I wrapped up a 20-week long after-school outreach I’ve been teaching at an elementary school. I worked with two groups of students: the older group made a documentary about the experiences of their classmates who have moved to the U.S. from other countries, and the younger group made a collection of short instructional videos on topics of their choice (drawing, making a paper airplane, counting to ten in Japanese, making farting noises with your armpit, etc.).

April-May started with the IMC Fest, three days of music featuring nearly 30 local performers and an art show in partnership with the Champaign-Urbana Boneyard Arts Festival.

It was a terrifying sight: a vengeful teddy bear chasing high school students down the sidewalk in downtown Cincinnati. If you attended the 90th Annual Reds Opening Day parade this year, you might have caught a glimpse of the bizarre scene near the corner of Race Street and Central Parkway, against the backdrop of high school bands and parade floats.

Comment from Denise Cheng on May 1, 2009 - 7:50pm

cute! will they be available online?

Comment from Elizabeth Goussetis on May 4, 2009 - 2:19pm

Thanks for asking! I'm working on it right now, actually. I just set up a profile on Vimeo for the youth channel, and those two videos will be up soon!

Comment from Elizabeth Goussetis on May 22, 2009 - 8:34am

Update: the two videos, as well as several other youth channel projects, are posted on the Vimeo page. You can also find them on the youth channel page on the Media Bridges website.

Way back in September, I organized an event at Media Bridges for the third-annual One Web Day, which is a cool event that some of your organizations might be interested in participating in.

This story takes place in Ohio. I know some of you coastal VISTAs are longing for more Ohio news and charming Midwestern commentary, like you were getting before the election. Perfect timing for me to wake from my procrastination hibernation and write my very first field report!

Earlier this week, I returned to New England from a trip I took with my family to Mexico for my cousin's wedding. While I was away, my videojournalism club at Cambridge Educational Access was supposed to produce the fourth episode of their recently inaugurated newscast, Youth View Cambridge.

Comment from Morgan Sully on December 7, 2007 - 2:52pm

Yay!
feeling needed is certainly an important part of being a VISTA.

rock on!

m

The NAMAC conference was an experience. It was great to reconnect with CTC VISTA Project peeps, learn about new media arts happenings and experience a great new city. It is hard to say how the conference was overall. Each panel was completely different from the next, and hardly seemed related to the previous one.

Comment from Kevin Palmer on November 27, 2007 - 12:48pm

Hey Sarah,

Too bad they're not keeping you bust at GRCMC! That entire van production process was exhausting just to read but sounds awesome. Any chance you've taped the whole process?

In terms of real world skills, knowing how to get a club license may be the coolest skill learned by a VISTA so far this year.

NAMAC was great...started missing Austin the second I hopped on the plane back.

I work for Reel Works Teen Filmmaking. its a great youth media organization. I learned about Reel Works two years ago when i was an "At Risk" kid In High School. they helped me make two award winning films. we recently blew away an online youth media competition at Listenup.org. oh yea, we are having a screening on the 24th. if anyone is in the New York area and wants to see our latest movies.

Comment from Jack Waugh on July 19, 2007 - 6:52pm

Congratulations on progressing from "at risk" to "award winning".

Comment from danielle martin on July 20, 2007 - 11:56am

Woohoo! Now I can watch HOURS of Will made movies to my heart's content.

-Danielle

Ps I hope you don't mind, I changed the spelling of my name in the title.

I just finished a digital storytelling and mapping workshop that included over 10 youth who stayed creative and excited to share their stories even i

hey everyone, its been a while. I think i start every blog with "its been a while since i wrote a blog" haha. well i'm a busy man. It's not easy working full time, making such a large sum of money and trying to find places to spend it all. HEY i think the greatest thing i did this year was go to the Sundance film festival.