Digital Arts Service Corps - digitalmedia

Danielle on TV! on CCTV's Critical Focus

danielle martin — Wed, 30 May 2007 03:12:23 +0000

Check out my appearance on a panel about changing the media on Cambridge's cable access station, CCTV Critical Focus show. As it says on their blog, "Critical Focus: A Forum on Media Today is a series of six one-hour videos investigating how representations in the media affect culture, politics, and behavior. Each episode features a diverse panel of experts from academia, journalism, the broadcast industry, and social action agencies assessing the impact of media on our society." This episode focused on discussing some concrete ways citizens can learn about and change the media landscape. Of course, I plugged both the CTC VISTA Project and MassIMPACT's work doing digital storytelling with housing developments in the Boston area. I felt pretty privileged to sit next to fellow panelists like Nettrice Gaskins, Lauren-Glenn Davitian, and Steve Provizer, who've been working on community media, technology, and activism for YEARS, and have folks interested in what I had to add.

Click To Play

Intellectual Property and Community Media

Colleen Kelly — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:59:13 +0000

This is an article written by Reebee Garofalo. He's a professor who teaches about music and social movements at UMass.

Copyright: Its Still About the Content, Stupid.
By Reebee Garofalo
Original article can be found at: http://acmboston.org/node/340

Reebee Garofalo is an internationally known scholar of popular music studies, professor at UMass/Boston, and founder of the Community Media and Technology Program at UMB's College of Public and Community Service, where he has taught since 1978.

For the last 30 or so years, I have been a popular music activist and educator. I have been asked to comment on the relevance of copyright law to community media. This fits with my own agenda for a couple of reasons: first, that music tends to get underrepresented in discussions of communication policy and media transformation (except when we want to censor it), and second, most of the copyright battles that will eventually plague all media have already happened in the music industry. We can learn a lot about the future by looking at the history of these struggles.

Read attachment for more.

Video Distribution - Digital Media Group call 12/15

danielle martin — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 15:01:26 +0000

Just a note that we have our fourth CTC VISTA Digital Media group call on Friday December 12th at 2pm EST. (Email Danielle for the call in #s.)

In an effort to make the calls more useful, we're going to focus on a topic and keep the individual updates to the first 15 minutes. So any other CTC VISTAs that are interested in participating in a Video Distribution discussion, please call in!

Agenda

QUICK Introductions for new VISTA, Daniel Chen (2pm)
QUICK Project news (Updates to CTCVISTA.org, the Digest, etc) (2:10pm)

Discussion: Digital Video Distribution (2:15pm)

Video Blogging (Gariet?)
Other techniques?
Youth Video Sharing - Concerns for youth safety?
YouTube vs. Google Video vs. Blip.tv
Youth Video Exchange Network (2:30pm)- http://www.nymapexchange.net

(possible guest, Andrew from MNN)
Digital Bicycle / Torrents

Future discussion ideas?

(smaller groups?) (2:50pm)

IDEAS:

Youth Development
Volunteer Recruitment/Management
MySpace as an organizing tool?
Media Literacy

Live D Web Conference - Neighborhood Networks 12/05

danielle martin — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 19:15:17 +0000

Are you ready? I'm leading my first web conference presentation tomorrow afternoon to spread my digital storytelling love on the Neighborhood Networks Quarterly Consortia Conference Call. I met some of these folks back in June at the Digital Storytelling Bootcamp at the (HUD) Neighborhood Networks Regional Technical Assistance Workshops. Check out the Powerpoint if you like.

I'm excited to try this new form of presenting and see if we can get more NN members excited about doing digital storytelling at their centers. We're using WebEx so I'll let y'all know how it goes and if my efficacious humor conveys over web presentation software and teleconference call.

Plans are still in the works for more Spreading the Stories train-the-trainer workshops next year, hopefully out in western MA and something local in Boston, perhaps with Latino groups or youth.

My big project over the past couple weeks is managing the StoriesForChange.net website development and looking for not only the right approach but also the best technology (and/or CMS) with a group of great volunteers and facilitators. I've got a bunch of thoughts now about approaches to building social networking and/or file sharing sites with nonprofits, but I'll blog about that later.

Oh did I mention we're pulling together a MassIMPACT strategic planning and board meeting for next week? MassIMPACT's board hasn't met in quite a while and the board members I've met with individually all have interesting ideas about where the organization should go in the future.

On Being a Community Servant

Nichole Payne — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 18:20:32 +0000

by Nichole Payne

I was having a conversation with an intellectual recently. He was debating whether or not he should take time off to do community service or go straight to graduate school. He noted dispassionately, “In two hundred years, we’ll all be dead anyway.”

