Making Meaning from the Characteristics of Community

Students are exploring different train of thoughts concerning their community through the research of issues they believe more people should be aware of. With ideas ranging from textbook adoption to the use of laughter as a form of medicine for child patients to the the importance of statistics. Take a look for yourselves and help these students out by offering any helpful ideas, comments or questions that will guide them through their research practice.
http://sightandsound2010.blogspot.com/ PLI Youth Blog

From Theory to Practice: Considering the Construction of New Knowledge

Constructing New Knowledge
Members of the Youth Media Literacy and SIGHT & SOUND programs at El Centro College this summer with Preservation Link, Inc. are gearing up to produce some technological savvy projects that will help prepare them with their future endeavors. I enjoy watching them create and implementing their thoughts into concrete ideas. This practice engages them in the usage of critical and higher order thinking skills. Student participants are encouraged and motivated to develop projects that will inform the public about issues that we as citizen often encounter, with the twist of seeing it all from a students’ perspective. Student projects are presumed from the development of their own insights that involve many issues that are prominent within society. I am rooting for these ideas to gather momentum as they continue to grow in their academic careers as students, with the hopes it will carry on into adulthood.

Question

How do students go about bringing these ideas to light?

It all starts from learning the basic processes of how to produce, manipulate and develop a product. If you think about it, we all are equipped with a basic ‘know how’. It may not be as developed as it should be, but it’s a starting point. This is how the process begins. Students take their initial knowledge about a concept and construct new meaning by adding the new information that they root out as they work to prior knowledge.

The Future
The Youth Media Literacy and SIGHT & SOUND students are developing these pertinent skills, as they should be, before making choices about their future careers and individual life directions. It makes me feel confident in the fact that they are our future leaders and teachers that will be at the helm of mechanisms that will stir us into a greater hope in the things to come.

Let’s me hear from you: Please leave comments and thoughts as to how you believe you develop new knowledge…

Interactive Involvement with Media Literacy

The students of SIGHT & SOUND were presented with the opportunity of creating a radio broadcasts and today was the test pilot of the show. Students faced a few challenges logging in and hearing Boo at times or logging in to the wrong broadcast. There were adjustments that were made gradually that linked the students up with the live broadcast.  I believe that it presented the students with another means for getting their voice heard. It also served as a lesson for preparation- having a back up plan for what is plan in the case that something unexpected happens. After the test pilot, there was a meeting of the minds that occurred where students offered up suggestions to make improvements for the hour long broadcasts that will occur every Friday from 11am to 12pm.  

So don't forget to tune in every Friday on Blog Talk Radio! Search under Youth Reach Radio and Preservation to navigate your way to find the live broadcast of the show. Text, call in or text the show with your questions and offer up some support for the youth that have decided to get involved with something positive.So people I encourage you to leave posts with any thoughts or ideas/ topics that you would like to hear discussed on the show that pertain to the youth. Way to go Bobby and Christian on today's Broadcast!

And the Winner IS!

And the Winner Is!

Yesterday, the SIGHT & SOUND 2010 students were presented with a challenge to create a 5 by 5 video (5 frames that last 5 seconds each) that consisted of the following criteria:

Audience- Who is your audience? Students had to consider age, gender, education, values and interests, and current attitudes towards the message.


Message- What point are you addressing or trying to get across to the audience?

Artistic Style- What visual images and music will represent your message? Is the music conducive to the message and is related to the visual images represented in the video?

So without further ado......drum roll....the winner is.....

Watch My Shoes
______________________________________________________________________

Students 5x5 - Watch My Shoes from Preservation LINK on Vimeo.

SIGHT and SOUND & Youth Media Literacy Club

This summer I am serving as an active volunteer a few days a week with Preservation Link, Inc. in conjunction with the non-profits Sight & Sound program that is offers middle and high school students an eight week experience that offers them "opportunities to create, view, and critique documentary media." In addition students have access to El Centro College and earn 4 college credits. I will often leave post about the experiences that I encounter form the Summer Program "SIGHT & SOUND" and Youth Media Literacy Club.

Last Friday, students took an outside field trip to UT Dallas and were exposed to a university campus style atmosphere... sitting in a lecture hall, individual classrooms and auditoriums. While there, students got the chance to visit and talk with professionals and explore the many possibilities that are at their disposal.

1. Dr. Betty Pace is a professor and director of the Sickle Cell Disease Research Center (SCDRC) at the University of Texas at Dallas, spoke to the students about her involvement as a Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Researcher to seek a cure for Sickle Cell Disease, cancer and blood diseases. Students toured the SCDRC and explored the equipment used to conduct research.
2. Regina James Dorsey, who is the Resume Editor at the UT Dallas Career Center. She stressed the importance of developing a career plan early on and setting goals that will direct them on the path to obtaining the job that they want. Have a back up plan if their first choice doesn't pan out as expected. Lastly, to think of/ or set a contingency plan- a back up plan for the 'back up plan'. She encourage the students to consider all the options available to them. One thing that I really enjoyed hearing her say, was that you are never to young to think and consider what you would like to do in the future.

Students also received a tour of ATEC facility and EMAC- the following was retrieved from the schools website.

