Digital Media Group - November Updates

Sorry for the delay, but here’s the notes from the last Digital Media group call on November 3rd.  As a whole, a lot of our conversation centered on the challenges of working with youth media projects, such as lack of equipment, youth motivation, developing handouts and guides.  Subsequently, AJ followed up by volunteering to gather any curriculum and handouts people are willing to share.  [Check out the archives of the discussion list at http://www.ctcvista.org/forum/] In future calls, we plan to center on topics such as web design techniques (Dreamweaver or Drupal), video editing help and youth development. Our next call is scheduled for Friday, December 15th at 2pm EST.

Here's some individual highlights:

• AJ & Kevin (Home Inc) - working on after school programs with little to no video equipment; HOME Inc is evicted from office space and moving to BNN Roxbury; developing Final Cut materials for youth; challenge of distributing tasks out to large group of youth (8-22 youth) to do one video project; meeting challenge of no equipment by improvising and using cell phones; offered to gather some of CTC VISTAs curriculum and handouts
• Colleen (Project Think Different) - see article for Digest about new Media Literacy Series program (Media Watch Teens she trained in the summer now lead 4 months of trainings for other org's like Roxbury B&G Club; office dynamics and personnel changes at PTD adding to her workload;
• Dina (Project Think Different) - now that PTD electronic community projectthinkdifferent.org/civic/ ("a socially conscious My Space") is in it's final stages (where she edited Drupal/PHP modules by hand) with radio, forums, and podcasts - its soft launch on 10/31, working on some print materials for PTD and CTC VISTA and re-organizing the PTD filing system
• Gariet (Portland Community Television/OLLIE) - getting hardware soon for MNN's Digital Distribution project and continuing to work with schools; requests more time in the day!
• Jeff (UTEC)- switched to TANP group; we’ll miss you!
• Jessica (Center for Digital Storytelling) – participated train-the-trainer in Ukiah, now she's trained to do those workshops (future workshops include foster youth and domestic violence); research about who's doing storytelling in Berkeley area is now on hold because they don't have time to support; working on content for the StoriesforChange.net portal; working on redesigning some promotional materials and a Final Cut Xpress handout update (will try to share shorter version)
• Lashanda (Benton Harbor African Arts and Culture Council) - programs are going ok but working with supervisor to get updated computer equipment.
• Lauren (Media Bridges) - getting some content for the youth channel but needs more!; in process of setting up youth film festival with schools (old name "Sprockets") as Youth Channel kickoff and more established programs for youth such as an  8 week project based workshop in January; interested in doing collaboration to go to conferences;
• Ray (Computers4Kids) - developing workshops and writing them up; 10-15 workshops developed so far - digital photography, 3d modeling with Bryce, photoshop composites, web page design, silent movies with imovie, remix in GarageBand;
• Richard (MOLLIE) – working on video projects in schools, where the subjects of the videos match the school curriculum, such as astronomy – challenged by lack of hard drive space for editing; wants to set up an audio production track but need to survey the community
• Shaneka (WYTEC) - attending an Entreprenuership conference in AZ; developed a tshirt business/marketing plan with youth; continuing to develop a girls program; also developing an adult computer literacy program (created her own manual) based on resources on GCF Global learning (will check about sharing the .pdf)
• Tony (BGC AZ) - Techathalon this weekend; he's been doing the setup with getting teams organized and working behind the scenes; posted AYW animations (with video and sound); lack of real programming for teens, so he's trying to do movie/video projects but teens don't like the more structured programming;; got his motorcycle going as a form of transportation;
• Will (Reel Works) - been working on Benefit 11/14, documentary about the program; helps with classes, guides people through the editing process; working on using MySpace to recruit new youth, and putting movies and films up on there;

Comment from Richard T. Anderson on November 28, 2006 - 10:40am

Wow, I'm included in the minutes of a "meeting" that I missed.

Well, I'm still plugging away. How you had a nice Holiday.

Peace,

Rich