His idea seems to be that we are in some kind of rat race to achieve our goals and make something of our lives. This idea only makes sense, though, if those achievements will be completely permanent, and I don’t believe they can be. Even if you produce a great work of literature that continues to be read hundreds of years from now, eventually the solar system will cool or the universe will wind down or collapse and all trace of your efforts will vanish. And in any case, we can’t hope for even a fraction of this sort of immortality. What my friend doesn’t understand is that change is personal, and if there is any point at all to what we do, we have to find it within our own lives. This is the reason I joined up, as did so many others, to serve as an AmeriCorps VISTA.

I grew up in a densely populated urban community beset with gang activity, disaffected leaders and failing schools. I once heard a disgruntled teacher mutter, “There is no hope for people like them.” Even in the face of people like that teacher who believed our plight irrevocable, I fought for change. I was the first in my family to go to college and pursue a life of education and middle class existence. I never felt the burden or schizophrenia associated with straddling both these realities. I always felt plugged in, privy to information neither side knew well enough to comment on. Creating a program like Mind Over Media, at Technology For All in Houston, Texas, allowed me to capitalize on this position, with the chance to share my experiences with students who have similar backgrounds to mine. I was able to share my experiences in a world outside the forced provinciality of the ghetto. I took students to campus tours, and they got an opportunity to speak with professors and college administrators about their dreams. It was amazing. Now Armando, a CEP student kicked out of numerous high schools for delinquency, wants to study abroad in Japan for computer engineering. I ‘m not taking credit for these students’ dreams, but I will take credit for the transformation of their dreams into tangible goals, maybe even attainable plans.

I believe that the true role of a community servant should be creating culturally relevant curricula, programs, and organizations. With the support and fellowship of CTC VISTAs and the guidance of VISTA Leaders and Project staff, I was able to make my work more than just relevant for others at Tech For All – I was proud to build my own self-efficacy. My friend’s true dilemma was that he had lost his sense of personal viability in his questions about service. The difference you try to make in life should be connected to you; otherwise you run the risk of seeing your life embedded in too large a context. Many human efforts, particularly those in the service of serious ambitions rather than comfort or survival, get some of their energy from a sense of importance. You have to be infused with the sense that what you’re doing is not just important to you, but important in some larger sense. Sometimes it’s just knowing your efforts are important, period. If we have to give this up, it may threaten to take the wind out of our sails. If life is not real, life is not earnest. Then our only goal is the grave.

Nichole Payne was formerly a CTC VISTA at Technology for All in Houston, TX and developed a digital video / media literacy after school program for teens called Mind Over Media (check out the video). Nichole is currently a PhD student in the Anthropology program at Rice University.

Lessons Learned: Summer Youth Tech Program at C4K

Raymond Varona — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 18:48:39 +0000

[From the blog of Raymond Varona, August 23, 2006.]

Raymond Varona

During the summer, most of our population was made up of kids whose primary language wasn't English and who had never used a computer before. As a result, the workshops were more like guided activities instead of real skill-building sessions since I have to literally show them, step-by-step, how to do every action (including opening files and browsing through folders). So I started off with an intro to Photoshop and gradually worked my content down to the point where my last workshop was on how to change fonts in different programs...

This brings up a significant problem for Computers 4 Kids in that we have some kids that are learning how to program and others that are learning how to use a mouse, and somehow our programs and curricula have to include both. Definitely something I'll continue to address as the year presses on.

Read more from Ray's new CTC VISTA blog.

CTC VISTAs Can Share! - Digital Media Toolkit

danielle martin — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 16:57:24 +0000

[From the blog of Danielle Martin, 10/13/2006]

Morgan Sully, developed an open DIY Digital Media Toolkit/CD-ROM, with a simple HTML start page and links to resources and free software (usually distributed on CD) to bring to sessions he did in his work with The San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender Community Center.

He put it up on his blog and posted it to the Digital Media discussion list (and Nettrice posted it to the old portal), and opened it up for folks to take and customize for their own work.

In response, Roxanne Johnson, built upon it and compiled her own toolkit to train her AmeriCorps volunteers and youth at the Twin Cities C-CAN/CTEP Project in MN.

Read more about Danielle's work as is a second year VISTA and VISTA Leader at the CTC VISTA Project and project manager and trainer at massIMPACT at her blog.

Animate Your World 3rd Place Winner

Tony ORourke — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 22:39:46 +0000

Click To Play

Our club celebrated Hispanic heritage by creating animations with the Animate your world software. This was our third place winner.

