Helping Organizations to Find Solutions for Digital Learning

Recently we have heard a number of disheartening stories of schools of all sorts – from academic to trades to athletic to creative – that are considering closing as a result over uncertainty over how long the doors to their physical locations will be closed as we work to flatten the curve of the spread of COVID-19.

We can help your organization to transition into an online learning environment for both the short term and long term (if that is so desired).

What this could involve is:

  • finding and setting up the right digital learning solutions for your organization,
  • training your instructors in building and teaching their courses online,
  • helping your instructor’s get their courses online, and
  • fine tuning instructor’s online courses and the organization’s online classroom environment in the long term.

Click through the slide deck below to learn more about our experience and how we can work with you to create digital learning solutions for your organization.

Please reach out, if we can be of help to you.

Transitioning Classrooms and Offices Online

Wow, what a change a week can bring!

As much of the world is transitioning to online classrooms and working from home while we work to #FlattenTheCurve of the spread of COVID-19, we thought we’d reach out to see if any of you need any help with that transition.  If you do, please send us an email.

Our Virtual Office

Our team has now been working remotely for over a decade, and we are happy to share what works for us and to answer questions as to solutions we’ve found to various aspects to working together from a far. 

Mango and Lori hard at work in one of our virtual offices.
Mango and Lori, hard at work together from one of our virtual offices.

We also began to develop, design, and teach Online Courses for Colleges eight years ago, and have similarly been developing Online Learning Solutions for our own business and community building efforts.  This is part of the reason why I have been working on my Master of Educational Technology, to continue to build upon digital and virtual learning solutions for our community and our storytelling.

Ella, Chief Feline Officer at Ahimsa Media
Ella finally taking her role as CFO (Chief Feline Officer) seriously.

If you need help in building your courses and / or learning materials online, don’t hesitate to reach out.  We are happy to help.

The Gift of Learning : Storytelling and Digital Media Courses

With it being that time of year where many people are purchasing gifts, I’ve been pondering spending and what is important to me. It had me thinking of that old proverb …

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

Photographer: Cristian Palmer
Photographed by Cristian Palmer, care of Unsplash.

There is no greater gift than learning a skill that helps you to pursue your passions. This is the reason why teaching is an important part of our work, that our team values.

The Importance of Teaching to Our Team

When I started speaking in 2008 about bridging the worlds of media, interactive and cross-platform storytelling, and digital media, it occurred to me that while inspiring people through my talks was great and all, to truly help people to take action, they needed a course giving them guidance and support while they build and craft their storyworlds.

Interactive Storytelling
Erica Hargreave and Caitlin Burns on a Panel on Convergent Storytelling.
Photographer: Liz Kearsley

A year later, after pitching the local post secondary schools, my first post-secondary school courses launched at BCIT and Capilano University. Since then my team and I have also built courses and workshops and taught community, undergraduate and graduate courses at Ryerson University, Humber College, and NVIT. In addition, we’ve helped build new programs and revise old programs. It has both been an honour to teach and share with others, and fulfills a passion of ours. We love teaching.

Creating Our Course Online

In 2011, after speaking in Egypt, we recognized that to truly make a difference to people that could most benefit from our courses, we needed them to be available online.

Erica Hargreave speaking on ‘Real Time’ Storytelling at the UNWTO Conference on Working with Media in Challenging Times in Marsa Alam, Egypt.

Thanks to BCIT and our colleague Kevin Ribble, they were by 2013. This has also allowed Lori Yearwood to help build and teach those courses with me.

2020 Courses at BCIT

I am happy to share that as we move into 2020, we now have 2 online post-secondary credited courses and 2 intensive community courses offered through BCIT’s Broadcast Media and Communications Part Time Studies. All of our courses are project based, in which our students come out of them having built or built upon projects of their own that they are crafting for their future endeavours.

For those of you who are looking to give yourself and someone in your life the gift of learning this year, these are a few of the courses that we will be teaching in 2020:

Photographed by Ian Schneider, care of Unsplash.

