One of the main goals for HOME In.c at the moment is to create a community between the students in our different programs (our three partner schools and the TeenTV summer workshop). I feel that the best way to do this is to tap into existing social network rather than trying to create our own. We've tried having a Myspace page for TeenTV but it hasn't caught on.

Comment from Dan MacNeil2 on February 20, 2009 - 5:59pm

The UTEC-Lowell.org people are often CTC VISTAs and they've had some success with myspace.

If there isn't a UTEC CTC VISTA at the moment, You might drop spouv@utec-lowell.org an email (and say I sent you)

whoooo hoo. Just got done teaching my digital storytelling class. At Media Bridges, we have a series of youth classes lasting a week or two. Mine lasted one week, 3 hours a day. And the ages were 9 - 15. You would think that the 15 year old would have been bothered by the younger ones, but they all got along really well.

Comment from danielle martin on July 11, 2007 - 5:49pm

You ROCK! Sounds awesome and thanks for all the juicy details in your post. You could publish the stories on StoriesForChange.net and Jess & I would be psyched! And if you add it as an Event, you can see all the stories together...see the workshop I just did in Roxbury with youth http://storiesforchange.net/event/teen_digital_storymapping_bootcamp

I'm of the tack that any story kid take this gumption to finish is GREAT!

For Ad Attack, see if you can get your hands on MNN's media literacy curriculum...it's awesome. I have a paper one I could send you if you can't get it online.

-Danielle

This is the first week in many months that I do not have any outreaches. I had two of them to focus on for the past several months. One was from a high school and the other was an after school program.

The high school group was a bit difficult. Most the kids were there by default, since the options they wanted were already full. But it ended up ok. I will say I tried to use a curriculum and that miserably failed. It partly happened that way since half the kids were already familiar with video production and some imovie (though they failed to tell me that during our first day, no wonder why they were not paying attention). It also may have happened because another portion of the group was completely uninterested in learning. Some of these kids have issues with instant gratification. They want results now. There was little interest in planning. And then when it came time to shoot, there was no planning to fall back on. I also hate to say this, but it was kinda a rotten group of kids. A couple of loud mouths and show offs detract from the rest of the group and impede on learning. But I guess that's a common complaint. One of the students even voiced her distaste for the class and completely disrespected the teacher. She called the teacher lazy and annoying and all these things right to her face. Maybe kids these days have little respect and little patience.

hi there. Spring is in the air here! And it's already humid. Everything at Media Bridges is going alright. Though our state senate just introduced a devastating bill to public access, consumer choice and all that stuff. Am I allowed to talk about that? well, anyways.

Today I finished a mini grant for a summer media camp. It was a short short grant but good experience to write up descriptions and form some budgets. By the way, if you are writing a grant, you're a volunteer, not a staff person and that looks really nice to the grant people. We'll do the camp regardless if we get the money, since it's already in the budget, but more money is always nice for equipment and foooooood.