Five Octobers ago, I gave a Saturday workshop for our Sacramento Educational Cable Consortium (SECC) on A Case for Filmmaking in the Classroom. On October 20, I’ll join SECC videographer Doug Niva at the Alliance for Community Media’s Regional Conference: Merging Local Voices and Digital Technology.  Our session is on …. A Case for Filmmaking [...]

“To fulfill the promise of digital citizenship, Americans must acquire multimedia communication skills that include the ability to compose messages using language, graphic design, images, and sound, and know how to use these skills to engage in the civic life of their communities.” ~Renee Hobbs As we head into the New Year, it is exciting [...]

I was there – at the Sacramento Board of Directors – on Wednesday, joining other concerned educators and citizens in a last minute effort to save one of Sacramento’s primo science programs:  Splash. Thanks to Splash, thousands of elementary, middle, and high school students have explored life in Sacramento’s streams and, in the process, have [...]

One year later, I have another argument to add to my July 2009  Case for Filmmaking in the Classroom post: Filmmaking empowers students. In May I watched a  team of Lesley McKillop’s students (see argument #6 in last year’s post) once again step onto the stage and into the limelight to accept a 2010 SEVA [...]

How do we bring administrators on board with 21st century possibilities for teaching and learning? This question has been on my mind since Wednesday, when a colleague shared with me that her principal came to her classroom while she was embarking on a movie making project with her class.  In front of the students, he [...]

I walked away from media teacher  Vernon Bisho’s Thursday night SEVA session Understand > Care > Feel > Learn with a whole new understanding of the art of creative non-fiction writing for video.  Vernon provides his high school students with the scaffolding needed to produce award-winning entries.  But his program could easily be adapted to [...]

One of the best things about heading into 2010 is the opportunity to follow Rudy Alfonso and his 5th graders as they continue their journey into the art and process of filmmaking. If you haven’t visited his EETT & Making Movies blog, I recommend starting with the First Entry (from October) and working your way [...]

The single most important part of telling a good story is asking throughout the entire process: ‘What is the story all about?’”  Bryan Shadden, KVIE I look forward to our regional (Sacramento)  SEVA Trainings for Teachers series. Saturday’s event was an opportunity to learn about Tips for Building a Documentary, a session lead by KVIE [...]

This year I’ve decided to add Photo Story 3 to my workshop offerings.  I don’t know why I’ve waited so long to introduce teachers and students to this extremely user-friendly program.  For a number of reasons (and I’ll limit myself to five), it’s a great beginning step into filmmaking and the art of digital storytelling. [...]

I’ve known Glen Bledsoe for about eight years, through our mutual association with the National Writing Project. Whenever I have the opportunity to participate in one of his workshops, poster sessions, or panel discussions, I am blown away by both the brilliance of his observations on teaching and learning and the innovative ways he molds [...]