More Coming on StoryToGo

Also keep your eyes peeled on StoryToGo, our contemporary media community as we’ve long been talking about offering mini online courses and tailored online and blended courses for organizations there. This is something that you will see launch in 2020 with more course offerings from us and our rich group of storytelling friends and colleagues.

If you have a course that you would love to see offered through StoryToGo, please let us know in the comments, and if you wish us to tailor create a course for your organization, please send us an email.

Photographed by by Danielle Macinnes, care of Unsplash.

Raising a glass of whatever your preferred beverage to a happy and rewarding new year and new decade, rich in learning!


Contemplating a Course? Pin this to Save for Later

Storytelling and Digital Media Courses from BCIT

Vidme – How to Get Started and Verified

As storytellers and storyworld strategists, we keep our eyes and ears open for newer storytelling tools, platforms, and social networks on the rise. A recent one that has got us quite excited is Vidme.

Basically Vidme is a social networking platform for hosting your video content, as well as watching and engaging with the content of others – much like YouTube and Vimeo. It’s defining characteristics are that it also includes elements of Reddit and Twitch in it’s design. By sharing user engagement history, as well upvotes on both user videos and comments, it encourages users to engage with one another.  Unlike Reddit, however, there is no down voting of content, and as such it is fostering a positive and supportive community of content creators.

Currently, Vidme is getting the attention of many newer video content creators, as a great platform to grow on and share their video content.  After spending the last couple of weeks experimenting on the platform and getting to know the community, we’d have to agree.  This is a social networking and video hosting platform with a lot of potential. Also as a newer video content creator on Vidme there is a lot of opportunity to get noticed. Case in point, if you look at the photo below, that is one of our videos trending on Vidme in just our second week on the platform.


Guide to Getting Started and Verified on Vidme

For those of you interested in learning more about Vidme and how to be successful with your Vidme channel, here is our Guide to Getting Started and Verified on Vidme:

To review my 3 main tips were to:

 

  • Engage, Engage, Engage!!!

Engagement is what we should be doing on all our social media platforms as that is after all what ‘social’ media was designed for, but all too often we neglect to do this and just use our social media feeds to broadcast.  Vidme has been designed to remind people of the importance of engagement and as such many users (ourselves included) are discovering the magic that happens on social media when you become a part of an engaged, supportive community.

  • Wait to Apply for Verification Until You Check-Off Everything on the Verification Checklist.

Golden Goose, care of DonkeyHotey.

Image care of DonkeyHotey.

On Vidme the golden goose for many Vidme content creators is getting their channel verified. Why? As it gives their channel additional privileges, including the possibility of showing up under the trending videos, being able to monetize their channel, and adding their channel to different categories.

To get verified you need to: gain 50 followers, add an avatar and cover image to your channel, upload one video of your own, and adhere to the community rules. The process to doing this, helps to get you exploring, engaging and building a community on Vidme, which is a very good thing.

However, as is too often the case, we carry ego with us, thinking that rules don’t apply to us, so many people try to apply for verification early, before they have met the rules.  This usually results in two things: 1) you are turned down and feel resentful, or 2) you get verified (usually as you have really great quality video content or have a big audience on YouTube) and the community resents you for jumping the cue. In other words: wait to apply for verification, until you have checked off everything on the verification checklist.  If you do what I have suggested in the video above, it won’t take you that long and you will be better off for it.

To help you get started, review the Verification Page and visit the Vidme FAQs.

  • Participate in the Vidme Subreddits – both official and unofficial.

Whether you have had good or bad experiences with Reddit in the past, the Vidme official and unofficial subreddits are positive spaces to engage with other Vidme content creators and share content on Vidme.  A few subreddits I recommend checking out are the official Vidme subreddit, Vidmeos for sharing your Vidme videos, and Vidmelove for connecting with positive Vidme creators and content.

Just remember: read and follow the rules of the respective subreddits, and follow the Reddit 10% Rule. For those unaware, the Reddit 10% Rule is that for every 1 thing of your own that you share, you comment and engage with 10 other people’s posts on Reddit.

Advice from other Vidme content creators:

Having discovered the #vidmelove community, thanks to taking the time to explore Vidme and  to engaging with other Vidme content creators on both Vidme and Reddit, I asked the #Vidmelove community for their advice on getting started on Vidme.

