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technology

Reflections After Presenting at the ICELW Conference on eLearning

June 14, 2020 by Laura Schreiber

Why Did I Want to Present

Last fall, which seems like a lifetime ago given how much the world has changed during the current pandemic, I began researching upcoming eLearning conferences. I was actually hoping to find more conferences in my region. As a working mom with high school aged twins, flying across the country can sometimes be a challenge. I was overjoyed when I discovered the ICELW conference was to be held at Columbia University in the city of New York, my beloved alma mater. I submitted a proposal to speak about “Best Practices to Bring Your eLearning Module To Life” from the perspective that academics and HR people who never thought they would have to work with professional voice actors like me suddenly find themselves in the position to cast and work with voice talents as professional narrators for their eLearning modules and projects. I addressed questions that they should ask every time they have a project, VO tech and why it matters, and pricing for voiceover, including where it should be and what the price indicates. My presentation went nicely and it meant a lot to be a part of the dialogue. I am very excited, however, to share some of the larger takeaways from the more scholarly presentations during the conference as I reflect on how they will shape both my work, my voice over bookings, and client interactions as the eLearning industry continues to progress.

Reimagining Learning

With an international audience and an enthusiastic crowd, there was a lot of discussion at the conference about how the advancing technology would enable content creators to re-imagine learning. David Guralnick from Kaleidoscope Learning and Columbia University talked about opportunities to use “technology to humanize learning” and went on to present a thrilling example combining AI and interactive technology. In this example, the student asked questions about Ancient Greece and the Acropolis and was able to create a scene where he was present in Ancient Greece having his questions answered. Particularly at a moment when students around the world are relying so heavily on on-line learning, this was thrilling and wonderful to see. The advantages of this were how realistic the scenario is and how clear the examples are. Clearly the new technology enables better communication of content. As a narrator, I have been working with more companies that create K-12 content in the last year, and I am sure such technology would be a huge asset to them.

Critical Thinking

As the technology available continues to improve and emerge, teaching and discussing critical thinking becomes more and more essential. Antonella Poce from Rome Tre University presented about critical thinking and digital learning. This is an issue I discuss with my own children often. Dr. Poce spoke of the importance of discerning true from false. She talked about knowing what questions to ask. My ears lit up when she said this, as a major section of my presentation was dedicated to this as well. My experience in hearing clients’ pain points is that they often did not ask the right questions at the beginning of work and consequently hired the wrong voice over actor. In her session, Dr. Poce spoke of how many tweets during the recent pandemic have been propaganda from bots. She spoke of the importance of being “correctly informed” so that we have time to do deep readings and reflect on what we learn. In that sense, we should use technology, according to Dr. Poce, towards critical and deep thinking. She also spoke of cooperation, collaboration, and creativity. When I think about my role in this creative process, as both an academic who is now a narrator of this content, I think truly understanding the character we are voicing, and the roles we are playing, opens up the opportunity to really help the end user to engage with critical content.

Interactive and New Technologies

There were multiple sessions during the ICELW conference that addressed new technologies like AI, VR, and enhanced/mixed reality. I was riveted by these sessions as well. Someone brought up that when Steve Jobs designed the first iPod, he did not do a focus group, he just knew it would be a better device and he was creating the technology to drive a potential future experience. That is what a lot of the new experiential learning technology does. There is vast potential, the sky is the limit so to speak. Michelle Cortese, a VR Product Designer at Facebook and Professor at NYU gave a thrilling demonstration of work her students are doing. I was fascinated as a former educator, as a parent, and as a working creative. I could not help but see the intersection between technology and improv, something that so many of us in voice over spend so much of our time training in. The social behaviors that occur were fascinating, and unpredictable, and again as a working creative this made me think of improv which is not something that I typically connect to my eLearning work. Although, under further analysis, the point of studying improv, is that we are supposed to bring it with us into the booth so that our reads and takes on characters are fresh and exciting. What I found so fascinating about the sample that Michelle shared is that all of the content in the VR chat was user generated and is in the moment art. It is a vision and content that comes from the user. When so much of the learning content that we work with is contrived, this opens up a world of creative possibilities for end users. Fernando Salvetti also demonstrated work with enhanced/mixed reality and I was riveted. The possibilities that are simple and user friendly are true game changers. Having worked in eLearning for years, being exposed to such projects is eye opening.

