Henry Jenkins, Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program, announced the development of a new media exemplar library, and posted a link to one of the first exemplars, Cory Doctorow. Jenkins described this project as a “a library of short digital films focused around media-makers and the craft and ethical choices they face in producing and distributing their work.” He said that long-range plans are for this to be an open library where anyone can insert their work.
The exciting thing about this is that it’s an effort to provide support for media production within the school day. Henry Jenkins has been working with the MacArthur Foundation on new media literacies, and hopes this project will address some common roadblocks to media production projects faced by teachers and students:
they had no standards by which to evaluate work produced in these new and emerging media; they didn’t know enough themselves to give good advice to student media makers; the students lacked role models to help them understand future opportunities in this space; and the students were facing ethical issues that their teachers and parents didn’t really understand.
I’m anxious to see this project soar, and will be following it closely. The original impetus for me to learn more about the internet was a video project I made with a group of sixth graders about our school lunch program. Everybody loved the video, but there was nothing for us to do with it after we made it. It sits on my hard drive, unpublished because of privacy and copyright issues that I didn’t address when we made it. Guidelines for both technical and ethical concerns are sorely needed as we begin to see growing opportunities to produce new media texts with our students.
updated: Clarence Fisher posted about this today, and left a link to the New Media Exemplar Library. Good to know about that.
3 Comments
I haven’t done this yet this year, but I will send home soon a school district “Media Release Form” which I change some of the wording on so that I can put student drawings, written work, photos (they take or photos of them), video (they take or with them in it). I usually attach a letter from me stating how and why we want to publish work on the net – In six years I’ve only had one student’s parents not sign the release and she moved a week later or I think I would have gotten them to sign. The only time I ever had “Copyright” issues was when we made our video “Don’t Laugh At Me” which used the soundtrack of Peter Yarrow (from Peter, Paul and Mary) singing the song. He gave us permission, which I later learned wasn’t enough because when Apple Computer wanted to publish it on their website I had to get Permission from Sony Records and On The Rock Records – that had the copywright from the co-songwriters to sign off – I already knew the songwriters were VERY enthusiastic about us using their song. When I called each company and explained what we wanted to do and that this was a class of fourth graders that weren’t making money – they both said the same thing. “We usually charge about $25 to $250 for public service use – but for something like this we will just waive the charge completely. We give you permission.” Which I thought was way cool. Peter Yarrow emailed his permission as performer and we were all set. Hope that helps.
Brian
Brian, you correctly inferred that part of my problem was with a music soundtrack, Orinoco Flow by Enya, that is comically plays over images of my students working at a conveyor belt with the school lunches rolling off. Nice to know that I could ask forgivesness for that. But the bigger problem is that some of the kids never turned in those releases, and they are long gone. I tried editing them out of the film, but accidentally trashed the data files in iMovie, and now I have only the exported QT movie as an artifact of the project. The lunch service people loved the movie, and gave it to the director as a retirement gift. That’s something, anyway.
I know better now. I get those releases signed, and filed early in the year.
thnx for link, I watched the cory doctorow video, it was great.
I will use and promote this resource
Post a Comment