You are cordially invited to join us at “Rebooting the News: Reconsidering an Agenda for American Civic Education,” Oct. 23-25, 2008 in Philadelphia. It’s a short, strategic convening for journalists, teachers, educational administrators, public-policy researchers and engaged citizens.
WHAT’S THE CHALLENGE?
We’re gathering because there is an epic change underway in the way American citizens prepare themselves for self government. And it’s time to consider what to do about it.
Younger Americans are abandoning traditional news products in large numbers. Yet a growing number of teen-agers and young adults are highly engaged with media in multiple forms. American newspapers endure their worst year in decades; yet the Daily Koz political website records 33 million “hits” in one month and online political fund-raising is setting records.
If you are a journalist, teacher, public-policy researcher or engaged citizen, you’re probably concerned: Do these changes threaten participatory democracy . . . or promise to enliven it?
This year, the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) adopted news literacy as a critical focus for its membership with a kickoff gathering in August at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
Next, The Media Giraffe Project, the Media Education Lab at Temple University and the National Constitution Center invite you to help answer this question – and develop a set of “news literacy’ strategies for the nation.
A CALL TO ACTION
That’s why we want you to come to Philadelphia from Thurs. Oct. 23-Sat. Oct. 25 – or even just for the day on Saturday if you can’t get away from the weekly schedule – for an informal constitutional convention in the shadow of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Forget about panels and audience. Surrounded by some introductory background briefings, we’ll roll up our sleeves with circle-round agenda sessions, ad-hoc breakouts and stories about specific projects and approaches.
With “Rebooting the News: Reconsidering an Agenda for American Civic Education,” we hope to answer questions such as: “How can we best help young people engage with news media in ways that help them understand and contribute to contemporary society?” We’ll also:
* Share classroom and newsroom experiences that are working.
* Learn how to promote active, reflective and critical participation in news/current events.
* Learn about the ASNE initiative, and news-literacy at Stony Brook University.
* Create fertile ground for discussion among journalists and teachers leading to a major 2009 news-literacy initiative.
* Formulate specific advice to the U.S. presidential candidates on American civic education for the new century.
WHO’S COMING
Join Renee Hobbs, of Temple University’s Media Education Lab; Howard Schneider, dean of the Stony Brook University School of Journalism; Ellen Hume of the Center for Future Civic Media at MIT; and a host of other invited and confirmed participants. For a preview of some of our invitees, go to:
http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Reboot-invitees
SAVE 30% BY REGISTERING RIGHT NOW | REGISTRATION STIPENDS AVAILABLE
If you want to attend and (1) need additional financial assistance, or (2) have a specific idea for a briefing session, contact us by email at mediagiraffe@journ.umass.edu.
Category: 2008
Training Opportunity for Educators at Urban Word, NYC
Preemptive Education: Language, Identity & Power
Urban Word NYC’s Annual Mentor, Teacher, Educator & Community Activist Training (Sept. 25 -Sept. 28 at NYU)
Preemptive Education aims to examine the issues that affect today’s youth, while providing creative and practical resources to address them. Using the power of spoken word poetry and hip-hop as the lens to explore language and privilege, participants will learn best practices in student-centered pedagogy from professionals in the fields of education, youth development, and spoken word & hip-hop. Combining performance, panel discussion, and professional development workshops, Preemptive Education will provide comprehensive opportunities for educators of all levels.
Opening Panel and Youth Performance: FREE to the Public
FRIDAY Sept 26, 7-9pm
Room 703, Silver Center
WORD LIFE:An Evening of Performance and Conversation on Language, Identity & Power
This dynamic performance and panel series will start at the word. Three poems with three panels will interact and converge in a conversation that uses spoken word poetry to reclaim identities and challenge inequities around language, privilege and power. Using each poem as a starting point, panelists will address and illuminate issues around language privilege, youth voice, and social justice. Young poets from Urban Word NYC will provide the platform from which respondents and panelists will vision a new dialogue around the transformative power of spoken word poetry and the pedagogies that champion the voices of the next generation.
Global Action Project – Open House!
Free after school video programs for NYC students
Open Houses September 22nd – 26th
4-6 PM at Global Action Project
All of G.A.P.’s programs are free and open to youth city-wide who are from traditionally underserved communities (i.e., low income, youth of color, immigrant and refugee, LGBTQ identified, etc.). Young people do not need any video experience; just an interest and commitment to exploring social issues and promote change through media and an ability to make a commitment to the program from Oct. 2008 – June 2009. Travel costs and snacks provided for all participants.
G.A.P. is now recruiting youth for our after school programs! Programs start on the week of October 20th!
Space is limited for all programs so once they’re filled a waiting list will begin.If you have know any young people interested in attending any of these programs or if you are interested in having G.A.P. come do a presentation to your school/organization, please contact Teresa Basilio at 212-594-9577 or via e-mail; teresa@global-action.org.
