digital media

by Reebee Garofalo For the last 30 or so years, I have been a popular music activist and educator. I have been asked to comment on the relevance of copyright law to community media. This fits with my own agenda for a couple of reasons: first, that music tends to get underrepresented in discussions of communication policy and media transformation (except when we want to censor it), and second, most of the copyright battles that will eventually plague all media have already happened in the music industry. We can learn a lot about the future by looking at the history of these struggles. …read more

by Lauren Bratslavsky My focus in college was on media studies and some video production on top of that, so applying to be a CTC VISTA with Media Bridges, to serve as a Youth Media Facilitator, seemed like a perfect fit. Media Bridges is a public access center in Cincinnati. They have a summer youth program and run the occasional outreach program for local schools. I was going to serve the organization by building a solid, year-round youth program. I was only a little hesitant. The job description included teaching, which I had never done, but I was ready to try. …read more

[From the blog of Raymond Varona, August 23, 2006.] Raymond Varona During the summer, most of our population was made up of kids whose primary language wasn't English and who had never used a computer before. As a result, the workshops were more like guided activities instead of real skill-building sessions since I have to literally show them, step-by-step, how to do every action (including opening files and browsing through folders). So I started off with an intro to Photoshop and gradually worked my content down to the point where my last workshop was on how to change fonts in different programs... …read more

[From the blog of Danielle Martin, 10/13/2006] Morgan Sully, developed an open DIY Digital Media Toolkit/CD-ROM, with a simple HTML start page and links to resources and free software (usually distributed on CD) to bring to sessions he did in his work with The San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender Community Center. …read more

CTC VISTA Project members, supervisers and staff represented well at this year's CTCnet National Conference in Washington DC. …read more

by Molly Szymanski Molly Symanski at KACS Last summer, I began my year as a CTCNet VISTA member in Chicago at Korean American Community Services with all the anticipation, and a bit of the idealism, that a progressive-minded college grad is destined to have. Fast-forward one year to the end of my VISTA term, and the year hadn’t gone as I originally envisioned. Of course there were positive aspects, such as the thrill of meeting new, inspiring people and the satisfaction of learning and acquiring new skills, but there were challenges as well. My youthful idealism was certainly put to the test, and I have never found more comfort in the mantra, “you learn something from every experience.” At times, the toughest challenge I faced was ‘people’ – how to motivate, connect, or effectively collaborate with them. As the lone VISTA member at a site, it can be hard to effectively navigate the cog-work of the non-profit world. Granted, these trials are not unique to the work of VISTAs, but for those that may feel a bit lost amidst the challenges of the coming year, I offer the following thoughts: Utilize your VISTA networks. As a VISTA, you’re never completely disconnected. At the beginning of the year, you’ll be added to innumerable mailing lists and discussion forums. As the year goes on, it’s easy to get wrapped up in projects at your site and forget about these networks, but don’t! Using existing networks and the people in them as a go-to resource saves you the time and frustration of having to start something from scratch. Whether you’re looking for statistics for a grant proposal or sample curricula for a youth multimedia program – sending out e-mail to one of the listservs or posting on a discussion board almost always garners a helpful response. …read more

by Colleen Kelly You would think creating a new media literacy series would be easy enough. There are enough of them out there. Thus, when I was asked as a brand new VISTA to create a new media literacy curriculum for Project: Think Different, I figured I would just quote some Noam Chomsky and maybe throw in some media statistics and get something at least presentable together. The task seemed simple. …read more

by Nettrice R. Gaskins Nettrice's Icon on MySpace Participatory culture is about the intersection of digital media tools and the ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving a variety of web-based applications to people. I use the term “participatory culture” to reference the concept of active participation or the act of sharing in the creation of ideas, versus the “passive” scenario where people can receive information but are not allowed to engage in the creation or selection. Participation also refers to the availability of sources and individuals’ ability to customize their media experience. …read more