The Bottom Line

As in so many projects I am a part of, the bottom line matters. Dr. Tim Brock of the ROI Institute talked about creating a framework that balances needs and feasibility. The needs need to be defined at the beginning. This resonated with me a lot. Often voiceover is left off of the budget entirely, it’s an after thought. This was another area that I was addressing in my talk, the price of the voice over. When a company is looking at the ROI, the return on investment in the overall project, the voice over, and typically in eLearning we are talking about a narrator, needs to be a part of that calculation, from the start. As the technology continues to progress and is better and better, the voice over needs to be a part of the initial plan, not a lost minute add on. In Dr. Brock’s talk, he spoke of feasibility, and as the technology becomes more and more advanced, having an overall understanding for the get go of the feasibility certainly makes sense!

What Did I Love Most?

The ICELW conference was fantastic. This blog could have been much, much longer and I could have written about each session! I loved the sharing, enthusiastic vibe! I most loved that it was such a scholarly, international crowd. I have attended numerous eLearning conferences around the country and the talks at this conference really resonated with me. I very much look forward to keeping in touch with the others that I “met” and I hope to attend in person next year! Fingers crossed!

Filed Under: Elearning Tagged With: AI, critical thinking, elearning, Feasibility, ICELW, narration, narrator, Occulous, ROI, social media, technology, VO, voice over, voice over actor, voiceover, VR, working mom

Voice Over and Current Trends in eLearning

October 1, 2019 by Laura Schreiber

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IajR9fqd4A&t=4s

Five Years of Passion

As a working mom, I have talked about how working as a full time, professional voice over actor suits me in countless ways. It seems like yesterday I was sitting at my kitchen island and I was watching a GVAA webinar on eLearning. J. Michael Collins, who I think I have mentioned a lot recently, was presenting the outstanding webinar. Everything he talked about resonated with me. It was not just the rates for eLearning that were appealing, it was that I had come to the voice over from the academic world, so for me I felt an instant connection to an industry that I did not know existed!

Me with talented coach and demo producer J. Michael Collins.

I decided during that webinar that I would to an eLearning demo with JMC and I can tell you that demo has paid for itself in spades. While I have had many conversations with industry friends about how processed eLearning demos should be, and a lot of folks are confident that there should be little production, I am very pleased with my demo for several reasons. First, it showcases my range from warm, millennial to professional, confident, and knowledgeable traitor and will work across the genres of eLearning. Next, I think my personality shines through. Lastly, it is pleasant to listen to! As most of my booked work is proprietary content and cannot be shared on my website, it is really great to have something that I am happy to share!

I have focussed on building and maintaining solid client relationships in the many years that I have been doing eLearning. While I have been full-time in voiceover for five years, I have really developed the eLearning strand of my business since 2016. Some of my best clients, that I continue to do steady work for, I met face to face at conferences like ATD, Dev Learn, and smaller conferences put on by the eLearning Guild. I also have worked with some wonderful clients that I connected with on LinkedIn. Regardless of the source of the business relationship, my approach s the same, I treat each client as if they are my most important client and all of my success depends on them. The result has been great, and as a consequence recent eLearning clients include Walmart, PSEG, Ace Hardware, Victoria’s Secret, Sam’s Club, CosmoProf, Sally Beauty, Club Pilates, and more!

More Casting Trends!

Finding the right conference to meet your business goals can be tricky! I have a lot of success at the smaller conference. There may seem to be a lot of potential at large conferences like ATD and DevLearn, but it is often easier to find content creators at the smaller conferences.
With an eLearning client Alicia that I get to catch up with at conferences!

So with all of this eLearning work, what trends have I noticed? A lot of clients are writing the scripts for “real” characters with specific voice and tone requests. These are not typical narrators. I am not Suzie from HR, I am playing a role in a scene. as a voice ACTOR, this is actually great fun for me! For example, in a recent project of Sally Beauty, they wanted to voice to be conversational, fun, and upbeat! It was no problem, the script was a joy! Last week I was doing a training module for Ace Hardware. I have been doing their work for a while, but this was very different. They really had a specific character in mind. Before recording the entire module, I sent three samples for approval to make sure we were on the same page and that my interpretation matched their vision. I had so much fun putting these samples together. I think that as the technology continues to improve, the content creators will push voiceover actors even further in our roles.

Rates are HIGHER

As a working mom, I am pleased that as the demand for solid voiceover for eLearning increases, the rates that voice actors are paid is also increasing. It is increasing in two ways. First, session fees continue to rise. While I have old clients that still are grandfathered in at their original rate, new clients book at the appropriate industry standard rates. Jobs are typically quoted per finished minute or per word, and there has been a huge jump. When I first started doing eLearning, I was happy to have a minimum session plus $18 per finished minute. Now I quote my session fee plus $35 per finished minute of audio. Frankly, because of the intrinsic value of the content we are providing these clients, I think these rates are right where they should be for corporate clients doing training.

