The Media Spot

Over the past year, I had the opportunity to work with the inspirational staff at the Brooklyn School of Inquiry, PS 686, on a series of documentary videos on their arts, enrichment and media literacy programs.

Throughout their inaugural year, I worked with academic coordinator Nicole Nelson and principal Donna Taylor, developing a framework for how they will integrate media literacy skills and concepts into their curriculum.

Have a look at their video archive, starting with the 5-video fundraising series, A School Grows in Brooklyn, which includes our documentary on K-1 Media Literacy.

Recently, Dan Storchan, who is managing our team of consultants at Digital School Solutions, came to visit me in action at Franklin K. Lane High School. When Dan saw students creating online tutorials for their integrated algebra regents exam using Voicethread, he discreetly pulled out his Flip video camera and started shooting. What he captured lead us to develop the following video, where FKL students and their teacher, explain the benefits of this process in their own words.

Mr. Tandarich, a 5th Grade teacher at PS 124, in Brooklyn, NY is a comic book lover. I have worked with Mr. T to integrate technology into his curriculum since 2005 -- his preference is normally to work within his literacy curriculum around student reading of classic novels. We've always looked for ways of incorporating Mr. T and his students' familiarity and interest in the comic book genre along with 21st century forms of storytelling, and this year, it came together in 5-501's Classic Production of The Invisible Man!

An instant classic, the students at GSS at PS 32 in Gowanus, Brooklyn worked with TMS collaborators, Brian Smith, Jacqueline Arias, and myself, to produce this spoof of reality TV, and corresponding PSA, during our genre study afterschool video production workshop series.

After researching hazards related to the improper disposal of rechargeable batteries, students wrote a script with Mr. Marsano keeping them focused on the problem, and what the students wanted their audience to do about it. To "hook" their audience, students decided to take a serious tone with elements of humor.  Come on in and have a look at their PSA, the "making-of" process-based documentary, and our production notes. 

The teachers and students at PS 334, The Anderson School, a gifted-and-talented K-8 school Rhys has been consulting with through AUSSIE since 2008, were presented with a unique opportunity to integrate multiple technologies into an exciting opportunity bridging media literacy, traditional classroom learning, and natural science studies. All grade levels collaborated to create multimedia products that would transform their traditional curriculum and embrace the challenge of creating new learning materials to inform their own understanding of the world, while combining new acquisition and practice of technical literacy skills like video production, web development, Internet-based and collaborative annotation resources, with new literacy skills like researching information on the Internet and composing text-based documents on a computer, as well as traditional and real world competencies, like public speaking, teamwork and community building, and persuasive writing.

7 summers, 35 Clips of the Day. The Generation Connection 7 wrapped up at the end of July with 5 new CODs shot and edited by tween-aged and senior citizen campers with one objective: communicate what makes the experience of exploring Central Florida with each other worth coming back for every year.

Summer 2009 at GSS brought together a fantastic team of educator and youth collaborators for 7 video production workshops emphasizing the core principles of media literacy education. The workshops were broken up into 2 genre study and production sequences: Music Videos, and Movie Trailers, and the entire curriculum was archived on Voicethread.com.

For our Spring 2009 session at PS 32 with Good Shepherd Services (GSS) "a social service and youth development agency serving vulnerable NewYork City children and families", we continued our production work with a new groupof kids who brought their own ideas and excitement to the videomakingprocess. Alongside the GSS staff and the students, we scripted,planned, videotaped, and edited a video on the themes of "growth" and"identity" for their of the yearperformance, "Grow Mania".

In April we helped TMS friend and consulting educator, Joe Destefano (a.k.a. Mr. D) wrap up his third annual "Tech Turnoff" week with his Colorado high school students on the The Heritage 47 website.

Each year, we help Mr. D set up his Wordpress-based website and blog, brainstorm some media literacy themes to discuss, and cut him loose in his threaded discussion with his students. This year, for the first time, Andy and I entered the discussion with some questions and reflections of our own. The results are archived on the site, and are worth a look -- meta-discussions on what it means socially to disengage from such a large part of our culture; critical comparisons of Huxley's Brave New World and our own mass media consumption; analyzing lines between participatory "web 2.0" culture and mass media sources, and more!