Films on the Fly is a cutting edge company with a solid understanding of the world and a passion for making it better.
As such, we would like to work with other companies in spearheading three new paradigm shifts.
Entertainment — Through the use of the Multipath storytelling concept.
Education — Through collaboration and as explained in our previous post.
Economics — Through the ‘For-Benefit’ concept and beyond.
With other companies and organisations helping change other parts of civilisation, including energy, medicine and production, we envisage a brighter future for all humanity.
Remember : Change is not a spectator sport — Barack Obama
Sugata Mitra talks about child-driven self education. Leaving computers in a ‘hole-in-the-wall’ in some of the poorest places in India taught them how to use a computer, how to speak English, bio-technology and much more.
He makes some great points about children working in groups, with 2 or 3 children per computer. He also promotes the use of the ‘nanny’ way.
Sir Ken Robinson talks about how every country in the world is trying to reform the education system.
This is mainly because of economic and cultural reasons.
He mentions how having a degree is no longer a guarantee for getting a job, and most critically, he explains how the current system was designed in the enlightenment period of the 1800’s. It was based on a very different concept of the human mind than that of today and was geared towards the economic requirements of the industrial revolution. The system assumed that people were either academic or not.
Sir Robinson then shows a heat map of where people in USA are treated for ADHD (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). It shows an increasing weight towards the eastern states, such as Washington and New York. He believes that it’s no wonder we are having issues trying to get children to pay attention during schools. Kids today grow up with advertising, computer games, smart phones, social networking, and all manner of distractions, yet our outdated education system is trying to get them to learn boring stuff. It’s little wonder we are having to drug our children up to anaesthetise them through school, “I think we should be doing the exact opposite. We should be WAKING them up to what they have inside of themselves”.
Ken explains that our education system is modelled on, and in the image of Industrialisation. Schools are organised on factory lines. Ringing bells, separate facilities, specialised classes, batched learning (putting children together according to their age and not their learning potential). We’ve been increasing the amount of standardised testing when we should be going in the exact opposite direction.
The talk then explains how children are better at divergent thinking, yet as we grow older we lose this ability. He believes this is because as we get older we get educated to believe that there’s one answer, it’s in the back of the book, but we aren’t to look at it, nor copy others as that’s cheating. Yet in the real world that’s called collaboration.
We have to think differently about human potential. Academic, non-academic, abstract, theoretical, and vocational. We have to understand that most great learning happens in groups, and we have to change the habits and habitats of our institutions.
This is a great talk by the creator of the Khan academy. He explains how he started the online video repository and the amazing work being done. Showing the sheer power of this, some schools have made the Khan academy a part their curriculum by getting kids to watch the lessons as part of their homework and what was normally homework is now what the kids do at school with the teachers. From a Films on the Fly perspective it seems like the Khan Academy has already created 90% of the features we had envisioned for using online video to help change the educational paradigm.
Michael Kubler’s Personal Take
We know that people learn in different ways. Different senses, different explanations, different requirements and concepts. Some people are good at listening, others by writing what they are listening to, lots of people learn by watching videos, others by reading, and for a lot of some concepts to properly understand them you need to get in and play with it.
We also have the brain rules. The 12 rules on how the brain works.
Rule #1: Exercise — Exercise boosts brain power.
Rule #2: Survival – The human brain evolved, too.
Rule #3: Wiring – Every brain is wired differently.
Rule #4: Attention – We don’t pay attention to boring things.
Rule #5: Short-term memory – Repeat to remember.
Rule #6: Long-term memory – Remember to repeat.
Rule #7: Sleep – Sleep well, think well.
Rule #8: Stress – Stressed brains don’t learn the same way.
Rule #9: Sensory Integration – Stimulate more of the senses.
Rule #10: Vision – Vision trumps all other senses.
Rule #11: Gender – Male and female brains are different.
Rule #12: Exploration – We are powerful and natural explorers.
When putting together the concepts of child driven self-education, the power of online video, the brain rules and Intrinsic motivation, we can start to create a new educational paradigm.
Personally, I think that there are a small number of compulsory concepts that should be taught in school.
