Sun 19 Nov 2006
We’re working on a collaborative moviemaking project using video blogs this semester across two sections of a course titled, “Foundations of Image and Sound Production.”
The video above is the second video on The A Team blog. Learn more about this project.
In mid-December, I’ll create two final videos out of the material we have to post on each of The A Team and B Team blogs.
To subscribe, visit The A Team RSS feed and The B Team RSS feed.
Sun 19 Nov 2006
Slide from Felicia Sullivan’s Community Media 2.0 presentation
I was asked to present the keynote at the Alliance for Community Media NorthEast Region conference this past Friday. I had some pretty big shoes to fill because Josh Silver, the Executive Director of Free Press, was supposed to be the speaker but couldn’t make it.
I titled my talk, “Our Viewers Know More Than We Do: PEG Access TV in a Participatory Culture,” after Dan Gillmor’s famous quote, found on the Center for Citizen Media site.
Not sure if the PowerPoint presentation I created for the talk is that useful without audio or video to go along with it, but I’ve made it available anyways for download here.
The purpose of my talk was to try and persuade a room full of PEG access TV folks to learn to embrace online participatory tools like blogging, podcasting, videoblogging and other the innovative uses of technology happening in access to connect and empower their communities - not just to connect their channels to their communities, but to connect their communities to the world.
I think this idea may have gotten through to some folks in the audience. And I know that it definitely put some other people to sleep . . . but, that’ll happen : )
I enjoyed sharing some of the things that I’ve learned and experienced over the past year, as many have been working hard to share their knowledge and vision about how to move forward, collaborate, and find our way together using the Internet as a platform for collective distribution.
I’d like to thank the folks at the ACM-NE Region again for giving me the opportunity to be there.
Sun 19 Nov 2006
Inspired by a number of recent events this past week, including:
1. Jay Rosen’s talk at the Berkman Center on Open Source Journalism (and Steve Garfield’s excellent interview with Jay),
2. Rebecca MacKinnon’s exploration into Journalism Education and the Internet, and
3. The CIS Presents podcast with Holmes Wilson,
I wanted to consider these conversations in relation to today’s NYTimes Public Editor piece titled, “Breaking News: Can Times Quality Be Preserved Online?”
Byron Calame talks about the challenges facing mainstream news organizations like The Times and their ability to deliver breaking news online with speed, accuracy, and completeness. He writes,
“These new constant and quickly evolving demands call for a new mind-set in the newsroom that could help determine the paper’s future in the world of instant information. So how is The Times handling this?”
He then takes a closer look at how the The Times is handling this and helps to provide a picture of what Rebecca MacKinnon’s students and future journalists may be faced with as they graduate into a world of fast-paced reporting for the web.
But what if we stopped to consider this challenge in the context of a rapidly evolving participatory knowledge-venting culture? A culture where Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia “is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most articles to be changed by almost anyone with access to the Web site.”
In Steve Garfield’s interview, Jay Rosen asks
“What if we asked lots of people to help us to get an answer to a single question or report a single story? Could we do it?”
Might this be another path towards delivering news as it breaks on the web? Would it be so terrible for the The Times to ask their readers for help? Could we - the people and mainstream news outlets - do it together? What might this look like? These are some of the questions that Jay Rosen’s NewAssigment.net and other citizen journalism related sites and projects are asking.
(More on the challenges facing The Times) Calame writes
“As top editors ponder how best to deliver the full range of Times articles to the Web 24 hours a day, it seems clear to me that the reporters nailing down important breaking news stories on their beat will continue to need some time to report and think.”
Could The Times at least experiment with creating a citizen journalism forum on their website to allow readers to contribute information as their beat reporters take this time “to report and think”?
While mainstream news outlets are reporting and thinking, citizen journalists are also reporting and thinking. And if some reporters are searching blogs for answers to important questions, why not ask their employers to provide spaces on their sites to help them find answers to these questions?
Like educators learning how to use new media tools in the classroom (as Rebecca MacKinnon discussed), could mainstream news outlets become open to the idea of a participatory digital newsgathering process? Is there room in J-school curricula to begin exploring what this world might look like?
