In March 2009 I visited a social studies class at Chief Sealth High School here in Seattle, Washington. The 12th grade class was just starting a unit on global water issues, so their teacher asked me to come in and talk about some of the reporting I’d done in East Africa the year before. I introduced myself as a radio journalist and right away a hand shot up in the front row.
“What’s a journalist?” asked a high school senior, in total earnestness.
My immediate reaction was shock: how could an 18-year-old not know what a journalist is? I felt lost—a foundational element of what I had come to talk about was missing. But we plunged ahead with a news literacy question: “Where do you get your news?” Some answers you would expect—the local paper, web sites, NPR—and some were surprising, such as Nike.com. These answers helped the class engage in a conversation about news and radio and the difference between news and advertising.
Common Language Project
As a founding member of the Common Language Project (CLP), a nonprofit multimedia journalism organization based in Seattle, I cover underreported local and international issues. Since 2006 the CLP has reported on child labor in Pakistan, immigration and deportation in the Pacific Northwest, and climate change and water access in Ethiopia and Kenya, to name a few.
At the CLP, we can barely keep up with the demand from teachers for our journalists to visit their classrooms. Our network of teachers has found a range of ways to fit our work into their lesson planning. Some work us into units dealing with the issues we’ve reported on, like global health, climate change, or education, others into journalism classes, and others into media literacy units within social studies curricula. We want to maintain this diversity of class subjects, but we are also looking to expand our program to meet teacher demand while creating an opportunity to track the long-term impact of media literacy education on students.
Media Literacy: An Important Exercise
Youth media organizations often teach media literacy prior to producing media. For example, at Reel Grrls, a filmmaking program for teenage girls in Seattle where I work part time, media literacy is a key aspect of every program. Reel Grrls has found that participants need a larger context in order to understand how the media works before they can start to tell their own stories. Girls in the program have gone on to produce award-winning films that have shown in hundreds of film festivals all over the world. Many graduates of the program say that gaining a basic knowledge of media literacy was a pivotal moment in developing their ability to become storytellers.
The inspiration to start talking to students about media literacy came during the CLP’s first international reporting project, when our team reported from Israel and the Palestinian Territories during the Israeli-Lebanese War of 2006. Being submerged in the locally produced news reporting of the conflict inspired one of the first media literacy exercises the Common Language Project developed.
As a trainer, I brought a copy of the English-language news monthly Egypt Today to help students compare with Newsweek coverage. Both magazines featured articles on the conflict. Egypt Today ran a several-page spread of full color photos depicting desperate people searching for friends and family in the dusty rubble of a freshly-bombed apartment complex; another photo showed a dead body before it had been covered with a sheet. In contrast, Newsweek used an infographic as its main illustration: stick figures in red and blue to indicate the numbers of injuries and deaths on either side of the conflict.
Students love this exercise. Many respond to the idea that our media are sanitizing our information for us. They enjoy a rebellious, typical teenage reaction to being told what to think. Others pick up on the emotional manipulation inherent in printing pictures of extreme suffering—or in choosing not to print them. We love to facilitate these discussions, helping students think about how—and who—is processing their information for them. And perhaps even more importantly, to foster a love for what we call the ‘mind-boggler,’ or questions that do not have one simple answer—where wrestling with every side of the issue is what is most important.
In another exercise, we show students a chart mapping the crossover in membership on the boards of directors of major corporations with those of news outlets. At first, our chart is typically met with the familiar mild annoyance that any teacher might expect when asking high school students to read a graph. But as the discussion develops, students quickly grasp the concept of conflict of interest, and suddenly start to make intellectual leaps to many different issues in their lives.
Students consistently tell us that realizing this information empowers them to understand their role in the information landscape and to consider the motivation of other players. A student we visited in 2007 offered a succinct answer to one of our evaluation questions—“What information presented was the most useful to you?”—simply: “Mainstream media chooses what becomes news.”
