Category: 2007

WORLD CHILDREN’S FESTIVAL
The National Mall, Washington DC
June 23-25, 2007 (10:30am to 5:00pm)
Be part of a historic celebration of children’s creativity and imagination.
More than 3 million children in 100 countries are participating in the program to claim the honor to represent their country (or U.S. state) at the World Children’s Festival.
The key festival objectives are:
– showcase children’s creativity, imagination and talents
– give voice to children on issues and interests of common concern
– introduce children to the power of their collective creativity
– harness children’s imagination for positive social change
– promote the concept of “artist-athlete” as a symbol of healthy living
– demonstrate the benefits of integrating art, sport, science and technology
– build bonds of understanding and trust between American children and the world’s children
– provide creative leadership training and connect current and future leaders
– provide Digital Media & Design Studio, design education and 21st century IT skills
You can support the festival and participate in it!
– If you live in the Washington Metropolitan Area, you can help local children host children from across America and around the world at the festival.
– If you live elsewhere in the United States, you can sponsor a child from a low-income family or a poor country to participate in the festival.
– If you live anywhere in the world, you can become a catalyst in this community by hosting an international children’s art exhibition during the festival.
MORE INFO AT http://www.icaf.org/worldfestival/

Following last year’s success, the Pedagogy in Cinema Society (PiCS) is proud to be co-curating a second Short Film Festival. This year, reinforcing our commitment to using film and media as tools for stimulating critical dialogue and action, we supplement the Festival with a panel of NYC youth and their teachers. To provide a space for youth’s voice to be heard, we invite young film/video makers to submit short pieces (max. 30 min.) they believe teachers and youth can use as teaching and learning tools in schools. Films will be chosen based on a set of criteria co-constructed by youth and their teachers and will be selected based on each film’s relevance for school use. Film and video makers of selected shorts will be invited to introduce their films at the festival, participate in a discussion panel, and receive a small honorarium. PiCS plans to locate the selections in the library at Teachers College and disseminate them amongst participating teachers for use in their classrooms.
This Short Film Festival is attached to the “”Popular Culture in the Classroom: Teach, Think, Play” conference, organized by the TC Students for a Cultural Studies Initiative (TCSCSI). The purpose of the conference is to bring together an international group of faculty and graduate students, along with K-12 educators and students from New York City in an effort to address various issues of popular culture and education.
Submission Guidelines: All submissions should include the following: name, mailing address, e-mail address, school/organization/institutional affiliation, degree program (if applicable), a brief (max. 100 words) statement explaining how you envision teachers and students using this film in school, and directions (or restrictions) for acquiring additional copies of the film/video should it be selected for screening, library, and classroom use. Please email tcpics@gmail.com if you have any questions. Short films/videos should be sent to PiCS c/o Liz Johnson at the following address:
TC PiCS
c/o Liz Johnson
Teachers College, Columbia University
525 W. 120th Street
NCREST – Box 110
New York, NY 10027
• Deadline: The deadline for film submissions is: Saturday, February 17th, 2007.
• Review Process: Films will be screened by participating students, teachers, and the PiCS group. Final submission status will be emailed by Saturday, March 10th, 2007. Submissions will not be returned.

Three YO-TV Documentaries are getting showcased in NYC. All three films were made by Youth Organizers Television (YO-TV), a core program of the Educational Video Center, a non-profit youth media organization dedicated to teaching documentary video as a tool for social change and as a means to develop the artistic, critical literacy and career skills of young people.
Still Standing provides an intimate portrayal of the challenges faced by Hurricane Katrina survivors six months after the storm. Diana is a single mother looking for housing, employment, and the chance to reunite with her children. Ms. Gertrude is a determined grand-mother struggling to return home and rebuild. Her son Bilal’s post-Katrina experiences in New York City drive him to become politically active. 50 minutes.
Alienated: Undocumented Immigrant Youth about Licia, a determined young woman from St. Vincent who commutes from Brooklyn to New Jersey to work as a nanny for $4 an hour. Meanwhile, anti-immigrant groups rally around lobbying efforts that seek to impose ever harsher policies and to “protect our borders.” Alienated examines what it means to be young, able and ‘illegal’ in America. 8 minutes.
All That I Can Be follows William Solomon as he enlists in the United States Army in the fall of 2003. His story offers an intimate portrait of a young person making his way in a society in which joining the military seems to be the best or only option. All That I Can Be explores the economic draft and the promises and realities of the U.S. military in post-9/11 America. 8 minutes.
Contact Jen Meagher, YO-TV’s Director of Marketing & Community Engagement for more information.

The Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK) joined theoneminutesjr network in to add user generated material for their weekly programme called fabrikken, which aires every wednesday from 16:30 – 17:00.
The programme is made for youth between 12-15 years old, who can participate in creating their own videos, telling theirs stories and joining the online community. NRK selected 150 one minute videos to broadcast.
NRK will also host its first oneminutesjr workshop, which will take place in Oslo with youth who are 12 years old and inetersted in learning more about video making. The workshop will take place February 20-22, 2007 were 15 teenagers are welcome to join. The videos will be broadcast in NRK’s programme fabrikken.
for more information go to nrk – http://www.nrk.no/programmer/tv/fabrikken/oneminutesjr/
IN ADDITION:
Three one minute winners at tokyo video festival!!!
For the first time, theoneminutesjr network has been integrated in the tokyo video festival (tvf) an international video contest sponsored by jvc, meaning that a selected part of the videos send in to theoneminutesjr competition is also send in to the tvf festival.
Three one minute videos were selected out of the 100 prizewinning works for the 29th TVFby the judges who reviewed 3,491 submissions from 55 countries (841 from japan, 2,650 from other countries).
the three winners are:
dorin babeu with baby-trees (excellence prize)
sophie wagner with la mia familia (selected works)
marija jocic with black no sugar (selected works)
SOURCE: www.theoneminutesjr.org

By Rachel Bonham Carter
NEW YORK, USA, 24 January 2007 – Voices of Youth, UNICEF’s own online forum, recently helped reach hundreds of children from around the world with a groundbreaking project in Teen Second Life, the under-18 corner of the increasingly popular online alternative reality, Second Life.
In December, Voices of Youth supplied information and helped to educate Teen Second Life participants in a week-long creative festival based on the ‘World Fit for Children’ declaration on child rights. The declaration was adopted at the 2002 United Nations Special Session on Children.
Designed by children and organized by the New York-based charity Global Kids on their island within Second Life, the cyber-festival centred on a competition to build virtual structures in response to issues raised by the declaration: HIV/AIDS, education, health and child exploitation and abuse.
FULL ARTICLE, VIDEO AND FURTHER LINKS AT: http://www.unicef.org/adolescence/index_38145.html

Continue reading In the virtual world of Second Life, teens tackle real children’s issues

The second issue of WORD! Zine, a publication for social change, has been released from Hampton Roads youth inspiring action (in Virginia). Download ad pdf version of the zine at www.altinc.org. To request a hard copy, email wordmagazine@gmail.com or write to:
Word! Magazine
@ Alternatives, Inc
2021 B Cunningham Drive
Suite 5
Hampton, VA 23666
Word! will launch their website soon. In the meantime, visit Word Magazine on MySpace.

A new survey by the Carnegie-Knight Task Force at Harvard University shows a strong movement in America’s classrooms toward the use of Internet-based news and away from the use of newspapers and television news, a trend that is virtually certain to continue. The study also shows that teachers, as they have moved to the Internet, have switched from using hundreds of local news outlets to making use of a small number of national ones. Internet-based news in the classroom is dominated by the websites of a few top news organizations including CNN, PBS, and The New York Times. In fact, the classroom use of non-U.S. websites, such as BBC’s, even exceeds the use of local TV or newspaper sites.
The report is based on parallel national surveys of over 1,250 social studies, civics, and government teachers in grades 5 through 12, as well as several hundred Newspaper-in-Education (NIE) program directors at daily newspapers. The survey of teachers showed that half are making greater use of news today than they were a few years ago, an increase attributable to developments outside the school such as the war on terrorism and the fighting in Iraq. For over 20 years, hundreds of large and small U.S. dailies have provided free or reduced rate copies of their newspapers for classroom use by students through the Newspapers-in-Education program.
Touted as a means of improving students’ reading, spelling, and writing skills as well as contributing to civic education, it has also been a way to encourage students to become lifelong newspaper readers. Most newspapers continue to promote hard-copy newspapers at a time when teachers and students are moving online.
For more information go to http://www.shorensteincenter.org

Continue reading Students Get More News in Classroom from Internet than TV or Newspapers

The Collective of Researchers on Educational Disappointment and Desire are a participatory action research team that is investigating the value of the GED, push out practices in high schools, education options, and the myth of the American dream. They are currently recruiting 16-22 year old NYC residents to commit to a summer project who have a creative approach to social justice. Email thecredproject@yahoo.com or go here to access view their flyer.

griot n.- a storyteller in West Africa who perpetuates the oral traditions of a family or village
Visual Griots is an international program to promote community cultural development and mutual understanding among young people through the art of photography. Interactive workshops empower youth to communicate what is important about themselves and their communities, using a medium that cuts across language barriers. Skilled educators, photographers, and community leaders engage young people in a powerful process of self-exploration and expression through the lens of a camera. To view the photos go here.
AED AT THE SMITHSONIAN
When: October 2 – April 29
Where: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
What: Exhibit of photography from AED’s Visual Griots project
For more information go here.