Recently in web development Category

Can "Digital Hollywood" support education & innovation? Opportunities, obstacles, and missing conversations

I recently attended Digital Hollywood, a digital media trade conference in Los Angeles for executives in the film, television, computer, music, and telecommunications fields. As a Ph.D. student in Communication at USC Annenberg, I attended four panels relevant to my research interests in children and media. These panels were organized around the following themes: immersive touchscreen media, mobile apps, crossmedia content reinvention, and one specifically on children in the digital space (of which Joan Ganz Cooney Center's Ann My Thai and PBS Kids' Sara DeWitt were panelists).

There was a wide range of conversation topics between the different panels, far too many for a single blog post. However, my main purpose in attending was to hone in on this question: In what ways can we meaningfully leverage the technological innovation driven by profit in Hollywood into creating deep-learning digital experiences in informal and formal education for children?

My single day at the conference (Me: "Sorry, I'd attend your panel on Tuesday morning but I have stats class at 9AM.") brought up some evocative questions, as well as some perennial frustrations. I would divide my takeaways into three categories: opportunities, obstacles, and those issues for which an in-depth discussion was unfortunately missing.

VIP Online Film Festival - Participatory Youth Media

Before coming to CMS and NML, I was a youth media educator in several schools in New York City. Before that, I worked with an awesome organization called Listen Up!. They've been working to network and strengthen the youth media field for around 10 years now. One of their newest contributions to the field is the Very Important Producer Online Film Festival. Unlike a traditional film festival, everything takes place online and the majority of the awards are judged by the viewers. It is a great example of the participatory culture we champion here at NML. Below is an interview with the Creative Director, Austin Haeberle, about what VIP2008 is and what makes it unique from other film festivals.

"Son of Fandom": Criticism?

Here's a news bulletin for anyone who works in youth media--if you missed Son of Rambow during its brief theatrical run earlier this year, I urge you to catch it in its DVD incarnation, which was released at the end of August.

While broadly speaking the premise of this 1980s-era comedy is nothing new--misfit school kids team up to produce a work of popular entertainment--and it certainly doesn't feature "new media," Son of Rambow is nonetheless notable on several levels. That's because writer-director Garth Jennings (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) has mined his own experiences as a teen video auteur to produce a work that's not only authentic-feeling down to its core, but also speaks to the vital relationship between being a fan and being a creator that informs so much student work in so many media today. Inspired by the original Stallone vehicle First Blood (1982), two English schoolboys produce (and eventually "market") their own highly unauthorized sequel. Along the way, issues of content appropriation (of story, situation, and character) and the ethics of collaboration itself are touched upon, even if only implicitly. Also interesting is the portrayal of how, in bygone times, student media production was an activity that stood, as if by definition, as antithetical to the K-12 environment; in one key scene a flying dog (don't ask) shatters a schoolhouse window and interrupts a teacher who's busy trimming his nose hair: if there's a more perfect metaphor for academia's self-absorption being shattered by the boldness of student creativity, I'm unaware of it. In other words, let's all be glad that Son of Rambow is a period piece in more ways than one.