I just signed on to update the Teen Voices web site on a monthly basis. I am excited to be partnered again with this great organization. I am NOT excited to have to pick up where years of a variety of “webmasters” left off…with no site map…or comments in the code…or templates…Sometimes the most difficult web design jobs are the ones like these! It sounds like a simple job when you are asked to update a site’s content, but when the code is messy (its not exactly w3c compliant!), the folder hierarchy is not mapped, and the workflow is not optimal, it can in fact be far more arduous! I also have to be careful of my hours, and resist the urge to spend time “cleaning house”, when I am being paid by a non-profit with limited funds. It is an online magazine, too, so I am wondering why it isn’t syndicated?! RSS to the rescue!! That’ll have to be “phase 2.” Happy to be on board ( and get some extra spending money/Christmas cash )!

PS :
I realize that I never posted about the 2 sites I made (from scratch) this summer :

http://drsarahsarkis.com/

and

http://blackandwhiteball2007.org/ 

DLP Screening and Q&A

Originally uploaded by msradden

The Facing History and Ourselves office in Brookline were shown the four student-produced films from the DLP summer pilot program for the first time! WOW! I was soooo impressed all over again! And super proud to have been a part of it. As I watched the films I relived the suggestions I made for the storyline, or the edits I contributed to the narrative, and the “how do I…?” teaching moments with Premiere. I recalled the jokes, the A-HA! moments, the shared personal stories, and the “how did you DO that?” moments when I sat down and they taught ME a thing or two in Premiere! It was a truly collaborative teaching and learning experience that I will never forget! And tonight, seeing some of “the cornbread crew” again and the final pieces after so long, I think I was just as proud as the students were to see my own name in the credits! ( You can read more about the program in the blog )

Afterwards, Arva, Sophia, Jessica and Sevon fielded questions from the audience. They ranged from “what was the most challenging part of the project?” to which a collective groan was given about logging and the lack of A/C, to the “heavy” question of whether after all of this any of them wanted to be an activist. Arva explained the “cornbread” theory in her reply. Mel King never thought of himself as an “activist” in the sense that he was more important than anyone else during the civil rights movement in Boston. He said the woman who baked the cornbread for the meeting each week was just as important to the movement as the one who lead the meeting. As a result of this anecdote and the humility of the interviewees across the board when asked a similar question about their leadership, none of the students felt they could plainly say that they wanted to be an “activist.” Yet as Jessica pointed out, “I know how to be a leader, but I am not afraid of being a follower either. Being a follower is just as important as being a leader.”

The audience gained a perspective of the amount of work and literal sweat (it WAS hot in there!) that was put into this pilot program by the planning team, the teaching crew, the DLP staff, and the students. And what was clearly apparent was the pride and accomplishment each student felt about not only their piece, but the process they went through to produce it. And in fact their films will be used, for the first time ever, as actual curriculum assets within the 10th grade History of Civil Rights curriculum for Facing History and the Boston Public Schools. WOW!!

Sometimes teaching is so tiring and discouraging and you can feel like you are not making an impact because you just can’t reach them ALL that day. But then you have days like this, when you realize that you DO make an impact, one kid at a time, in small and big ways.

Kinda like making the cornbread…

I am halfway through my involvement in The Digital Legacies Project and loving it! This week the students have been logging Aroll, annotating the transcripts, and writing their narratives. Every member of the crew logged the same tape of their interviewee in order to get to know the footage. Facing History hired professional crews to film the A roll, retakes, and B roll of Boston to assist in getting high quality footage. The students conducted the interviews as well as filmed from their own perspective. I have been spending all of today digitizing the tapes using Premiere. The file management is so critical, and must be prepared for Digital Arts Alliance to come in and work with the kids in the editing process next week. I think DAA will be blown away by the skill level of the students. I taught them Premiere basics last Wed and Thurs and they were flying with it!

I am anxious to see what stories they come up with, the connections they made with the activists they interviewed, and the visuals and sound they choose to use in their films. There is SOOO much footage and SOOO much you can do with it in Premiere, that if they do not come into the lab with a plan, they will be overwhelmed and waste precious time.

I have been learning a GREAT deal from this program about what to incorporate into my own digital video curriculum during the school year. The DLP kids are doing WAY more than my students did, not necessarily because they are more capable, but there is more time, greater focus and importance on the end product, and hey, the students are getting PAID, not GRADED, so this is a job they are into and may pursue in college and a career.

I’d say the majority of my time has been spent in the lab making sure all the equipment works, software is installed, and supporting the students in the use of the equipment and software. I have also spent any extra time taking photos and recording footage in an effort to record the process we are all going through. I have been maintaining the blog as well but it has been tough keeping up with all that is going on and changing every day!! Check it for yourself at digitallegaciesproject.blogspot.com!