News and Media Literacy
In January 2011, the Common Language Project plans to launch a Digital Literacy Initiative in Seattle in partnership with public high school teachers and the University of Washington. Our program will bring journalists into classrooms around the city for a series of visits exploring news, media and digital literacy, local investigative journalism, and international reporting, with the goal of fostering an understanding of the news and how it gets produced. We see news and media literacy as two critical thinking tools—we know that students who receive this training will go on to become more engaged, empowered citizens.
In the summer time, these students will be invited to a summer camp that will offer the chance to try their own hands at investigative reporting and media production. They will learn the basics of research and reporting, visit newsrooms around the city, and produce multimedia stories on their own communities.
Next Steps
The Chief Sealth High School student who asked what a journalist was turned out to be one of the most engaged in the class. But her knowledge of the role of journalism in democracy, of how to distinguish between forms of media and of how to access reliable information about the world around her was sadly underdeveloped. She understood so much about how the world works—but not about how that information had reached her.
Something is missing from our public school curriculum when a high school senior does not know what a journalist does, or why it is important to think about where his or her information is coming from. We are pushing Seattle to become a key city in the national news and media literacy movement. We want that 18-year-old student to be the last high school senior who doesn’t know what a journalist is.
Jessica Partnow is a radio producer and cofounder of the Common Language Project, a new media nonprofit based at the University of Washington that reports in-depth stories for newspapers, public radio and television, and online outlets. She teaches an undergraduate course in Entrepreneurial Journalism as well as high school workshops on news and media literacy, and spends two days a week working at Reel Grrls, a filmmaking program for teenage girls.
Category: Uncategorized
The Urban Journalism workshop Program: A Case Study
There is not a single journalist in the United States who has not witnessed—or been personally affected by—the chaos that has befallen many newsrooms in the past few years: mass layoffs, furloughs and slashed news budgets. For those of us who have spent many years engaged in programs to get high school students to pursue journalism careers, we have asked ourselves if it is even responsible engaging in such pursuits.
Ironically, at the same time the news business has seen massive cutbacks, news consumption has remained steady and even increased. Therefore, it is essential that educators train young people to be responsible media consumers. Due to the advent of technology, younger generations are constantly bombarded with information. As a result, students must be taught to distinguish news from all the media and information masquerading as news.
About Urban Journalism Workshop Program
“Is it responsible to even suggest careers in journalism, given the state of the industry?” The answer is yes, but we must expand our missions to include training responsible young media consumers and news creators. Over the years, the Cleveland Urban Journalism Workshop (UJW) program—which is solely operated by journalist volunteers—has prompted several students to pursue journalism careers.
Beginning in the 1980s, many chapters of the National Association of Black Journalists began holding journalism workshops. The primary goal was to encourage minorities to pursue journalism careers. Most UJWs, like Cleveland’s, held six-hour sessions on Saturdays for eight weeks.
Even if many of us did not realize it, news literacy was one of the several unstated goals that had emerged in UJW over the years. Workshop alums in non-journalism careers say that the lasting impact of UJW helped them become better writers and to understand important concepts like fairness and balance. In addition, many say that the socio-economic and racial mix of their workshop peers was the first time they had meaningful contact with students unlike themselves. According to the U.S. Census data, Cleveland persistently ranks as one of the most segregated cities in the country, and learning about journalism and news is important to get accurate information to diverse audiences.
The UJW is not sponsored by a school district or academic institution; however, for about a decade we have partnered with John Carroll University in University Heights. The college assigns a faculty member to attend the workshop and the University sponsors our graduation ceremony. The program recruits about 30 students per workshop from throughout Northeast Ohio across inner city and elite schools. Some of our students are sent by guidance counselors identified as “challenging” since program participation typically results with increased critical thinking skills and improved academic success.
