Stuff about schools…

Valedictorian hates school…

I came across this valedictorian graduation speech yesterday. It’s quite well-written and agrees with just about all my anti-current-education-system rants that I give on this blog every now and then. It’s always nice to read a reflection of your own beliefs, especially from someone who writes a bit more formally. It’s kind of annoying that you have to be a valedictorian for certain people to listen to you, but that’s how it is. (And listening doesn’t simply lead to agreeing anyway.)

Unfortunately I can’t seem to find any more direct source of the speech. It’s pasted on the Internet in a few places, but not from any official-looking sources. I’d love to know how parents and teachers reacted. Ultimately making any real changes to the currect education system is a tough business as people get all scared that students will get too dumb if we don’t at least hold on to what we have.

Another online animation school…

In other news, someone in my Animation Mentor group mentioned iAnimate.net, a new online animation school opening up next month. From what I can tell, it looks like it’s pretty much modeled after Animation Mentor, with some slight differences. The semesters are 14 weeks (so I guess it would take an extra 6 months to get through) and the tuition is a bit less. It looks like they also have less teachers, so maybe they’ll accept less students? Maybe it will be harder to get in?

(There might be more differences; I didn’t study the site super-thoroughly…)

I wonder if Apple will sue them, though, for all this ‘i’ stuff… and I wonder what a good name for an online animation school would be… I don’t really like the name “Animation Mentor” or “iAnimate”… they kind of give off auras of online cheapiness. You need like a “International Animation Institute” or something.

And I wonder how their business will go. Besides the smaller tuition price, is there any incentive to go to their school rather than the already well-established Animation Mentor? (Is that the reason for the smaller price?) Does Animation Mentor reject people that iAnimate would take? How many prospective animation students are out there that will now have this choice, and how will they make it? I always think some competition can be healthy, so I guess we’ll see…

My real concern though is… how is the US job market for new inexperienced animators? Is it already oversaturated or is there a risk of it becoming so? Or is there plenty of room for us? How will these schools affect that?

Anyway, just an interesting development in the business of online animation schools…