Here is some excellent advice from @MutantPixel, @SpeedyGaming and @LinktheInformer in the #vidmelove community:

  • Use #Hashtags.

Hashtags work and are used on Vidme as a way of cataloging and searching for content on Vidme. To catalogue your content with hashtags on Vidme, simply add the appropriate hashtags to the description below your video.

  • Steer Clear of the Drama.

Vidme is a newer platform that is gaining a fair bit of attention at the moment.  As such, Vidme is working on defining itself and the direction it wishes to take, as is the community using Vidme. This attracts a certain amount of unnecessary drama.  My advice?  Avoid this and don’t fuel it.  Life has enough real problems, without creating manufactured drama.

  • Share Your Vidmeos (aka Vidme Videos) on Other Social Networking Platforms.

While engaging on other social media platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+ … etc share links to your vidmeos in a engaging and meaningful manner, so that you aren’t simply broadcasting and spamming your audience.  If unsure if you are sharing in a meaningful and engaging manner, look at your social media feed and answer these questions:

  1. Do you provide an interesting / engaging teaser to the vidmeo, before sharing the vidmeo link?  Your answer should be ‘yes’ here.  If it’s not, then it is time you start doing this.
  2. Are all your posts on your feed sharing vidmeos and other posts that lead people to content you have created?  Hopefully your answer is ‘no’ here. If it is ‘yes’, then you are likely spamming your audience and might be looking a little self involved.

Be sure to checkout Trinding.com, as a new social networking site, designed specifically to share links to your online video content.

Another great tip, shared with me by @Hoshi-Hana is to create content that you are passionate about. Don’t create something just because others are doing it or you think it might be popular.  To have staying power and be invested in creating new video content long term, you need to like what you are doing.


Pen and Paper, care of Dinuraj K.

Photo care of Dinuraj K.

Other Vidme Tips?

If you have other tips to being successful on Vidme, we’d love to hear them in the comments below.

Are You On Vidme?

If you are on Vidme, we’d love to come check out your channel. Please add a link to it in the comments below.


More Tutorials

For more in-depth tutorials and coaching from our team, sign-up for one of our courses at BCIT, or book us for a custom designed course or workshop of your own. You can find the details at the links below:

Canada Remembers

Thanks to Thomega Entertainment and their Canada Remembers Documentary Series, we are reminded every year at Remembrance Day of the importance of this day, and the importance of taking the time for some quiet reflection of the freedoms and safety we enjoy, thanks to those that have faced unimaginable horrors on our behalf.  Tony Towstego has taken the time to help the Veterans to share their stories, before we have lost them, reminding us how important it is to thank these soldiers.

 

Canada Remembers Documentary Series

Thomega Entertainment’s Canada Remembers Documentary Series

 

For us, these stories have touched our souls and impacted our conscience that much more profoundly, as we spent weeks poring over the videos in the making of Educational Guides to accompany the Canada Remembers Documentary Series. That, and with our travels through Roamancing, it is continually driven home for us just how very fortunate we are that our Veterans and present soldiers have fought for the freedoms we enjoy. As a result, we feel it is important on Remembrance Day to both Remember and to Act.  What I mean by Act, is to get out and thank a Veteran or Soldier, and / or to share with our youngsters the importance of the day – Lest We Forget.

This Remembrance Day, Thomega Entertainment has shared with us their latest Canada Remembers Documentary on Henry Beaudry, the Story Keeper  …

 

[youtube z6yx9OfjWVA]

 

You can also catch their 2011 Canada Remembers: Festival for Heroes on City TV Saskatchewan TONIGHT at 11 pm …

 

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Thank you Tony for raising our conscience and awareness for Remembrance Day, and for sharing the stories of our Veterans and Soldiers before they are lost forever!

