This interview with Denise Jennings who teaches an interesting class in Oakland Unified School District. She teaches the class through Peralta College to high school students who are concurrently enrolled. She has a unique position to view the digital arts.

(PM) Denise thanks for agreeing to the interview.

(DJ) You are welcome.

(PM) Tell me a little about what you do.

(DJ) That's a hard one! (laughing). In addition to being the Bay Area DASP (Digital Art Studio Partnership) coordinator I run a program called Youth Media in Oakland (www.youth-media.org/projects). It is a community project in conjunction with Oakland school district. I also teach two classes in digital media at Oakland schools, or actually through Peralta Community College District.

(PM) Wow. Tell me a bit about Youth Media. Is it like Listen Up in NYC?

(DJ) Well to the degree that we can compare ourselves to Listen UP. We are part of the Listen UP network. Our mission at Youth Media is to help educators, youth service providers and youth use digital media and television production as essential learning tools. What that means is we work with teachers and students to give them skills and confidence to use media in all of their projects. We think digital media is education.

(PM) And you teach students at Peralta? High School students?

(DJ) well teachers and students. I teach the introduction Media 104 Beginning Digital Video Production for Broadcast Media to students who are concurrently enrolled in Peralta and through Oakland USD.

(PM) What are the objectives of that class?

(DJ) We take the skills students learn from producing live-television shows, video documentaries and websites along with visual literacy and help them develop critical thinking skills that increase their overall learning ability. Our objectives are to get students to:

- Become highly-motivated learners
< - Develop self-respect and respect for others
- Develop confidence in their ability to learn
- Learn to express abstract ideas and concepts clearly and effectively
- Develop cooperative learning and team-working skills
- Discover how written and spoken language and visual images operate as communication systems

(PM) In the survey instrument I asked about the objectives slightly differently. I us the following categories to describe the objectives:

a. Vocational-career/professional preparation
b. College Prep- academic preparation
c. Fulfill Visual or Performing Arts Req.
d. Provide students with means to express themselves

and you marked to provide vocational Ðcareer and provide students with a means to express themselves. So I take it the classes as you see them are more career Ed tech than VAPA oriented.

(DJ) Right. I use the Career Ed Tech Standards in that class. So the class gives high school and college credit to students. So what we do is get students to act as professional as possible. The course is very project oriented. They have to complete a video project. In the process of doing that they learn skills and self-expression as well.

(PM) What happens to the work? Is it shown anywhere?

(DJ) Yeah. We air the work of students on the district television station and also enter the work into showcases and festivals.

(PM) Is it important to do that?

(DJ) Yes. The students learn they have something to say and there is a validation in seeing your work on television even if it is a district show. I think for my students many of whom have challenging backgrounds it is very important that their ideas are validated. It helps them continue to want to express themselves. It's interesting in that they have to write scripts so the productions can be completed. I doubt the quality of the writing would be as high if all they did was write questions or conduct interviews in the written medium. Somehow seeing their work on screen is bigger than life. They know they have to sound intelligent or the video turns out not to be very good.

(PM) What about the teacher's class?

(DJ) We certainly understand the challenges teachers face in the classroom. Many students are visual learners or they have compromised English proficiency. Digital media is a way into to the student's world. Teachers can engage a student at a hands-on level and then the student will learn language arts skills through doing the work. We teach teachers how to do that. We try and give teachers tools to use visual language and digital media to enhance curriculum and engage students in learning.

The professional development workshops include:

- Live television production
- Video Documentary production
- Website Development
- Aesthetics and Visual Literacy
- Working with media professionals in your classroom

(PM) Where is it taught?

(DJ) It is a Laney College class and is taught at an Oakland USD computer lab so the student teachers will get a chance to use digital media in the classroom setting and see how to deal with issues and problems in a real classroom.

(PM) Can you tell me what standards you utilize in the student's classes?

(DJ) Well it is a college level class so it is not completely aligned with K-12 standards. What we do is get teachers comfortable with the Career Tech Ed standards. The teachers learn how to build lesson plans around them and so forth. It's like any other methods class except it is more grounded in practice than theory.

(PM) Do you think the collaboration with Peralta is a model that other schools can utilize?

(DJ)

(PM) What other improvements would like to see made in the digital media arts in education?

(DJ) Well to start we need more classes to be taught. If it can be done inside schools within a school day fine, but if it can't we need to look for models that work outside of that. Secondly, we need to provide teachers with the where-with all to use the tools that they might have or to know what equipment to ask for. So that means more continuing education classes. Perhaps the most important thing is to teach digital literacy to elementary school children.

(PM) How so?

(DJ) Well students need to have a good foundation in what digital media is because as they grow older the technology will change but the concepts do not. If they know how to find information, interpret information and data, learn how to express themselves well, then no matter what kind of machine they will be dealing with will make sense to them. If they do not get used to dealing with digital in school the only applications they will know are those based in their life as a consumer. That usage is platform dependent; that they can only retrieve data in the form the sender sends it.