Richard E. Jacobs Jr. is currently a guest lecturer in multimedia at Ibero American High School. Jacobs has a long and successful trajectory in the world of television; but before entering television, his first love was soccer. In an interview with our reporter, Jacobs tells a bit about his career in soccer and multimedia.
From a young age, because his father played soccer, Jacobs followed in his father’s footsteps and began playing soccer too. At a young age he moved to the Netherlands and from that moment continued developing in his sport. Half of his career was in the Netherlands where he played for big teams. Afterwards he came back to Aruba and played in various youth teams and represented Aruba in Santo Domingo, among others.
Jacobs says that during his soccer career he won different individual awards. Among others, he won goalgetter in a championship twice, and was MVP of a championship twice. He also won best striker.
During the 1990s, he was part of Aruba’s national team, representing our island in elimination games for the World Cup in 1994, 1998 and 2002. He was also part of the Aruba team for the Caribbean Championship Shell Cup, and in the year 2000 he was part of the Aruban team that beat the Puerto Rican team 4-2.
Jacobs studied in the electrical sector in Aruba and after finishing his studies in Aruba he moved to the Netherlands to continue studying electronica.
During his studies in the Netherlands, Jacobs says, there was a department that would photograph and film here and there, but mostly photograph. He went to experience this, and loved it so much that he started participating.
“I started going deeper into it. For filming, I began when I was 14, filming various activities around Aruba with a big camera. I always liked filming. That’s how I started, and as I grew up I gained more experience.”
Jacobs worked in TeleAruba, and after that he got the opportunity to work in ATV and at this time he gained a lot of experience in the world of television.
Internationally, he worked at different TV stations and programs. He says that he worked with CNN, Fox, NBC, as cameraman for the Larry King show, and he worked as cameraman also for Nancy Grace at that time.
The transition from television to school happened because his two daughters attended Ibero American High School, and during the years they were enrolled, they realized that he was doing multimedia work and the school approached him to start teaching in the MultiMedia department in order to introduce the subject to the students. “They found accreditation for this and after six years teaching, this is the only school that is currently giving complete multimedia lessons,” Jacobs emphasized.
“You learn everything regarding filming, editing, you learn video editing, and you learn to work with Photoshop, restore images, make posters, you learn everything regarding social media. We also teach the technical aspect a bit of the work of IT”, he added.
Finalizing, Jacobs says that what he likes the most about teaching at the school is inspiring the kids, who have an open window to the world of multimedia. “Maybe you are a very creative person, you can do a lot with multimedia and what I like is that when I give an assignment, I want for them to do it the best that they can, better than me. The goal is to push these children to use their creativity and experience the world of multimedia, through which they can express themselves in different ways.”