In the Online Classroom this Autumn, Teaching Interactive Storytelling

BCIT StoryToGoWe are excited to be starting a whole new chapter of teaching and storytelling for us this Autumn, with our first post-secondary accredited online course in Interactive Storytelling available through BCIT StoryToGo’s Media Storytelling Department (formerly Part-Time Broadcast Studies). This means that anybody can register and take this course from anywhere in the world, on their time, and they don’t have to be a regular student of BCIT. Pretty cool!

It also means for us, that we, ourselves have been experimenting with both new methods of digital storytelling and teaching to better reach our students. So we have created course videos, webinars, step-by-step technology manuals, interactive quizzes, and discussion boards … and that is just been the beginning. We look forward to experimenting with new ways of connecting and engaging with our students as the Course gets underway.  As the Course content has already all been built, we also love that this now places the emphasis in teaching, on engaging with our students, and trouble-shooting with them, as they begin to build their own interactive storytelling projects. Here’s a little of what you can expect from the Course:

 [youtube Cm3WBgelWS8]

Our course is not the only new online storytelling course this term through BCIT StoryToGo‘s Media Storytelling Department. Thanks to Steve Dotto, Marty Strong and I discussed storytelling and the online courses available through BCIT StoryToGo last week on the Dotto Tech Radio Show on AM 650. You can listen to the broadcast here:

The three Courses available online through BCIT StoryToGo’s Media Storytelling Program this Autumn, include:

You can also catch an online course with Steve Dotto, as he launches his own series of online courses in Email Management and ProTECHtivity.

Happy New Year!

Hope you have enjoyed a holiday filled with good health, enjoyable company, and relaxation.

As people head back to work this week, we thought we’d take a moment to wish you all a Happy and Healthy New Year, best said in pictures in our Holiday Card.

 

Ahimsa New Year

 

If you still have time off this week or wish to revert into holiday mode on your weekends this month, here are some ways to unwind with our tradition of sharing a holiday activity: Vegetable Scrap Gardening (on Erica’s new speaking site) and Holiday Decorations for the Birds (on a client’s site).

Enjoy!

With Warmest of Wishes,

Erica, Lori, Emme, Brie and the rest of the Ahimsa Media Team

Great People We Meet on the Road, Speaking on a Sustainable Future in Tourism

One of the things I have been loving about all of the great traveling we’ve been doing with Roamancing this past year are the lovely and interesting people we’ve been meeting around the world, including the two in this video, Mohamed A. El Monem and Audrey Scott:

 

[youtube Yx0M46_WWkw]

 

Mohamed is the host of a couple of Shows on Egyptian Satellite TV and an excellent interviewer, especially as he was translating on top of that.  Audrey and I also had fun debating some pretty weighty topics with him.

Audrey, like us, is a digital storyteller, and I might add, an excellent one.  She and her husband, Daniel Noll, have been focused on digital storytelling around travel with their site, UncorneredMarket.com. Also similar to us, they focus on the human side of travel, waking people’s minds up to cultures around the world.  They are beautiful people inside and out, and I feel very fortunate to have spent a fair bit of time with them the past few months.

 

Mohamed and Audrey on Egyptian Satellite TV

 

I am excited for tonight, as they will be speaking on Sustainability in Travel in Vancouver, which means I get to sit back and listen to a few more of their stories.  Pleased to share that there are still tickets, so you can enjoy them too. Here are the details:

 

  • What?  Future of Tourism Vancouver
  • When?  TONIGHT – May 31st, 2012 at 6:45 pm
  • Where?  The Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts (777 Homer St., Vancouver)
  • Cost?  By Donation
  • Register:  Future of Tourism Vancouver Eventbrite

UNWTO Travel & Media Conference: #WeVisitEgypt ‘Real’ Time Digital Travel Storytelling Presentation

For those of you that sadly could not be with Audrey Scott and Daniel Noll of Uncornered Market and I at the UNWTO Tourism and Media Conference last week on Egypt’s Red Sea, here is a slide share of our presentation on our #WeVisitEgypt ‘Real’ Time Digital Travel Storytelling Demonstration.

 

 

With any luck, we will also get our paws on the video that was shot of our presentation to share with all of you too.

 

#WeVisitEgypt ~ A Digital Egyptian Travel Tale

Courtesy of Audrey Scott & Daniel Noll of UnCornered Market

 

We are Roamancing Egypt (again)!

