Your Name and Title: Gregg Witkin, Adobe Youth Voices Lead Educator
School or Organization Name: Boynton Alternative High School (San Jose, California)
Co-Presenter Name(s):None
Area of the World from Which You Will Present: San Jose, California
Language in Which You Will Present: English
Target Audience(s): Educators interested in bringing youth media to the alternative educational setting.
Short Session Description (one line):A discussion on the steps to involve at-risk students in youth media, engage in globally relevant projects and unique challenges involved.
Full Session Description (as long as you would like):
A focus of the presentation will be that engaging at-risk youth in social media will help expand their world view. Many at-risk teenagers do not look beyond their own community (sometimes beyond their own street) and so a feature of this presentation will be that by engaging at-risk youth in purposeful media it will allow educators and schools to take the next step (whether through Adobe Youth Voices, iEarn, or ePals) to develop gloabal collaborations based on similar themes and/or activities.
Given the proliferation of technology and file sharing software (like yousendit.com, dropbox, etc) educators can share files (footage, voice overs, music, interviews) to be used in global collaborative projects that share a common theme.
The most important part is to get these at-risk students engaged, listening and thinking beyond their microscopic viewpoints. I have been involved in at-risk education for 15 years and much of what I have seen or experienced focuses on traditional stuents. More and more of our students are becoming non traditional so this forum would be a great way for us in a global at-risk community of teens to open a dialogue to find ways to bring about positive change both locally and globally.
This session will delve into the at-risk educational setting and focus on the inclusion of the creation of high quality youth media projects in the curriculum. Our at-risk teens are large consumers of media but spend little to none of their time actually creating meaningful media that highlights their point of view, beliefs, and desires. I will attempt to help lay a groundwork for the successful implementation of a youth media component in an at-risk setting in order to help educators and at-risk teens create with purpose and engage in a higher level of media literacy.
Replies
Hi Gayle,
Thank you for your feedback. Hopefully in this message I can better describe how getting at-risk youth involved in media will foster better global partnerships and collaboration between educators and schools.
While I would love to have another language involved I do not speak another language nor do I have a partner that I could round up quickly to add to this presentation.
A focus of the presentation will be that engaging at-risk youth in social media will help expand their world view. Many at-risk teenagers do not look beyond their own community (sometimes beyond their own street) and so a feature of this presentation will be that by engaging at-risk youth in purposeful media it will allow educators and schools to take the next step (whether through Adobe Youth Voices, iEarn, or ePals) to develop gloabal collaborations based on similar themes and/or activities.
Given the proliferation of technology and file sharing software (like yousendit.com, dropbox, etc) educators can share files (footage, voice overs, music, interviews) to be used in global collaborative projects that share a common theme.
The most important part is to get these at-risk students engaged, listening and thinking beyond their microscopic viewpoints. I have been involved in at-risk education for 15 years and much of what I have seen or experienced focuses on traditional stuents. More and more of our students are becoming non traditional so this forum would be a great way for us in a global at-risk community of teens to open a dialogue to find ways to bring about positive change both locally and globally.
I hope this is what you were thinking.
Gregg