The UJW structure includes:
• morning sessions
• a news quiz
• lectures on journalism principles and news literacy
• a “newsmakers” segment, which simulates a press conference
• multi-media projects
Like most programs that focus on storytelling or journalism, we start with the five Ws and H: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? These are not only key to news writing, but news literacy, as it frames learning with creating savvy news consumers. As part of our newly expanded mission, the committee decided to sprinkle news literacy into our existing format. Next year, we hope to implement more formal components.
Media is a big part of the workshop. For example, we held a session at a television station; and, another was based entirely on still photography and some video. The last three weeks are devoted to writing articles and doing multi-media projects for the UJW print and online products.
The multi-media projects students produce can be viewed at the following link, which includes a video commentary on censorship, a short feature on teen robotics and a sidebar interview on teen stress with a young woman who is the only working member of her family. Student work also appears throughout the workshop on the UJW blog.
News Literacy
As the UJW has evolved, news literacy has become more and more important. Instead of quizzing students about a week’s news events, we now ask students to offer opinions about how different media cover a story and analyze news content overall. Instructors teach a lecture titled, “What is News?” and many volunteers work one-on-one with students, who reinforce and apply news literacy principles in their teaching.
We found that although news literacy was introduced in the lectures, many students did not fully grasp the concept until they worked one-on-one with journalists in reporting/writing their own stories for the UJW newspaper. Students needed educators to help identify and point out the differences. We emphasized how students should scrutinize clues to accuracy before accepting information as reliable. Students explored the difference between news and gossip—a topic that is close to the fabric of their school experience. In this era of social media, blogging, text messages and emails blur what news is reliable.
This year, we introduced a question asking session to elicit the students’ opinions about how an event was covered. The answers often sparked lively discussion about fairness and balance and how a single topic is covered in different forms of media. Students learned how to identify reliable sources of information—for example, government data and reports or academic citations—to critically analyze whether or not mainstream media used reliable sources in their stories.
Students were given different types of examples in which media failed to use reliable sources. We discussed phrases like “Channel X News has learned” and contrasted that with the use of anonymous sources. This gave instructors the opportunity to discuss relying on rumors or hearsay versus reporting involving anonymous sources. The discussion revolved around how many print and broadcast operations have very strict guidelines governing the use of anonymous sources. Instructors discussed why many of them prohibit the use of anonymous sources all together.
Critical to these discussions was the importance of knowing opposing viewpoints. For example, the class analyzed a radio report on trans-racial adoptions. Sources quoted as supporting trans-racial adoptions included representatives from academic institutions and professional organizations that had done research on the topic. The only sources quoted as opposing trans-racial adoptions were random customers at a local barbershop.
Next Steps
Students benefit from a habit of critically analyzing information they consume. Youth journalism and media programs should incorporate news literacy into their curricula. By doing this, they are giving students a skill to use immediately and throughout their lifetimes. For youth media educators, the UJW is a case study that helps present how accuracy is the most important element of news and that correction is necessary to inaccuracy.
Thinking like a journalist includes seeking truth and reporting and interpreting information; minimizing harm and treating human beings with respect; acting independently, free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know; and, being accountable to one’s listeners, readers, viewers and one another. Steer youth media producers away from Wikipedia as a primary source of information and help train youth to analyze different forms of information and sources from the internet, radio, video and print. As storytellers, students require insight into the principles of journalism—fairness, accuracy, balance and objectivity.
Olivera Perkins is a reporter at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland. She has been an Urban Journalism Workshop volunteer for more than 15 years.
News Literacy in High School and Middle Grades: Why We Need it Now More than Ever Before
I was first exposed to news literacy as a set of skills when I was invited to be the lead teacher coordinator of the Center for News Literacy Summer Teacher Institute at Stony Brook University. It was already apparent that an elective course in News Literacy was most desirable for undergraduates (Stony Brook offered the nation’s first such course). Students gravitated to learning examples of biased sources of news: how propaganda is designed to persuade, while the goal of advertising is to sell; and how publicity enhances an image, while entertainment diverts the consumer from the reality of his or her daily life.
