The Media Spot

Today was day 200 of 200 of our 2-year media ed contract with PS 124 in Brooklyn! Monday will mark the end of this year's technology consulting to Manhattan's PS 334 through our new relationship with AUSSIE, and Tuesday will close out our first year of media education work with PS 130 in Brooklyn.

I've been knee-deep in professional development workshops and classroom multimedia productions at these schools 5 days a week for the past month or so, as a result we've been quiet here on the TMS blog. However, I'll be packaging up all of the fantastic work we've been collaborating on with teachers and students over the next month -- making the resulting productions, unit plans, production notes, rubrics, and curriculum maps available here on our site for the extended media literacy community to use and respond to.

At PS 124 we're approaching the year-and-a-half point of our media education residency. In that time we've developed a network of blogs that has become known as "The PS 124 Online Learning Network". This group of websites are the foundation of the school's media ed and technology integration program, used for student practice with the Internet and web publishing, archiving of lesson plans, rubrics, and curriculum maps, and as a community resource for general school info and announcements.

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.

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.

Class 5-302 at PS 124 generated original "list poems" based on a Walt Whitman poem, and adapted them into videos using their class blogs, creative commons, and iMovie.

5-303 made 6 different videos out of the same set of video footage that they shot on their trip to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens in February, 2007. Their productions demonstrate the power of decision making in video editing to create infinite messages with the same source material.