K12 Schools Must Fill Need For Digital Media Skills
There is a new urgency to teach digital media literacy as a study finds students are taking online information for granted
The 5th grade class at Lake Elmo Elementary School in Lake Elmo, Minn. was the first to create Tel.A.Vision videos was part of the pilot programs in spring 2008.
In early March, as he addressed the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., President Obama spoke at great length of the reforms he believes will give Americans “a complete and competitive education, from the cradle up through a career.” The proposals he laid out for improving early childhood education, K12 standards and assessments, graduation rates, teacher quality and college funding will be debated for months to come by thousands of school administrators, teachers, parents and politicians. It was the voice of a single teenager, however, that helped drive the president’s messages home that day.
At the end of his speech, Obama quoted Yvonne Boroquez, a California student whose high school class recently made a video exploring the impact of the economic crisis on their dreams of higher education and professional employment.
“It was heartbreaking that a girl so full of promise was so full of worry that she and her class titled their video ‘Is Anybody Listening?’” Obama said. “I am listening. We are listening. America is listening,” the president assured Boroquez and her classmates.
Artist Adam Davis-McGee addresses students, educators, business and nonprofit leaders at the Tel.A.Vision launch event at Minnapolis North High School in October 2008.
What of the myriad young people who aren’t as far along in the life-planning process as Boroquez, students who need help identifying their dreams before they can be heard and mentored? Increasing numbers of school districts are starting the higher education drumbeat by the freshman year of high school, employing 21st-century technology such as the popular career-based software developed by Naviance to help students map their school and life journeys. But what is the first step in inspiring those teens to define and pursue their passions?
“Nothing happens without a vision,” says George Johnson, a former special education teacher and self-described “serial entrepreneur.” Johnson founded several successful technology and Internet companies in his home state of Minnesota, including Internet Broadcasting and TECHIES.com, before becoming what he calls a “vision coach” for scores of other business and community leaders. While heading up Entrevis, a company he founded that motivates adults to reach their full potential, Johnson realized he could do something similar for young people while they are still in school.
“We have a huge vision deficit in this country,” Johnson explains. “There is so much fear and negativity, especially in the media. I decided to start a movement about bringing more hope and possibility into the world, and to do it by helping kids create little three-minute visions of what they want their life to become.”
Enter Tel.A.Vision. Johnson’s free Web tool gives today’s tech-savvy youth everything they need to create and share “vision videos.” A Tel.A.Vision is essentially a highly personal montage combining a student’s written hopes and dreams with still photographs, music and computer animation—created with tools available online at www.telavision.tv.
“Tel.A.Vision could never have been done before,” Johnson says. “It took the combination of high-speed Internet access (which we now have in most schools and over 50 percent of American homes), low-cost computer storage devices, access to music and photo files, and Web 2.0 software—which means there is no software that you have to buy to make this happen. Any kid who has access to a computer and the Internet can do this.”
Several months before Tel.A.Vision’s official launch in October 2008, Johnson tested the vision video concept in the Stillwater School District, east of Minneapolis, which serves the children in his hometown of Lake Elmo, Minn.
The free online creation and sharing of personal videos instantly proved both appealing and accessible to 120 tech-savvy fifth-graders at Lake Elmo Elementary School, including Johnson’s own son, Adam. Johnson says the reaction was just as positive among the 700 middle school kids who created Tel.A.Vision videos at nearby Oak-Land Junior High.
“One of my favorite stories is about an eighth-grader who had checked out, had not completed one assignment all year,” Johnson says. “She did her Tel.A.Vision video. And what she wrote in her diary was, ‘It’s about time somebody asked us what we want.’”