However, based on the overall lack of skills that those students exhibited, the need for either an across-the-board curriculum rich in news literacy was desirable in high school and even the middle and elementary grades.
One reason students do not always think critically about what they read is that the purpose of the content is not always immediately apparent.
Information Neighborhoods
News literacy aims to help students read between the lines and take account of context in order to identify an author’s goals. In other words, news literacy aims to help students identify different styles of information, known collectively as “information neighborhoods.” The various types of “information neighborhoods” include news, propaganda, advertising, publicity, entertainment, and raw or unfiltered information. Quite frequently, all of these different types are presented in the same manner as news, the purpose of which is to inform. The teaching of critical thinking skills, therefore, begins with teaching the differences between the “information neighborhoods.”
Students sometimes do not realize that the objectives of non-news neighborhoods may run in opposition to strictly informing. Raw or unfiltered information bypasses editorial guidelines, thus failing to ensure the important qualifications of journalistic truth: verification, independence and accountability.
When students are introduced to examples from the various information neighborhoods, they are led to an understanding that news is generally the domain of journalists, while the other neighborhoods employ practitioners such as advertising or public relations specialists, politicians, singers and actors. Without understanding the diversity of characteristics among the information neighborhoods, it is no surprise that our young people are often easily misled.
Transparency=Truth
Transparency, or the disclosure of how the reporter knows what s/he claims to know, is an important news literacy concept, frequently cited in news reports or broadcasts. Few readers, regardless of age and education, think to incorporate transparency as criteria for evaluating truth. Having students actively search for the appearance of transparency in any reading, as well as identify verification and prove independence and accountability, often leads to a detailed and robust discussion of the reliability of information in the reading.
In addition to producing more critically thinking students, these kinds of discussions can empower students. It has been my experience that the structure provided by news literacy terminology gives even the quietest students confidence to successfully articulate what is being learned.
The same may be said for the evaluation of sources. The MAVIN acronym is a wonderful springboard to provoke classroom discussion and is especially valuable for students needing a concrete structured technique of evaluation:
Multiple Sources are better than single sources.
Authoritative sources are better than uninformed sources.
Verified sources are better than sources who assert.
Independent sources are better than self-interested sources.
Named sources are better than unnamed sources.
This simple acronym again provides a structured technique to regularly apply to situations where students need to weigh the value of individual sources in order to properly evaluate information.
Last year, one of our innovative participants developed a unit that applied news literacy skills to her Spanish class. Students took an important contemporary topic—Mexican immigration to the United States—and were exposed to reports from both the U.S. and Mexican press. This activity extended to a rich utilization and reinforcement of reading, writing, and conversational Spanish, while exposing the students to a variety of perspectives and an excellent reinforcement of the history of Mexican-American relations. The unit included reading of scholarly and popular journals, viewing of video documentaries, the creation of a Spanish glossary significant to the issues, Spanish journal entries, and poetry. The idea of obtaining truth by following a story over time is greatly emphasized as well as the recognition of the information neighborhoods that are being read.
Discussion questions included:
• What was missing from the article that would balance the article’s assertion?
• Are all interested parties fairly and accurately represented?
• What additional points and sources could the article have addressed?
• Is the evidence verified or asserted?
• Identify each source.
• Are these sources independent or self interested?
• Determine reliability of the website used regarding: authority, point of view, and currency.
The unit readily demonstrates how news literacy is a most important and valuable tool for the educational, motivational, and assessment needs of even the most specialized subject areas. Many students have expressed to my colleagues that news literacy is one of the most valuable courses they have taken. One even stated, “I’m going crazy since I took the course! I can’t stop deconstructing (evaluating) news stories!”
