The Media Spot

Yesterday we wrapped up a high-paced media education program at Good Shepherd Services camp, with an end-of-summer video exhibition at PS 32 in Brooklyn. For 3 weeks in August, I worked with groups of middle schoolers and "tweens" as part of the camp's "choices" hour at the end of each day. Different groups of campers made 2-day commitments to planning, shooting and editing short videos that were projected at yesterday's assembly for the camp community.

The PS 124 community decided to take a strong stand against school violence. Following this theme, the 5 production groups in class 5-302 made video news releases (VNRs) exploring violence in their lives and community. Extensive preparation, or "pre-production" work by students created a rich, well executed production process that produced dynamic results, and lots of opportunities for critical media analysis.

It's been a great year! We've established a network of blogs for school staff and students to communicate with each other, and publish their work. We're breaking down the fear of technology across the staff, developing in-school standards for media education and technology, creating a menu of classroom multimedia productions, and establishing a model program for other NYC elementary schools.

This post showcases some of our favorite videos produced this Spring, including: Fifth grade investigations of local food markets and animated music videos over original artwork, and a dramatic video illustration on friendship by fourth graders.

Using the same source video footage, the students created 6 different videos on themes ranging from the difference between organic and conventional farming, buying local vs. food flown in from all over the world, and how the food we produce and distribute effects our environment.

The PS 124 community decided to take a strong stand against school violence this Spring. Following this theme, the students of class 5-302 decided to make a series of videos exploring violence in their lives and community.

5 production units in 5-302 developed questions based on their main ideas, and video taped interviews with 2 visiting eighth grade students from IS 318, along with their dean and vice principal, as well as a fellow student from 5-302, and a favorite PS 124 school aide.

5th grade students in their art class at PS 124 incorporated original pastel drawings in a video, learned about stop motion animation, blue screens, and image mapping in this dynamic collaborative production.

Over a 6-day contract with 130 in the Windsor Terrace neighborhood in Brooklyn we set up a free WordPress.com blog, developed and modeled classroom publishing projects for students, got them posting weekly announcements from the office, and helped the staff start to conquer their fear of school technology!

Fourth graders take a theme-based group writing project on friendship, turn it into a video script, and produce video illustrations to share what they've learned.

We've been making progress with our video production work at PS 32 in Brooklyn. We worked with the boys for 10 sessions to produce a 5 minute video, and showed the video as part of GSS's "Hero Project". "REAL HEROES" was the title, and it got a great response at the show.

Over a 6-day contract with 130 in the Windsor Terrace neighborhood in Brooklyn we've set up a free WordPress.com blog, developed and modeled classroom publishing projects for students, got them posting weekly announcements from the office, and helped the staff start to conquer their fear of school technology!