Always keen to support our Charity partners, Assistant Paul Dolan enthusiastically responded to the call for arms from Teach First which was seeking volunteers to produce a small video for a virtual career talk.
Here, Paul shares his thoughts on the first time he directed and starred in his own video...
Teach First have a fantastic initiative to provide virtual career talks from volunteers of partner organisations, via video presentations. The talks are sent direct to students providing them with an insight into potential career opportunities.
If students then wish to ask questions about a role or career path, they have the ability to send through questions to the volunteers so that further guidance can be given.
With supreme confidence, I thought, I know how to Zoom. I can do background filters and add pigs ears to my head during an online call and I am not one of those people who get caught out by mute (not quite true by the way) so this Loom video will be a doddle.
For those who do not know what Loom is, it is a way of compiling a short video that you can pause and edit, which you can easily circulate online. Teach First did a brilliant job of explaining what needed to be done but this editing lark was not quite as easy as my supreme confidence thought.
When completed, I stood back and admired my finished work, apart from sounding like a nodding disjointed Mr Bean I was quite pleased, as I had learned another technological skill. But more than that, if my virtual talk helps one youngster then it was all worth it.
So if anyone is thinking about doing it then go for it, you will learn a lot, it's good fun and you are helping Teach First with their work to reach out to students.
You can find out more about the Teach First Careers Leaders Programme here and contact Liveryman Gerald Shortland via email gdshortland@gmail.com to get involved.