Next Steps
All educators have the means to be news literacy instructors. Critical thinking is an end teachers hope to achieve, regardless of content area. Unfortunately, we too often demand critical thinking from our students before we’ve provided enough of a cognitive architecture—in the form of skills and vocabulary—for critical thinking. It has been my experience as an educator at primary, secondary, and collegiate levels that asking students to read between the lines, decipher a point of view or determine the relative strength of sources is critical to their active engagement in society. Perhaps creating media through youth media programs is the next critical step for a teen to put the lessons of news literacy into practice.
Stephen Shultz is an adjunct professor as well as the lead teacher and coordinator of the Stony Brook University Center for News Literacy Teacher Institute. A former Social Studies teacher and supervisor in New York City and Suffolk County, New York schools, Mr. Shultz was honored as the 1987-’88 New York City High School Social Studies Teacher of the Year. He has been a contributing writer for a number of textbooks, has authored teachers’ manuals in both Global and U.S. History, and continues to write articles pertinent to Social Studies educators.
Teaching Journalism and News Literacy
Not all school years are good news years for student journalists, but 1996 was a banner year in Palo Alto. In that year, the Palo Alto High School student newspaper The Campanile published an investigative story that made big local news and resulted in some significant resignations. The story was about a topic that most kids would find boring: a school board meeting.
However, it was anything but boring when the student reporter Ben Hewlett uncovered some shocking facts. Ben, in reviewing the minutes from the meeting, questioned why the board had reopened a closed board meeting at 10:30 pm, kept it open for only three minutes, and passed several resolutions in that three minute time period. All of the resolutions pertained to salary increases for district office administrators.
What was the board discussing in closed session for several hours prior to their reopening of the board meeting at 10:30 pm? Why was it passing financial resolutions with no prior discussion? When Ben looked carefully at the minutes, it looked like the board had been discussing financial issues behind closed doors which is a violation of the California Brown Act which requires public entities to have open meetings when discussing financial issues.
After further investigation, Ben wrote the story. The student newspaper The Campanile published it on page one. Within two days of the publication, the board held an emergency session and retracted the raises. Within two months, after the publication of a follow up investigative story, the superintendent resigned. Within a year, multiple other district officials had also resigned.
The day after the story was first published it was picked up by the the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News as well as on Channels 4 and 5. The local press, the Palo Alto Weekly and the SF Chronicle both wrote supporting editorials.
There are many stories like this from the Palo Alto student press. Six years prior to the 1996 school board story, back in 1990, The Campanile wrote an expose about the ineffectiveness of the counselor program at the school and within a few months it was dismantled and replaced with a “Teacher Adviser”program that still exists today, recognized nationally for its excellence.
In 1991, The Campanile students published a front page story alerting the community to the prevalence of unsafe sexual practices among students. That story became the basis for the formation of a required course teaching safe sex and other important social and health topics for all students in the Palo Alto School District.
Almost every year for the past 25 years, students have written one story per academic year that has had a profound impact on the community. The impact doesn’t stop with graduation. Many of these students have gone on to careers in the professional press. Just to name a few, Gady Epstein is head of the Forbes bureau in China; Ben Elgin is a lead reporter for Business Week; Rachel Metz writes for Associated Press: Tim Dickenson writes for Rolling Stone, among others. Several students have started magazines at Berkeley, UCLA, and other universities.
Students with non-journalistic careers have kept their journalist experiences with them. The overarching idea is to empower students through giving them the writing skills and tools to express their views and the platform to be heard so they can pursue any career they choose.
These stories show the positive power that the student press can have on students and the community when teachers and administrators respect students’ First Amendment Rights.
The philosophy behind the Palo Alto High School journalism program is that students learn by doing, not by watching. Like in youth media programs focused on print, journalism, radio, and web, students get passionate about journalism and writing when they are given the freedom to write about issues of importance to them. In the process, they learn how to write well and become more interested in the world around them and at the state, national and international level.