As some of you may be aware we launched Emme Rogers and Brie Mason into their latest digital, interactive transmedia tale this past summer, Roamancing ~  a travel tale in search of those most elusive of creatures: love and romance.  We’ve been having fun with it and for those of you that are familiar with Emme, I am sure you can imagine the silly shenanigans and characters we’ve met along the way, from being presented with a key to City of Yorkton with the fabulous Katrina German to forever bumping into a few delightfully mischievious Blues Men that have wormed their way into our hearts and our stories. With a trip to Egypt this past December to speak at the International Organisation for E-Tourism Conference in Cairo, Lori Yearwood and I decided that like many of the wonderful storytellers that we work with, it was time to weave ourself into our own tales.  I am glad we did, as I had a lot of fun telling a tale or two with Lucy Duck and the Roamancing Red Boots in Egypt, and I am proud to say I am the first of our team to have done the Roamancing strut overseas (even if I looked ridiculous in doing so).

 

Lucy prepares to enter the Mosque

 

One of the realisations from being in Cairo during demonstrations in Tahrir Square, was the impact of mainstream media images on people back home.  I was perfectly safe and having a grand time, yet perceptions from media images in North America were that Egypt was in a state of violence and chaos.  The biggest threat to me?  Too many marriage proposals.  Here are two posts I wrote on the topic, upon returning home:

It struck me that when we’ve seen images of rioting in Canada, no one worries for ones safety in still visiting the country.  That is not the case with Egypt, as the culture is so different from our own.  Yet I felt welcomed and safe in visiting Egypt and saw how damaging the media images from Tahrir Square have been to Egyptian Tourism, a major player in the Egyptian economy.

 

Hmm … Clearly the ‘flat’ aspect of the bread making was lost of me.

 

It is for this reason that we have been consulting with the Egyptian Tourism Authority on using digital storytelling to share the wonderful and exciting travel experiences that you can have in Egypt in ‘real’ time. I am also pleased to share that the Egyptian Tourism Authority has similarly been consulting with two of the wonderful digital storytellers and fellow speakers that I recently met in Cairo, Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott. Daniel and Audrey are the husband-and-wife storytelling team behind the award winning travel blog, Uncornered Market. For over five years, they have continuously travelled around the world, inspiring others to create their own life and travel experiences.

Together with Audrey and Dan, I will be heading to Egypt from April 21 – 29, 2012 with Emme Rogers, Lucy Duck, and the Roamancing Red Boots in tow to share our adventures in Egypt in ‘real’ time and demonstrate for the World Tourism Organisation (UNTWO) Conference on Media and Tourism: Partnering with the Media in Challenging Times how digital media and travel bloggers can be used to change the conversation about tourist destinations challenged by negative perceptions related to current events.  As a part of this, Dan, Audrey and I will be hosting an informal session with the Egyptian Tourism Authority at the beginning of the  Conference on Thursday April 26th, 2012 to demonstrate our #WeVisitEgypt digital storytelling campaign.

 

Audrey Scott & Daniel Noll of Uncornered Market in Cairo

 

We invite you to join us on our Digital Egyptian Adventure by following along with the hastag #WeVisitEgypt on your social networking feeds, as well as through uncorneredmarket.comroamancing.com and emmerogers.com.  Furthermore, we invite you to join us in demonstrating to Tourism how effective digital media, including social media and blogging can be in sharing a message. Here are some ways that you can become involved in the #WeVisitEgypt Campaign:

  • Share what we are doing in Egypt and the #WeVisitEgypt hashtag to your media channels;
  • Follow #WeVisitEgypt on your social networking channels and retweet content that appeals to you;
  • Interact with us on our adventure at @UMarket@Roamancing@EmmeRogers and @EricaHargreave; and
  • Share your own photos, video and blog posts from Egypt with the #WeVisitEgypt hashtag (and we will do our best to retweet them).

Thank you in advance for whatever ways you decide to join in the #WeVisitEgypt Adventure.

Best wishes,

Erica Hargreave

Ahimsa Media