Thursday, March 18, 2010

Grampa as Newly Hired Multimedia Wizard!


Hooray! After 18 months of unemployment, I finally have a JOB!

It's more of a contract, really, but I'm working for what we call "Teeny Money" and I'm tickled spitless. (Interesting that today is the same day President Obama is signing the jobs bill at the White House.) Schedule and registration details are listed below the video.

No matter. I'd rather teach than eat (and I love to eat!)

I was recommended as a Multimedia instructor in the Continuing education department of Highland High School here in Salt Lake City by an old friend who wants to take the class. She called and said they were going to drop it if they couldn't find an instructor. (I'm living proof that networking works. Every job I've ever had was as a result of a referral by a good friend.) Thanks, Carol!

She knew I was unemployed, or rather spending more than full time on this blog. The pay is, "interesting" I get to keep half of all the tuition. If I want to make more than an honorarium, I should invite my friends to pay between $40 and $65 to spend a few nights improving their computer skills. (Schedule and details are listed below)

It feels GREAT to get back to work. In The United States our self esteem is all wrapped up in our work--what we do, where it fits in the peckin' order. I'm told that blue collar workers, skilled tradesman in Germany are treated as professions: Doctors, Lawyer, Professors. I've taken many classes, but never jumped through the hoops necessary to hang a qualifying sheepskin on our wall.

If you remember Kevin Kline's wonderful movie called simply "Dave" He plays a presidential impersonator who gets to do the job for real, for a while. He develops a full employment program as the substitute president based on his 9 to 5 job as the owner of an employment agency in suburban Virginia. The line I love from that show is Dave's encouragement to his new clients, "It's Thursday and EVERYBODY works on THURSDAY!" (Of course, he changed the day depending on what day it was!!)

Here's a little welcome video I produced in about ten minutes using a new program (new to me). It's called Photoshop Elements 8. It will give you an idea of where we'll all be learning together Sirry, no sound on this one. Do look for the little disappearing cartoon animals.




Here's the schedule of three different multimedia classes, (note two different web classes. It's the same class. Because of demand it's scheduled twice.) These classes are arranged chronologically by start date


WEB DESIGN (The first of two sessions)

DATE: Mar. 23 to May 04

DAY: Tuesday evenings

TIME: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

PLACE: Highland

COST: $65

AGE: 16 and up

INSTRUCTOR: Jon Robert Howe

Learn to design and create your own website using html, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Photoshop. As part of the class, you will create banners, make links, format tables, and insert and prepare graphics for web use.


MICROSOFT OFFICE

DATE: April 12 to May 17

DAY: Monday evenings

TIME: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

PLACE: Highland

COST: $65

AGE: 16 and up

INSTRUCTOR: Jon Robert Howe

Class covers the basics of each of the Ms Office programs: MS Word, Excel and Power Point. Learn to create, edit, and produce documents, spreadsheets and presentations.


WEB DESIGN (If you missed the first session)

DATE: Apr. 15 to May 20

DAY: Thursday evenings

TIME: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

PLACE: Highland

COST: $65

AGE: 16 and up

INSTRUCTOR: Jon Robert Howe

Learn to design and create your own website using html, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Photoshop. As part of the class, you will create banners, make links, format tables, and insert and prepare graphics for web use.


PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS

DATE: May 11 to May 25 (3 nights)

DAY: Tuesday evenings

TIME: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

PLACE: Highland

COST: $40

AGE: 18 and up

INSTRUCTOR: Jon Robert Howe

Photoshop Elements photo-editing software combines power and simplicity so you can easily manage and protect all your photos and video clips, make your photos look extraordinary, and share amazing stories in unique print creations and web experiences. This version of Photoshop is designed for the home photographer. Download from your camera, organize your photos, and prepare and edit them for printing.


I'll be off on Wednesdays soaking my feet (Just like good Grandparenting, you have to BE there, at each elbow helping them catch up with the rest of the class.) That's a lot of patient dancing around. It's been about 10 years ago since I taught did this for New Horizons Computer Learnng Center and Alpha Computer Solutions I loved it then, of course in those days I was teaching for eight hours every day.

I loved my platform teaching experience, and like any teacher working hard to earn his "salt", I learned grundles of software and hardware tricks that I, in turn, passed on to thousands of students (and learned to use to my own advantage). The best advantage of this training is speed. I have discovered that I can turn out pretty good printed material and higher quality blogs, websites and my own improved photography in jig time. So can you!

If you get this message in time and you haven't already signed up, call Suzanne Hammond, Continuing Education Director at Highland High School 801-4814891 or email her at highlandce@slc.k12.ut.us.

If you see this post after the fact, send me an e-mail at grampaintraining@gmail.com and put the words "Grampa Wizard's Continuing Education Update?" in the subject line. If I do a good job, I may be asked to teach these things again next fall, so keep in touch!

Benjamin Franklin once said, "If you pour your purse into your head no one can take it from you." See you in class! JRH

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