Today we have more than 500 students enrolled in journalism courses such as magazine journalism, newspaper journalism, broadcast journalism, web journalism and video production and beginning journalism. All the courses are computer-based and the publications are available online at and in print, recognized by National Scholastic Press and Columbia Scholastic Press.
I am a strong advocate of making programs like the Palo Alto student journalism program available to all students. Today we have a nation of citizen journalists who are blogging, posting, and commenting on sites all over the web. Students are posting to Facebook and Twitter, but in time they will be posting to other sites and writing blogs or contributing to citizen news sites.
From a teacher’s perspective, news literacy is helping students become more aware of current events and developing strong technical, writing and collaboration skills—essential for success in today’s world. But teachers must also be trained to incorporate news literacy teaching. Traditionally, education schools focus on the teaching of fiction and five paragraph essays and poetry, neglecting the teaching of non-fiction or journalistic writing styles. This issue needs to be addressed from many angles, but in college education programs specifically.
Ideally, news literacy should be a required course for all students in the U.S.—a course in which students not only learn how to write for a publication online or in hard copy, but also learn how to be critical readers of web-based materials. We don’t need anymore studies of how the schools are failing; we need resources to get students engaged in their learning and excited about the world around them. From a high school teacher’s perspective, journalism and youth media are doing just that.
Esther Wojcicki was awarded a Knight Foundation grant to coordinate the writing of a Web-News Literacy program that will be called 21st Century Literacy. The program will have a variety of modules that teachers can use either in an English class or a social studies class. The units can be used individually or as the core of a semester class. Some of the units will be novel based; others will be article based and some will be project based.
Mariah Cooper, Youth Journalist
Youth Producing Change (YPC) World Premiere | June 18-19 | New York City
The 3rd Annual Youth Producing Change (YPC) World Premiere is coming up June 18-19 in New York City, and we would like to invite your youth to attend their special YOUTH MEDIA PRESS CONFERENCE.
This year’s Youth Producing Change program includes 11 incredible films made by teens across the globe who are exposing human rights crises (environment, poverty, right to education, LGBTQ, political asylum, etc.) in their own lives and producing real change. Several of these filmmakers will be traveling from Kenya, California, The United Kingdom, Texas and New York.
When: Friday, June 18th, 4.30pm-6.30pm
Where: Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, Plaza Level (at Lincoln Center, between Broadway and Amsterdam)
What: Youth media producers from across NYC will have the opportunity to meet teen YOUTH PRODUCING CHANGE filmmakers from Kenya, UK/Afghanistan, Los Angeles and San Antonio. There will be chances to network, interview the filmmakers and have your youth share about their own experiences, projects and pursuits as they create their own media. *Snacks will be provided.
Prep: In advance of the press conference, we will send your group a DVD of all of the films, so your young people can be prepared and will have seen the films that we will speak about.
Up to 20 youth media press conference attendees will receive free tickets to stay for the evening screening and reception (7-9:30pm). SPACE IS LIMITED SO PLEASE RSVP ASAP to aminmas@hrw.org.
Screening:
Friday, June 18, 2010
7:00pm
Film screening, and discussion with youth filmmakers. Reception to follow. | Invite friends on Facebook
Saturday, June 19, 2010
1:00pm
Film screening, and discussion with youth filmmakers. | Invite friends on Facebook
All screenings at Film Society of Lincoln Center Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street, Upper Level (Between Broadway and Amsterdam)
Special YOUTH PRODUCING CHANGE ticket price – $7 ($12 regular)
*Tickets will go on sale May 20,2010
12th Allied Media Conference June 17-20, 2010 • DETROIT
Housing & Travel Message Boards for the AMC and the U.S. Social Forum
Thousands of people are making their way to Detroit this summer to attend the 12th Allied Media Conference and the U.S. Social Forum. Many of them want to stay for the full 11 days of both events – from June 17 to June 27, but will only be able to do so if they can secure affordable housing (from cheap to free!). Other people can afford to stay in a hotel for that whole time but would rather invest their money in Detroit neighborhoods than downtown hotels.