I went from beach bum to working 14 hr days! My eyes burn as I write this…but it DOES feel good to be “back.” I reported to TBA on Monday for the first day of my participation in the Digital Legacies Project for Facing History and Ourselves. I am basically managing the lab, teaching the students Adobe Premiere, and helping to manage the logging, script writing, and production of the students’ documentaries.

The 10 students selected for the program are fantastic! They come from all over the city. Being back around high school students gets me excited all over again about all things technology…They are vibrant, on the cutting edge, enthusiastic, curious, investigative, and above all, passionate about the skills and concepts they are learning. They have brought experience & confidence to the table too, which makes the curriculum a tad bit easier to teach.

 Today was the major lesson of the week which was file management, intro to Adobe Premiere, capturing and logging digital video, and basic effects and transitions. They all seemed to get it under their belt, but for each crew, there is always one who is hands-on and strongest out of the bunch for editing.

They are conducting their interviews today and tomorrow so they are both nervous ad excited all at once. One student got a nose bleed during the anticipation! But he managed to pull himself together into his oversized suit jacket! So cute. The girls are super confident and it is so awesome to see them step up with the tech skills, teaching back and taking control of the footage.

 The Facing History team is a great group of people to work with! We are all equally flexible and creative and energetic, and when we are not, one steps up for the other at just the right time! The curriculum is a pilot for FHAO, so indeed we are constantly adapting it, changing objectives, and adjusting activities at the last minute.

The knots in my back that usually develop in early September, were back on Monday! And between this and teaching at Bunker Hill on Tues and Thurs right after a day of FHAO program…well, let’s just say that a long run or tall glass of wine are both effective ways to eliminate the knots!

All in all, I am lookin forward to what the students will produce in the next 2 weeks. You can read their reflections and daily summaries on, yes, another Blog that I manage : http://digitallegacies.blogspot.com

I have finally made some offline adjustments (some? MANY!) to the TechBoston Academy web site. For the record, I was not in charge of the site last year, and many blank pages were posted in the hopes that content would magically appear. Ugh. This winter, I had originally assigned students to make the updates as part of their learning experience in Design Studios, but they were pulled from the job when their grades dipped too low for such a privelege. So it came back to me. Next year, however, I plan to assign webmasters from our student body.

I have created a blog for our school’s news and announcements, published the feed to our site, and allowed subscribers to get emailed updates. I updated the ASP-enabled calendar, replaced that OLD photo in the header and inserted more images throughout the site. The navigation has been restructured, and the information updated such as the staff directory, mission statement, and directions. The basic layout remains but there is more content that can and should be added. Of course, it is an ongoing process.

So why am I blogging when there is FTPing to be done?! Get on with it!

I was ready to deploy at 2:00 Friday when…the network connection slowed down way too much to FTP. Irritating! Look for changes this week!

I attended the second working session of my collaboration with BATEC on an exciting project funded by the National Science Foundation. The NSF has a series of Advanced Technological Education centers throughout the nation, and I am involved in one here in Boston. ATE centers partner with IT industries to develop best practices, instructional materials, and professional development to better prepare high school and college graduates to excel in high-tech jobs.

I am building a syllabus and a project for my 10th grade Advanced Web Development class which explicitly integrates the NWCET and SCANS standards. It is very useful to be able to document the employability skills and technical skills my students are learning, and to envision synergy between the high school, community college, 4-year college levels and IT industries.

More background info…
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is the federal government’s only agency dedicated to the support of education and fundamental research in all scientific and engineering disciplines. Their mission is to ensure that the United States maintains leadership in scientific discovery and the development of new technologies.

The Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program, under which BATEC is funded, specifically focuses on improving the education of technicians in the areas of science, technology and engineering at the undergraduate and the secondary school levels.

Related Links :
BATEC : Boston Area Advanced Technological Education Connections (http://www.batec.org/)
NSF : The National Science Foundation (http://www.nsf.gov/)
NWCET : The National Workforce Center for Emerging Technologies (http://www.nwcet.org/)

I provided curriculum development and training to TEEN Voices, the magazine published for and by teenage girls. Women Express, Inc. offers a variety of programs, works with girls world-wide, and publishes Teen Voices print and online magazines. I was hired to develop a curriculum which helped teach teen girls how to make an online version of their magazine. I delivered a schedule of weekly objectives, detailed lesson plans, and sample projects to Teen Voices and they were very pleased!

The program is being taught to approximately 50 teen girls in downtown Boston as we speak!

I am happy to announce the “Extreme Makeover” of the Marblehead Public Schools web site, my latest client (it’s been a while - I gotta stop giving my students all the jobs out there!!) I spent the summer working with a team of stakeholders in Marblehead to develop the new look of their web site. We went through a series of mockups, and then I built templates and populated pages with content. The site itself is “live”, but on a testing server until all of the content is ready, so the links below will hopefully get updated soon :

Check out the “before” : http://marblehead.com/schools/
And the “after” : http://mvmslatin.webstrikesolutions.com/