They see a separation between pro media of delivery and how they conduct their personal lives. They use video chat while working or ftp sites or YouSendIt. They want to work with uncompressed media, at high resolution. They still bump shoulders in the hallway, and they are big on collaboration across all media. When we asked whether it was important for an audio engineer to understand video formats, there wasn't any hesitation. Of course, they all said.
We assembled the group from the audio recording program, digital arts, animation, film and motion graphics. At one point, a young woman from motion graphics, who was aiming for a career in game production, talked about having been up until 3 a.m. working on the soundtrack for her midterm project. The audio students were all conversant, at least on a basic level, with Final Cut Pro. And the film students seemed familiar with formats from all disciplines. When we asked them how they find tutorial information, they all said YouTube first, then if they needed more, either forums or a manufacturer's Website. They overwhelmingly prefer video as a means of learning about a product or perfecting a technique.
From that focus group, and in subsequent visits to Full Sail and the Institute of Production and Recording, and in talks with educators across the country, it became clear that tomorrow's engineers are living in a true multimedia world, both in how they produce projects and in the ways they consume information. It's natural for them to associate music or sound with picture, whether that picture is captured on film or produced in the computer. When they need to learn more, go beyond the classroom, they go and find it. And their curiosity is not limited to their field. When they leave school, all digital artists are their peers. All talk the same language.
In this space, in previous Audio Education issues of Mix, we frequently talked of how education is a lifelong pursuit; about how, when you live and work in a technology-driven field, you never really stop updating your skill set or learning from the masters. Today that is more true than ever, and there are countless available ways to gain knowledge. The real revelation today, however, is that it's not just audio anymore. It's a true multimedia world.
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