AMP Awards Micro-Grants to Support Grassroots Fundraising to get to the AMC
Allied Media Projects invited the coordinators of the 14 tracks of AMC2010 to submit proposals for media projects that would support the grassroots fundraising and organizing of their tracks. We awarded micro-grants of $400 on a first come first serve basis. Learn more about the awesome projects that are seeded through this process and how you can support: the New Mythos Tour, the Eco-Justice CD Compilation, and the Medios Caminantes CD Compilation
AMC and USSF organizers want to make sure everyone has housing, and we also want to see as many resources as possible flow into our communities as a result of these two events. In order to facilitate this match-making, Allied Media Projects built a message board system where people who have housing to offer and people who need housing can find each other. If you are interested in making your house or apartment available, or if you need to announce your need for housing, check out the new Housing Message Board.
This message board system also contains a Travel message board to coordinate travel solutions to the AMC and USSF. We’ve also created a General message board which is a good place to share ideas, announce calls to action, job postings, etc.
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
This is just the beginning of us moving towards a more interactive Allied Media web presence that facilitates our network’s connectedness year-round.
Announcing “Bridge” Activities from the AMC to the U.S. Social Forum
Every year at the Allied Media Conference, we build communications infrastructure that stays in Detroit beyond the conference. Last year, we encouraged AMC participants to spend the week following the AMC in Detroit to launch the radio station and recording studio at Hush House in the Northwest Goldberg neighborhood. This year, we are planning three projects that will start during the AMC and continue in the days after. Each of these projects are co-hosted by local organizations. They form a “bridge” of activities between the AMC and U.S. Social Forum, and offer a way for Detroiters and visitors to share knowledge and build community together.
These bridge activities include the “Another Detroit is Happening” mural project, a community wi-fi build, and the launch of a new community radio station. Learn more about these projects and how to get involved.
Become an AMC Network Sponsor
The AMC’s Network Sponsorship program is an opportunity for the AMC community to invest in the success of the conference.
Here’s how it works: Your group reserves 10 conference registrations at the requested rate of $100 each by April 30, 2010 and you receive the benefits of our “Ally” sponsorship level as a bonus ($600 value). Reserve 20 conference registrations at the $100 rate and receive the benefits of the “Supporter” sponsorship level as a bonus ($1,000 value).
We introduced Network Sponsorship for AMC2009 and seven organizations took advantage of this plan. We want even more organizations to invest in the AMC through Network Sponsorship in 2010. It’s not too late to become a Network Sponsor. Contact us for details.
AMP Awards Micro-Grants to Support Grassroots Fundraising to get to the AMC
Allied Media Projects invited the coordinators of the 14 tracks of AMC2010 to submit proposals for media projects that would support the grassroots fundraising and organizing of their tracks. We awarded micro-grants of $400 on a first come first serve basis. Learn more about the awesome projects that are seeded through this process and how you can support: the New Mythos Tour, the Eco-Justice CD Compilation, and the Medios Caminantes CD Compilation.
World Savvy’s Global Youth Media and Arts Festival | Friday, May 21, 2010
World Savvy’s Global Youth Media and Arts Festival celebrates the creativity and vision of NYC youth artists! This year, we are thrilled to announce the launch of the first World Savvy Album, produced in collaboration with The Orchard, and available for download on iTunes as of May 21. Please join us for this exciting event showcasing media, art, and live musical performances from middle and high school students in New York City focused on
Immigration + Identity
JOIN US TO CELEBRATE THE YOUTH AND THEIR ARTWORK!
And help support World Savvy’s Spring Campaign to raise $40,000 for our programs by June 30.
VIP Reception & Special Performances
Friday, May 21, 2010
5:00-6:30PM
Tickets are available through Brown Paper Tickets.
Purchase tickets by May 1st to receive a 15% early bird discount.