My Goals

I love doing eLearning projects. Any project is welcomed and makes me happy. As a true Jersey girl who spends a lot of time in my salon getting my hair and nails done, I was thrilled to do so much work for CosmoProf and hope more work in the cosmetic industry comes in. I also love travel, food, and dogs, so if the universe and voiceover gods shine down on me and send me work related to my passions I will be delighted!

Filed Under: Elearning Tagged With: characters, clients, conversational, demo, elearning, GVAA J. Michael Collins, narration, professional, proprietary content, rates, session fees, technology, trainer, training, VO, voice over

Useful Voiceover Tips from a Working Pro

June 18, 2019 by Laura Schreiber

We All Need to Stay on Top of Our Game

As the years go on, in between conferences, a working professional voiceover talent may have a question about our tech or about our recording software from time to time. As a seasoned, full-time professional, sometimes I discuss such issues with my accountability group. Other times I will pay for a session with an audio engineer. But a lot of the time I am plugging away in my booth and I need an answer right away. Another likely scenario is that I am playing around trying to remember how to do something with my audio software that someone has told me about and go down a rabbit hole trying to figure it out. In those instances, I head to youtube and I have found some pretty fantastic videos done by industry friends to answer my questions. Here are some favorites that you might find helpful too:

Time Saver for Editing Breaths

A few years ago in one of my accountability group chats voice over goddess Shelley Avellino firrst talked about how she handled breaths on Twisted Wav. She talked about using the “Detect Silences” option and replacing it with room tone. If your noise floor is low, this is a great option. I thought it was a brilliant idea, but as I do a lot of commercial work my recordings are typically not long enough to do this. Recently, the one and only Kim Handysides suggested I record my auditions all at once, and now that I am in the habbit of doing that, Shelley’s suggestion seems perfect. The problem was that I could not recall how to do it. I turned to YouTube and found this wonderful tutorial from industry friend Christi Bowen. Here Christi explains step by step how to quickly and efficiently replace your breaths in Twisted Wave. She also addresses issues like clipping letters at ends of words, so this is a must watch for sure!

Productivity tips for Twisted Wav

I was lucky enough to meet Jack de Golia and hear him speak in person at WoVo con in Las Vegas, but if you can’t get there, this video is extremely helpful, especially if you are endeavoring to do long form narration or audio books. Jack talks about so many salient recording issues, including why we should never record in MP3 and he provides valuable tips for editing. I also learned something from Jack when I heard him speak in person. I do a lot of live sessions, and Jack said that if your computer fan goes on, you can put ice packs under it to stop your fan. He later cautioned me to make sure I did not get it wet, but I keep my laptop on a raised metal platform, so thus far it has not been an issue. Jack’s thoughtful approach in this video is wonderful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9j31QzlraY

Trouble Shooting a Pre-amp

I have had not one, but many sessions with George Whittam, aka George the Tech Guy. I worked with him when initially building my studio. I have had emergency sessions when I’ve had snafus. I have had George build my effects stacks. I have had George build more stacks as I bought more equipment. To say I trust George is an understatement. He is a pleasure to work with and he will never leave you without a solution. This video gives you an idea of what it is like to work through a problem with George. he is calm and full of suggestions. They also happen to be working on an Avalon pre-amp, same as mine. Sometimes you just need to keep trying lots of different approaches and here you get an idea of how George tackles this issue.

Mic Technique

I’ve had a lot of coaching. A lot. For years. From the best in the business. But very little of the work that I have done has been in person, face to face. So, in our business we talk often of mic technique. You, like me, my found it helpful to watch videos about mic technique to learn how other industry professionals perform. I find Gabi’s videos to be both entertaining and insightful and her tips are always on-point. This is extremely specific! I have tried to switch mics and this also often involves adjusting my setup. Gabi looks like she is using the same mic as me now, the Neumann TLM 103, and I can tell you that it is powerful and sensitive so positioning matters a lot.

Conclusions

At the end of the day, we can take what we need from these videos and use them how they apply. I find it a comfort to know that there are so many valuable resources at our fingertips.

Filed Under: Voiceover Tagged With: audio software, booth, Breaths, editing, George the Tech Guy, George Whittam, Mic Techniques, recording, studio, technology, tips, tricks, twisted Wave, VO, voice over, voice over actor, voiceover

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