Online Distance Learning Forum

The Oscar success of Wallace and Gromit and Corpse Bride’s Animation Award yesterday have shared the honours nicely between these triumphs of animation. Watching Wallace and Gromit with my children last week, I marvelled at the sheer depth and detail. Freeze any frame of animation and you’ll see a visual joke. Listen to any line of the script and you’ll find the audio equipment. Even if I were ever to work in this kind of animation it would be on the script. I am in awe of the artistic talent of these people.
I am very proud of Wallace and Gromit as a very British work. The truth is, the creators have been given the scope by their connection with Dreamworks. I have written before of the number of animation jobs that will be coming up with Dreamworks, and if I had the talent to undertake an animation degree and go for animation jobs, that’s what I would be doing. I can think of few things in the film world that are as exciting as animation right now.

The news in the UK and US at the moment is full of editorial about the continued inequalities for women in the workplace. In the US, the number of women working outside the home has slipped in the last five years. In the UK, women continue to lag behind men in the salary stakes.

The truth is, for most of us there just aren’t enough hours in the day to have it all. Most of the working mothers I know who successfully fit their career around their children have the full support of their partner, who shares at least half the work with them.

To rise to the very top of the tree often means working rigid hours. But many women and men these days don’t actually want to get to the top; they just want a career that pays decent wages, gives them job satisfaction and fits in with all their other commitments, be they children, hobbies or just wanting to relax now and then!

A good education is essential to give women and men more choice in the workplace. Online study can play a role in this. Accounting is a perfect example. A man or woman working in finance can earn accounting qualifications over a period of time, perhaps allowing them to take on either full-time, or more lucrative accounting jobs when the time is right.

Accounting is a career that affords great flexibility, so mothers or fathers who want to work from home or to flexible hours could do a lot worse than online study in accounting.

In my view, flexibility is the key to working and education in the future. If getting to the top means no flexibility, then I don’t want to go there.

The UK band the Arctic Monkeys are like a breath of fresh air. They are interested in the music - not the celebrity status that goes with it, which is why the Arctic Monkeys have announced that they will not be making any more TV promotional appearances.

Arrogance? For some bands maybe, but with their debut album became the fastest-selling album of all time last year, the Arctic Monkeys have more right than most. What’s more, it was all due to the buzz they had gained through Internet marketing. This was largely due to the social networking site MySpace.

With 57 million registered users, MySpace is very much part of the social networking site phenomenon. Members can build their own websites, list their interests and meet people in a safe environment.
The social networking website has also, as we know, become an excellent platform for Internet marketing. MySpace showcases musical talent and allows bands like the Arctic Monkeys to build up a following without going down channels which many younger people now find uncool and even distasteful. This shift in attitudes about Internet marketing is all great news for the online degree.