Shaping Youth BETA BLOG

Calling all social media wünderkind, changebloggers, and humanitarian twitterati and digerati of the millennial set (yes, this means you, Alex Steed) there’s ‘gold in them thar’ hills!’ (ok, that phrase comes from either a Yosemite Sam cartoon or a cowboy parody, but either way, it shows it’s in my lexicon, revealing I’m WAY too old to apply!)

HASTAC (pronounced Haystack, as in ‘needle in the…’) and the MacArthur Foundation (Digital Media and Learning Competition) launched a brand new category for 18-25 year old young minds eager to use new forms of collaborative thinking that advance the human condition…The Young Innovators Awards.

Since I’ve floated this to plenty of smart digital wizards in my own youth arena with energetic zeal and been met with a shrug, I decided to distill their criteria into a palatable snapshot…a “DML Cliff Notes” version, at a glance.

This is for all those bright minds who answered my nudge to apply with, “too much paper pushing, I’ll never get it, no time, lots of work for a mini-grant, no partner for the internship yet, and I can’t even tell if I qualify it’s so confusing.” —Okay, ready? (more…)

“Neither left, nor right, but forward” is my ‘mama-media’ mantra in trying to impart the critical thinking skills necessary to make sense of historic election hoopla on all sides of the campaign circus.

As media trots out all the historic ‘firsts’ (first black, first female, first youth civic engagement en masse) the filters and niche-marketed spins make many eyes roll skyward, especially among those of us in the non-partisan realm.

How can we help kids to question assumptions and ’stage-crafting’ when fun digital magic of Web 2.0 allows us to add our OWN name candidacy in believable bumper-sticker mode? What is ‘real?’ Or is it EVER?

With virtual petitioning ‘in-world’, mock-classroom elections, using mobile to mobilize, Scholastic Kid Reporters blogging, Nickelodeon kids voting, GovTweets twittering, and Facebook “widgets, and buttons and apps, oh, my!” it’s useful for folding into our “collective knowledge depository” as dear digital genius and pal Doug Engelbart might say. But sorting out the dynamics is another task!

Thankfully, colleague Frank Baker is helping educators and kids alike do just that, with his jam-packed link list of helpful resources compiled on his site, Media Literacy Clearinghouse. Frank Baker also has a fabulous article in this month’s Cable In The Classroom magazine called, “Lights, Camera, Debate: How to Watch the Presidential Debates from a Media Literacy Perspective.” (more…)

“Sometimes all it takes is a stroke of a pen. A beautiful film by Alonso Alvarez Barreda.”

This was the caption for the amazing video I received via Facebook from my NextNow collaboratory friend and founder Bill Daul…And in my overloaded chaos I might have missed it if he hadn’t added, “worth 5 minutes of your time, I promise. Trust me.”

Unbeknownst to me, Historia de un Letrero (Story of a Sign) won the National Film Board’s 2008 Online Cannes Competition where 650 filmmakers from 40 countries submitted their work. And yes, it is MORE than worthy. Word of mouth, trust, and online community trumps generic mainstream media critiques every time.

In this age of conversation, the pivotal role of social media networks in leveraging personal connections is profound. It literally determines what does and doesn’t get seen or supported. If my dear friend Bill hadn’t sent me that link and note, it may have been years before it hit my radar. Instead, I was so moved, captivated, and inspired by it, that I must’ve hit ‘replay’ at least three times in the hour.

Alonso Alvarez Barreda, you have reinforced my very purpose here at Shaping Youth…to remind people that words DO count, marketing CAN be meaningful, and we can USE the power of media for positive change! Encore!

9-4: Hurry! Ends today in San Francisco! Hold it Over!

Teens and tweens have heard more raw verbiage on school grounds in any given day than Eve Ensler’s little snippet in America the Beautiful that garnered the documentary an ‘R’ rating. (trailer here)

That ‘R’ is for the reform needed in movie ratings, since even the most graphic visuals of plastic surgery could have shown on ER or CSI prime time on any given night. So this film IS an ‘R’ for recommend, based on its ‘behind the scenes’ peek at the damage to kids alone. (Realize I’ve posted that here and here, so this is the ‘action steps’ phase, with an ‘R’ for riled.)

The ‘R’ is also for Roberts, the film’s Director, for ‘really long’ (see interview) and for ‘roundup’ of theatre showings opening this week in Portland and Dallas. (Darryl Roberts is shown here with the film’s leading lady, Gerren Taylor who hit the runways at 12 and is now a hotshot 6 ft. tall volleyball player senior in high school in Santa Monica, age 18)

‘R’ is also for removal of Revlon from your cosmetics routine (if it was ever in there) due to their ongoing bait and switch tactics to give lip-service to carcinogens in cosmetics associated with breast cancer. And then there’s the letter ‘V’ that, um, …got them the ‘R’ in the first place…;-) (more…)

Seems everyone is in L.A. for the Virtual Worlds Expo except me right now, with e-mails and schmooze plans flinging back and forth like a gamer leader board.

No, gang, I can’t make it to dinner, but yes, I DO wish someone would crosspost some of these fly-on-the-wall conversations on Utterz as I’m sure key connections will transpire and I want to track anyone using innovation for education or championing positive change.

Looking at the 150 list and links to all the sites on the schedule, I’m particularly eager to hear more about EduSim, (free, 3D, open-source, multi-user collaborative learning) Me2 which is a virtual universe that literally ties play/points to how much kids get moving offline (requires a purchasable gizmo) and Elf Island which I first heard about via Izzy Neis here and now here, which holds considerable promise in Gaming for Good (TM), with kids helping in the real world, and online to offline positive practices. (more…)

Aw, crud, it’s ‘Blog Day’ and I might have missed it!

Like a Hallmark Holiday that shanghais the buyer into feeling like they’ve missed an occasion of importance, (Heads up! Grandparents’ Day is Sept. 7th this year folks; supposedly always the first Sunday after Labor Day unbeknownst to all but the marketing machine perpetuating it!) I’m sheepishly hanging my head and drumming my fingers thinking I have an hour left to post something original and get in on the fun…

Always a sucker for a deadline, I’m both challenged and bemused at the mere concept of trying to find “5 different types of blogs” to expand my cultural consciousness and open my point of view and attitude in a sea of Google Reader bookmarks that has me gasping for air regularly in ‘tmi’ mode.

Based on Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Joe Hungler’s ever-so-thorough post and Britt Bravo’s Have Fun, Do Good food finds and photo picks, I’ll bite….And ATTEMPT to toss out five blogs real fast before the clock strikes midnight and Cinderella turns into, oh, idk,…Robert Scoble or something. Ok, here goes: (more…)