Whether it’s in the classroom or in a mainstream news outlet, opening ourselves up to a little experimentation - and trust - may reveal some exciting surprises. It might also allow others, who already have a voice in our participatory culture, to contribute to something larger than they have, and they are, on their individual digital publishing spaces.
Thu 16 Nov 2006
A few weeks ago, I blogged about my talk at Bentley college. Mark Frydenberg has made the audio available for download on the CIS Presents Podcast.
But, what’s way cooler than that is Holmes Wilson’s talk on “Digital News” which is also available for download.
You can subscribe to the RSS feed here.
Tue 14 Nov 2006
There’s an all day Drupal Admin Bootcamp happening over at CCTV on December 10. From the website:
“Drupal is the open source content management of choice for many website designers, including our operations here at Cambridge Community Television. Blogs, forums, RSS syndication, e-commerce, audio and video, user management and more are built into this sophisticated CMS and is fast becoming a new standard for community site applications. CCTV has teamed up with Moshe Weitzman, a major contributor to the Drupal project, to provide web admins with high quality professional instruction in this special one-day intensive training.”
Another great example of the innovative uses of technology taking place in community media.
Tue 14 Nov 2006
Rebecca MacKinnon’s at the Berkman Center right now inviting comments from those in the room and out in cyberspace on “how best do we engage a class when the goal is to [give] students a clear undestanding [between] doing journalism and doing journalism on the web.”
“How do you do that journalism in new ways, to teach yourself new tools and think innovatively and not be afraid of learning new things?”
She also mentioned that “people in news organizations are training in web 1.0 and they don’t have a clear understanding of RSS and other new media tools.” There is a disconnect between what’s happening on sites like YouTube and news organization’s websites.
“There is a demand [at news organizations] for people who are really fluent in 2.0 not just 1.0.”
The biggest disconnect is between what you can teach and what happens when you work for an organization . . . same kind of constraints, “as a journalist, how can you do creative things within those constaints”.
Comments from the room led to a sense that figuring out how students can experiment is key to teaching new media and journalism.
Both the audio and video from today’s luncheon will be available later at MediaBerkman.
Mon 13 Nov 2006
There’s an exciting workshop happening next Tuesday (11/21) titled, “Social Software for Teaching and Learning: Insight for Early Adopters”. The website is here.
Rebecca Nesson from Harvard and Eric Gordon from Emerson College are both presenting. Unfortunately, I can’t be there but I’m looking forward to hearing more about it following the event.
Thu 9 Nov 2006
Photo by Justin Francese from “Video Installation for Timberland“
I met Justin at the ACME 2006 Summit in Burlington, VT. He was a rockstar, covering many, many workshops both audio and video from the conference for the podcast. We hit it off after discovering we had a few things in common, including similar academic and activist interests.
As I’ve said before on this blog, artists open to sharing skills and knowledge, particularly during the process have my vote. I’m a big fan, because it’s both inspring and exciting to follow along as artists share their work in real-time. Justin’s one of these folks and I’m glad to have met him.
So, check out his work . . . it’s solid.
Mon 6 Nov 2006
The first video for Community Media in Transition is up. It’s a short video with Ben Sheldon on Mapping Access. I’ll be posting our entire conversation as an audio podcast soon.
Fri 3 Nov 2006
“Media Matters” at UMass Boston
On Wednesday, Danielle and I presented a workshop at UMass Boston titled, “Blogs: The 5th Estate: Opening The Gates For Diverse Perspectives” at the Media Matters: Writing Conference for High School Teachers and Teens.
The conference was sponsored by The Boston Globe, UMass Boston, Project: Think Different, and WriteBoston.
We had a great discussion about citizen media and how students and teachers of journalism could use blogging, podcasting, and videoblogging inside and outside the classroom to enhance learning.
We also played a few minutes of the CCTV’s Project Documentary video, “Citizen Journalism: From Pamphlet to Blog” available over at blip.tv.
Danielle posted notes from our workshop on the ACMEBoston blog here and here. You can also check out the lovely presenter gifts we received on her blog here.