Learning how to learn — As with the brain rules, self-education and the power of online video, we need to explain different ways of learning and let students work out which ways they find are the best.
Information Literacy — “To be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information” The American Library Association. This is one thing I did manage to learn from school to an OK level, although things like Wikipedia have changed how we think about information.
The Scientific Method — The Scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. As per the amazing talk by David Deutsch on a new way to explain explanation the scientific method has changed the way we determine our assertions of reality.
With those main concepts plus an education system which is based around fostering children’s already existing hunger for learning and natural curiosity, we can truly empower the youth of today to make an amazing future tomorrow.
Some examples of mixing up education.
I like hiking, I also love listening to audio books. A group of 20 people could load themselves up with iPods, and other such MP3 players, all start listening to the same educational audio book at the same time, and go hiking together. When everyone has set up camp for the night and are all sitting around the fire you can all talk about the audiobook you’ve just listened to. I particularly love The Teaching Company’s courses, even if they are rather expensive.
Group students together by learning styles and level of experience, not by age group or gender.
Display results as experience points, in different areas, not as A-, B+, C, D, or Fail. For example, instead of getting a pass or fail you could give an A grade student 100 experience points in that particular area whilst others might not get as many experience points in that area. You can then graph peoples experiences in different areas like a radar graph
Radar Graph
The managing director of Films on the Fly, Michael Kubler, has had an interest in human behaviour, learning techniques, brain rules, phantoms in the brain, and much more for a number of years. From that he’s started developing an interest and passion in changing the educational paradigm and hopes that people like yourself will also develop an interest.
The TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson about how Schools kill creativity is the highest watched talk on TED.com with over 8.6million views (as of 28th June 2011).
The Khan Academy has had a TED talk and is expanding in size (March 2011).
HDSLRs are the High Definition Single Lens Reflex prosumer digital cameras which were primarily created for still images but have recently added HD video capture capabilities.
I’ve got great respect for the Novacut team and have pledged as much money as I can afford (unfortunately it wasn’t enough for their first fundraising drive so donated later via PayPal), towards their crowdfunding initiative.
Quote :
I’m going to make a bold statement: HDSLR cameras are going to quickly and decisively reshape the entertainment industry, and when the dust settles, artists are going to be at the helm.
The article talks about how within a single generation we went from incredibly expensive cameras (like the PanavisionGenesis or Arriflex), to the 1/10th the price RedOne camera and then the Canon 5D MarkII which was 1/10th the cost of the RedOne. Within a digital imaging product generation (i.e 2yrs), the price of HD cameras has dropped to 1/100th the original cost.
Just thought we’d touch base and let everyone know that Films on the Fly has been busy working on a few new exciting projects and proposals.
We are writing up a webisode proposal, are putting together some ideas for changing the way the education department thinks about collaborative, interactive video and have a couple of other possible projects that are too early to discuss at the moment.
In the mean time we’ve been doing work on the web platform and have been working on some back end code to help dynamically update the relationship links between videos. Hopefully with a few good days of programming we’ll be ready to do a soft launch of the new Link website.
Just for fun, I’ve posted a little teaser.
New Linkr Website design
For those who were unable to attend the Linkr Screening at the Mercury Cinema, here’s a simple, default example of a tree view. Note that there’s a number of view configurations the film relationships can be viewed with. Also, we were experimenting with the data and I’ve just realised that we changed the link relationships, so this isn’t an accurate representation of the actual film tree.
Do you want to witness the launch of a new wave of film-making?
Tired of the same old storylines, and wanna make your own stories?
Feel like doing some networking over free drinks?
On the 4th of September you can do all three!
At the Mercury cinema, Films on the Fly will be screening the Linkr multipath film content and launching an all new interactive, online, video sharing platform.
With the support of the MRC, and the financial backing of mega, we have created a number of short Multipath films.
Starting off with a drunk guy walking home you can watch him get saved by a friend or embroiled in a covert spy operation. You can watch a vampire get run over or in a completely different film tree you can see competing breakup agencies.
As a bonus we’ve put down a bar tab. So come for the free drinks, stay for the videos and don’t forget to share the experience with your friends.
