Beginning on Thursday Sept 15 (12-1 ET), the VoiceScape project will host a series of 5 webinars. The title of the series, “A Match Made in Heaven: Youth Media Making and Public Media,” introduces stations, educators, and community partners (it is open to all) to the how and why of integrating youth media making into public media. Hear from Project VoiceScape station grantees about their experience, explore hardware and software options, discover great resources (including Adobe curriculum,…
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  I recently attended an e-portfolio workshop with a group of Boston Public School teachers at the Adobe office in Waltham, Ma. E-portfolios weren’t new to me, but I had never spent a great deal of time or energy exploring their potential. But I should have. An e-portfolio can be many things to many people, but at its most basic it is an assemblage of digital pieces chosen by the author to tell a particular story. Wikipedia notes 3 main types of e-portfolios: developmental (e.g.,…
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If you’re looking to define media literacy there are books galore, websites innumerable, and semester-long courses in teacher training programs that will offer an approach. The industry standard resource for the education sector is the Center for Media Literacy. The concept of literacy is ancient. At least 17,000 years old. There was, after all, a reason to the how, where, and why of the Paleolithic cave paintings of Lascaux. In the end, I find the essential of media literacy is knowing…
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This school  year of media-making and digital media arts production is quickly coming to a close as summer vacation looms. Many of the projects began back in October. Some of us managed to help our students  complete one major project, some of our students continued with second and third projects. But at the end of the process, the same question is asked again and again: What do we do with our pieces now? These student-created works  are strong, powerful, and often profound. But how can…
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People come to digital (media) arts workshops and trainings wanting and expecting to learn how to use the software; they want to “get their hands dirty.” And so they will. But first comes the story. Good stories are not born fully formed; good stories are made. They are constructed. Marshall McLuhan, a half a century ago, said that the medium is the message. Software skills come not because you’re shown “how” to drop a clip into a video timeline, or because the layer function in…
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