The Nature of Participatory Culture & Technology

Nettrice Gaskins — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 18:31:51 +0000

by Nettrice R. Gaskins

Nettrice's Icon on MySpace

Participatory culture is about the intersection of digital media tools and the ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving a variety of web-based applications to people. I use the term “participatory culture” to reference the concept of active participation or the act of sharing in the creation of ideas, versus the “passive” scenario where people can receive information but are not allowed to engage in the creation or selection. Participation also refers to the availability of sources and individuals’ ability to customize their media experience.

We are at the beginning stages of a shift that will allow people, not only to create and distribute content and ideas, but also to act as filters and editors.

Recently, I’ve been writing about the major trends emerging in new media and technology tools that significantly reflect changing attitudes toward technology and communication. I contend that these trends have a considerable impact on society, especially young people growing up in the sensory-inundated environment of digital technology and mass media in the 21st century. These trends include open source applications, online video/audio, participatory media or personal broadcasting, and dynamic knowledge creation and social networking tools.

I would like to focus here on dynamic knowledge creation and online social networking tools. When effectively integrated into programs, these tools can extend learning in powerful ways. They can provide students with:

Access to up-to-date, primary source material;
Ways to collaborate with peers, teachers, and experts around the world;
Opportunities to express understanding via images, video, sound, and text;
Opportunities to learn coding (html and CSS) and use tools to create and edit online content

There is a real connection between teaching students web design, online distance learning (ex. Moodle), and popular services such as MySpace (I have my own page) and Second Life,. Second Life is a cross between a social network and gaming platform (even though it’s not a game) or computer-controlled virtual universe where virtual people interact with each other to do anything they can think of.

I think that popular culture not only reflects what people are consuming and using but also can provide clues on how to develop new and exciting projects for young people today and in the near future. I think that MySpace and Second Life are more than just distractions. As an educator, I am thinking of ways to use these applications to develop building blocks for learning web design and development, including online course development/management. It is important to note, however, that almost any application can be dangerous if used incorrectly or without the proper understanding of the rules and guidelines (or terms and conditions).

Learning how to code for the Web is becoming an essential skill, and editing MySpace requires knowledge of coding and web publishing. Why not use MySpace as a tool to teach these and other web skills? I enjoy creating images for my page, but MySpace has been educational for me as well, as it helped me to learn CSS (I am much better with HTML). In my opinion learning CSS is the first step to advanced web design.

Exploring MySpace and other tools, like Second Life, on my own has been very helpful in my work as an educator. Second Life uses Linden Scripting Language (LSL) that is similar to Macromedia Flash Actionscript so I've been able to teach basic Actionscript to students as young as 12. Second Life is also being used to extend the traditional classroom:

“Second Life provides a unique and flexible environment for educators interested in distance learning, computer supported cooperative work, simulation, new media studies, and corporate training.

Second Life provides an opportunity to use simulation in a safe environment to enhance experiential learning, allowing individuals to practice skills, try new ideas, and learn from their mistakes. The ability to prepare for similar real-world experiences by using Second Life as a simulation has unlimited potential!” - http://secondlife.com/community/education.php

The key to successfully integrating these tools and technologies into education is to have an explicit purpose and shared objective for everyone involved. Assignments should be project-based and encourage collaboration between students and teachers, who both need to feel comfortable creating, editing, and publishing with the tools.

Participatory culture shifts the focus of digital media creation from one of individual expression to community involvement and civic participation. The new ‘core competencies’ almost all involve collaboration and online social networking. The role of non-profit organizations, especially community technology and media centers, is to help their members gain skills that build on the foundation of digital literacy, such as research and technical skills and critical thinking in the 21st century.

Nettrice Gaskins is Computer Arts and Community Liaison at MassArt where she teaches and develops workshops focused on computer art including imaging, time-based applications, and multimedia. She is also adjunct faculty at UMass Boston. She holds a BFA in Computer Graphics from Pratt Institute and MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Digital Distribution

danielle martin — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 22:08:39 +0000

So far, digital distribution (or digital delivery) discussions among CTC VISTAs have been focused on video sharing, mostly among cable access stations (such as the NYMAP or Digital Bicycle projects). With the explosion of video sharing sites such as YouTube, Google Video, and Blip.tv, the ability to share video content has become almost second-hand to young web users. Factor in the ease of peer-to-peer network technology and we have an environment where youth could certainly be sharing all sorts of their own digital content.

Inherent in this area too are stumbling blocks such as copyright (see Creative Commons), digital rights management, and loss of video quality.

How can CTC VISTAs tap into these trends and resources to support their efforts? Blog your ideas, lessons learned, and questions and tag it "digital distribution."

Here's some other topics identified at the PSO around this area:

-outreach to local community organizations to share content
-Podcasting
-Videoblogging
-issues around distribution of youth content