Committed to social justice, G.A.P. works with young people most affected by injustice to build the knowledge, tools, and relationships needed to create media for community power, cultural expression, and political change. G.A.P.’s programs combine a dynamic mix of media production, social justice, youth leadership and popular education.
Youth Media Fellowship 2008/09 – Call for Applications
The Youth Media Learning Network seeks applicants from the greater New York City area to participate in the second annual cohort of the Youth Media Fellowship, a nine-month-long professional development opportunity for youth media educators.
The Fellowship offers participants a rich and unique opportunity to examine closely their work and the work of young people within a diverse and dynamic community of peer practitioners. Fellows come together in a supported, sustained, and facilitated setting intended to engage them as experts from the field, to promote collaborative learning, and to inspire emerging leadership.
The application deadline for the Youth Media Fellowship is September 22nd, 2008.
For application instructions and more information, please see the attached ‘Call for Applications’ or contact Timothy Dorsey at 212.807.4214 or tdorsey@edc.org.
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The Youth Media Learning Network is an initiative intended to promote professional development for the youth media field on a national scale. The central goals of the Learning Network are to: strengthen youth media teaching and learning practices; extend the reach of best practices from youth media work; foster communities of reflection for youth media educators; and support the development of sustainable peer learning networks across local regions.
As a pilot initiative, the Youth Media Learning Network is a joint project of the Educational Video Center (EVC) and the Education Development Center (EDC), with support from the Open Society Institute and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Editor’s Note
Ingrid H. Dahl, Editor of Youth Media Reporter, explains the vision and model for the very first YMR academic peer and practitioner reviewed issue.
Practitioner Q&A: What Tools and Materials Can We Share?
Practitioners interview one another at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit 2008 during a youth media educators caucus organized by I. Dahl (editor, YMR) and P. Narumanchi (program director, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking).
Practitioner Q&A: In your work what challenges do you face?
Practitioner’s interview one another at Allied Media Conference in Detroit, 2008 with Ingrid Dahl (editor, YMR) and Padmini Narumanchi (program director, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking).
Practitioner Q&A: What Do We Need to Address?
Practitioners interview one another at the Allied Media Conference’s youth media caucus, asking, “What critical question does the field of youth media need to address?”
Youthtopias: Towards a New Paradigm of Critical Youth Studies
by A.A. Akom and S. Ginwright, San Franscisco State University, and J. Cammarota, University of Arizona
Social science research on Black and Latina/o youth over the last century has been dominated by studies that frame young people as ‘problems,’ ‘pathologies,’ and ‘poisons,’ rather than focusing on young people’s emerging ‘assets,’ ‘agencies,’ and ‘aspirations.’ More often than not young people’s educational under-achievement has been explained as an individual pathology or cultural adaptation, which stem from social disorganization in their communities or lack of individual effort. In this article, we argue for a more expansive notion of youth cultural production, one that posits young people as central subjects to knowledge production and underscores their ability to actualize their agency for personal and social transformation. Following the work of Freire (1970), Fanon (1963), Solorzano and Delgado-Bernal (2001), Soep and Chavez (2005), Kellner and Share (2005), Cohen (2006), Andrade and Morrell (2008), to name a few, our new framework establishes clear pathways for civic engagement and social justice in the field of critical youth studies by utilizing the following five elements to form it’s basic core:
1) An explicit commitment to understand how race intersects with other forms of social oppression such as class, gender, religion, nationality, sexuality, phenotype, accent, immigration status, and special needs;
2) Challenging traditional paradigms, texts, and theories used to explain the experiences of students of color;
3) Fore-grounding the experiential knowledge of students so that young people and adults are “co-constructing” the learning environment;
4) A commitment to developing critical consciousness; and finally,
5) A commitment to social justice.
Download A.A. Akom, J. Cammarota, and S. Ginwright’s article here.
Young People, New Media, and Visual Design: An Exploratory Study
Sanjay Asthana, Ph.D., Middle Tennessee State University
The present generation of young people, unlike its predecessors, lives in an increasingly globalizing world that is being transformed by a wide range of technological innovations. Despite these major developments, it is a world that faces deep socio-economic disparities across various regions. This article will follow contemporary critical approaches to media education, youth, learning, and literacy by considering these as conceptual constellation that remains alert to the really existing social realties and life-worlds of young people and the communities. Through an examination of two initiatives from India, this article demonstrates how theory and praxis are indeed integrated in the media education practices pursued by young people. In creating and producing a variety of media content, the youth provide interesting perspectives on the local-global relationships which goes beyond the dominant understanding of the dialectic relations between the local and global contexts. For instance, young people raise crucial questions about power modalities around gender, poverty, and other generational and socio-economic inequities. In a preliminary manner, this article will explore some of the issues identified above, and suggest some possible connections with youth media education practices in the United States, and the role of media educators in fostering a globalist approach.
Download Sanjay Asthana’s article here.