The Arts and Technology program is Texas' first comprehensive degree designed to explore and foster the convergence of computer science and engineering with creative arts and the humanities.A joint creation of the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Arts and Humanities, the Arts and Technology (ATEC) program is a collaborative effort that transcends existing disciplines and academic units.

The Emerging Media and Communication program prepares students not only to produce the media of the future, but to reflect on the impacts these digital networked technologies have on our culture. While conventional degree programs in media emphasize established media formats, EMAC integrates this traditional approach with the creation, applications and implications of emerging media. In short, the major requires both practice and theory. We are concerned not with training and teaching students about the media of yesterday, or even today, but rather how to critically think about and operate in a rapidly evolving and emerging media landscape, to be prepared for the media jobs that do not yet exist.

Student really enjoyed and appreciated this outing and I foresee even greater experience for them all in the near future.

The Dallas Museum of Art and Preservation Link

Last year the Dallas Museum of Art and Preservation Link Inc.(PLI), partnered together to display the efforts of five schools in the South Dallas/ Fair Park area of photographs that the children themselves had taken. These photographs displayed what the children deemed to be beautiful about the community that they lived in. The beautiful things that they perceived was pointedly about their community, themselves, and their culture. I commend the efforts of PLI and the insightful look that has developed in the lives of the children that have taken part in this program. Their partnership with area schools began in 2004 through a program called Point of View. This program allows the voice, that is not often heard to shine through the mainstream single minded ideas about the community as ugly and wasted area. Instead, you are allowed a glimpse of the rose growing out of the concrete. It reminds us that beauty lives everywhere...you just have to open your eyes to see it.

This year Through the Eyes of our Children- Something Beautiful

will be again located in the Mezzanine Level in at the Dallas Museum of Art. The exhibit will run from May 14-August 29, 2010. The Opening Recpetion on May 27th from 6:30pm - 8:30pm. Dallas Museum of Art, 1717 N. Harwood Street
May 27th- come out and show your support and take a closer look at something beautiful.

http://www.dallasmuseumofart.org/View/CurrentExhibitions/dma_205634 image retrieved from the DMA website.

Visual Literacy and Visual Culture

Visual Literacy & Visual Culture

We have idea of what visual literacy is, so lets get you informed about what is visual culture... Visual culture derives from the idea of our culture as a whole having changed based on the visual. We are constantly fed visual images that ultimately influence how we all live in life. It is said that visual culture began during the age of printmaking (http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Visual_culture). Early work on visual culture has been done by John Berger (Ways of Seeing, 1972). "Thus, visual images are all around and our understanding of these images is deepened by using visual culture."(from International Congress of Aesthetics 2007 “Aesthetics Bridging Cultures” : Aesthetic Understanding through Visual Culture).

For this posting, I look forward to the commentary that you have concerning the issues of visual culture and the its effects on society at large. Use some practices of visual literacy and visual thinking strategies to discern what relationships the images could possible have with one another. Remember to describe what you see, then pull out those things that are familiar to use, and then tell what meaning you derived from the placement of the images.

Reading an Image

The following are some of the basic steps in accurately reading an image.
1. Look at the image (object/sign/picture/painting/sculpture) and describe what is happening? What initial information does it provide you with?

Look at this video I made last year(2009). Or just at this image.

Describe what it is that you see?
What can you tell me about the image?
What is happening?
What emotion if any, can you perceive from the image?
How can you relate to this specific emotion?

GOING A LITTLE DEEPER
1) As you look at this image, think about what could have possibly happened before this moment was captured....take an account of the things that could have possibly happened before the situation became so tense.
2) Based on any prior experiences that you have had personally, after viewing something that has captured your attention... Do you tend to forget about it ten to fifteen minutes later or will this moment in time as it is experienced, stay with you longer? Why is that?

Preservation Link Inc

PRESERVATION LINK, Inc-This is an awesome organization that focuses on the youth in our communities. It is geared towards empowering our youth by giving them a voice. how is this done?

"Preservation LINK, Inc. creates and develops arts-in-education programs and curricula for youth. Our focus on audio/visual media allows us to design innovative and exciting opportunities for youth to develop and share thoughts and feelings about the communities in which they live, learn and play."

It is important that we give our youth a different outlook about the the things of the community that are encountered by them on a daily basis. It gives them a choice in the type of role they want to take from and use in their environment. A voice is developed by the images or ideas that they choose capture on camera, drawings/ paintings or film. This image or idea is then explored from their point of view. They give the viewers on the outside looking in a glimpse of their world and what it is that they deem to be important. GENIUS! Check them out and support them through comments, donations and taking a survey.www.preservationlink.org

Welcome...

To my readers:
My studies in graduate school at UNT Denton in museum education has been focused on the research of the constructivist learning theory that supports concepts of visual literacy and visual thinking strategies. The concepts of visual literacy, being able to read images for meaning, allows museum visitors to learn critical thinking skills that would enable higher order thinking, including interpretation and evaluation. I believe that it requires visitors to read, share and converse together in front of works of art and broaden each other's knowledge about the work and about the world. My belief is that the art museum plays a considerable role of such learning. I invite you to share your opinions about visual literacy through the posting comments...enjoy.
~Mary