Macarthur-telconf-12-05-06
(this page was HERE).
andrew, Steve Wilmarth, jennifer and john from project harmony
Andrew spoke about what he's been working on, Jennifer and John and project harmon and sty a little bit there.
He is talking about some of his thoughts about where he would like see things going.
Steve Wilmarth's comments:
Julie Dobrow (Director and Professor at the Communications and Media Studies Program at Tufts University), Steve Cohen (Lecturer in Education/American Studies at Tufts University. Steve has been a Program Associate with Facing History and Ourselves for two decades and written articles about teaching controversial issues like Vietnam, the dropping of the Atomic Bomb, and the Holocaust.) and Steve Wilmarth are talking about conducting a summer workshop for teachers to strengthen teachers' competencies to work with new media technologies.
"We don't like the idea of practicing democracy in our schools or letting in the outside world. these are real challenges. Students are fully prepared emotionally and intellectually to use the new media formats, but the institutions of learning even at the university level, are not quite ready for it," according to Wilmarth.
Andrew: Doing peer-led workshops for teachers out of their public access center. He is working with Arts and Education for the capital District. He works with M&N Youth Channel based out of the public access Tv station in manhattan, do 17 hours a week of youth programming streamed live adn curriculum development around media literacy for peer-lead workshops. Trainers do four workshops a month in schools all over NYC and distribute that curriculum for free online. The third thing he does is he works on an online way to distribute user-produced video content.
Aldon: The kids are ready but the system isn't. What we should be doing. Kids developing the curriculum and creating 21st century skills. Andrew is talking about peer-lead curriculum. if the kids are ready and the system isn't then it is time for kids to start doing some of the teaching themselves.
Aldon: Need to build up the network as an online set of connections, which is some of what project harmony has done and is some of waht teh youth channel has done. tart bringing to gether Youth Channel, project harmony, 21st Century skills. use an online set of forum tools to do the unconference part of the planning. Do the sorting out what is going to happen in advance.
The traditional people would see a couple of weeks before, here is the program for the conference.
Andrew: Solves the problem of people coming from different places and how to make it really effective. But even the unconference planning aspect, ideally there would be youth involved in that who wouldn't be accustomed to the unconference process. Highly collaborative and inclusive.
Shawn: Never participated in any open space or conference. Gets the idea of collaborative, inclusive experience. What he's not clear of is how is the goal defined?
Aldon: He was just at RootCamp in DC and it was an unconferenced centered around debbriefing what happened in the 2006 midterm elections. It had a general goal -- to debrief and share experiences. What can be learned form it. With that a Media Giraffe 2007 unconference on youth and digital media can be defined in terms of something like learning from one another. As people start sharing it goes from there. Aldon has never dealt with foundations. He's not sure about having something quite that loose.
Jen: Her concern is you have to think about outcomes and the think about Open Space is the outcomes aren't determined until the end. On the other hand if you have foundations aware of htese issues you could come to some common ground and maybe what project Harmony did like the media project.
Jen: We need the idea of a multiplier effect.
Aldon: Learning how to use digital media in a learning environment is a good outcome. Another would be better connection between players in a digital learning environment. That leads to an action plan because as the people will connect part of the outcome will be a desire to further these connections. that's a multiplier.
Andrew: Another multiplier would be building into what get's support, building in sort of post-conference activities where people involved, be they adults or youth have an obligation to launch mini-conferences. There is an expctation that the conference continues and breaks out into mini-conferences and people take it back with them.
Andrew: Teachers and students are on entirely different plains.
Stephen: Back to point of it being a collaborative enterprise. It is difficult to get this many people in any point of time together in the course of a week but if we can do it regularly. once we begin to understand at some point we ought to have students engaged and bring them into the discussion. Their voice is a critical one and would add credibility to what we want to do.
Andrew: They have youth on staff. they would bring them in. He has the thought of bringing together who would not normally come together. That is a really key thought. We should try to, if we're thinking about post conferences, think about that same concept that echos in the post-conference activities. In NYC there are all sorts of people who never come together. He's thinking of journalism and education spheres.
Jennifer agrees to write a wiki page about how to put the grant application together. She wants to know how much money are we talking about. She agrees to do this.
Here is the grant-writing page.
Bill: Are we talking about a conference and a couple of months of learning lead up for kids and then post conference facilities?
Andrew: Yes, focusing on a three month or six-month process.
Bill: Start, finish. Are we talking about $50,000 to $100,000.
Jenn: But follow-on stuff would really wow the funder.
Steve is running a one-day event at the Hartford Convention Center which is going to cost $20,000.
Andrew: Each organization might come up with a list of needs.
Discussion about how expensive food is and how to get around that with box lunch and other options. It requires aggressive outreach and following.
Discussion about collaborative planning.
Next phone call, Tues., Dec. 12, 8:30 p.m.
Number to call: 1-641-985-1000 access code 132888#
Call adjourned about 9:50 p.m.