Host Committee support for the Festival is also available:
– Global Sponsor $1,000
– Community Ambassador $500
– Neighborhood Advocate $250
Contact Carissa Johnson at 718-210-3634 or carissa@worldsavvy.org to join the Host Committee or for more information about the Festival.
VIP Reception followed by
Festival Celebration
6:30-9:00PM
Free to the Public
NYU Commons Gallery
NYU Steinhardt
Barney Building, Ground Floor
34 Stuyvesant Street, New York, NY
@ 9th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues
Please check www.worldsavvy.org/new-york for more information.
*FREE* Music Production Workshop 6/21-6/25 | Now accepting applications!
http://www.bavc.org/bumptraining
Do you work with students/youth who are interested in music? Would you like to be able to offer a class where they can learn the technical and critical skills to produce their own music? The Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) is offering a FREE teacher training workshop where you can learn what you need to know to start your own music production program.
Who is invited?
Community-based organizations, teachers, after-school programming providers, and anyone interested in offering a digital music production class for youth. Instructors with regular access to a computer lab are especially encouraged to apply. Any experience with music is helpful, but not required we’ll teach you what you need to know!
What exactly will we be doing?
Working from BAVC’s BUMP Beats curriculum, we will be covering the basics of computer-based music production using the Reason software program. Technical topics will include drum programming, working with samplers and synthesizers, basic keyboarding and music theory. In addition, we will discuss best practices, such as critical listening exercises, efficient troubleshooting, and using web-based materials to enhance instruction. We will also be offering several supplemental workshops around classroom management, artistic responsibility and program funding/sustainability. Click here for more information (www.bavc.org/bumptraining).
Why should I be interested?
Many youth are craving the opportunity to learn about music and become creators, but don’t have access to the training and equipment to make this possible. Offering this opportunity can be a powerful draw to your program. From an educator’s perspective, music can be an excellent catalyst for teaching technology skills, media literacy and critical thinking. We will work with participants on how to begin building their programs within their budgets and provide advice around fundraising and sustainability.
Where/when will the training happen?
June 21-25, 2010 at BAVC’s Townsend St. training facility in San Francisco.
How much will it cost?
The training is FREE, but we are asking for a $100 deposit to hold a spot in the class. Deposits will be refunded at the end of the class.
For more information, please contact Chris Runde (crunde@bavc.org) at 415-558-2181.
Greater Boston Area | Part II • Volume 4 • Issue 2
Welcome to YMR’s second issue in 2010, documenting Part II of an evolving fantastic group of youth media educators that work in the Greater Boston Area.
While Part I investigated race issues, the divide between higher education and the community, partnerships with health providers, the use of graphic design as an important medium, and the lessons learned from a youth-led film festival, Part II emphasizes unique perspectives including art therapy, responses to Haiti, professional development for educators, and using youth media facilitation to improve overall non-profit organizations.
A warm thanks to all eight contributors for their dedication and hard work:
• Beth Balliro (RYMAEC, Massachusetts College of Art and Design)
• Chris Gaines and Paulina Villarroel (RAW Arts/Reel 2 Reel Program)
• Danielle Martin (Peace in Focus, MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media)
• Alan Michel (Home, Inc.)
• Beverly Mire (Terrascope Youth Radio)
• Jessica Moore (Teen Voices)
• Maya Stiles-Royall (Home, Inc.)
A special thanks to Christine Newkirk, senior program associate at AED who conducted the interviews featured in this issue.
The next issue of YMR will introduce News Literacy to the youth media field, alongside our first of a series of guest editors and experts.
We welcome you to join the conversation for each of these articles using YMR’s “comment” feature. You can also send feedback or comments directly to idahl@aed.org. If you are interested in posting a pod or vodcast response, please contact YMR’s media crew or email cnewkirk@aed.org.
Warmly,
Ingrid Hu Dahl, Editor-in-Chief, YMR
Youth Media Reporter is managed by the Academy for Educational Development
