Media Smart Day Unveiled

Well, the cat is out of the bag! We’ve been working hard on a pilot project through our non-profit Generation Y with Cable in the Classroom called Media Smart Day. We have seven pilot schools in New York, Washington, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut participating.

The concept is that students take a leading role in learning and teaching about how media plays a role in their lives and education. Media Smart Day was conceived as a single day planned and run by students at their own school. By focusing on a single day, special events can take place without changing curriculum or convincing teachers who may be reluctant technology users to take part. Empowered students are incredible evangelists for informed use of media and technology in education.

In each of the seven pilot schools, students have planned and organized a Media Smart Day that will take place this week or next, or right after school begins again in January. Each school is doing things a little differently, but it is all student created. Students have planned everything, including assemblies, activities, workshops, presentations, parent and community outreach and contests. They’ve drawn in their peers, younger students, teachers, parents and community. And of course, they’ve transformed it with amazing ideas of their own.

The first pilot Media Smart Day was last week at Northern Lebanon High School in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

Northern Lebanon goes high-tech for ‘Media’ day (article from the Lebanon Daily News.)

As Brett Bicksler demonstrated to his fellow students how a Nintendo Wii can be use in the classroom, another student, Mark Thompson, filmed him from the corner of the room. Bicksler and Thompson are two of 15 students from Northern Lebanon High School selected to educate other students, as well as faculty members, on varying forms of media during Media Smart Day.

The goal of this pilot is to learn what works (and doesn’t work) in creating a Media Smart Day. We started the pilot with a suite of Web 2.0 collaboration and networking tools, templates, resources and a few pre-conceived notions. Some have proven useful, others less so. We still have quite a bit of work to do collecting our data and working with everyone involved to make this replicable and self-supporting. The eventual goal is that these lessons learned can be used by any school or local cable operator wanting to create their own Media Smart Day.

Participation of the local cable operators has been tremendous. Cable in the Classroom is the national education foundation of the U.S. cable industry, and represents the collective desire of local cable operators to advocate for “… visionary, sensible and effective use of media in homes, schools, and communities.” On a local level, though, many cable operators are eager to help, but might not know exactly what to do. Supporting a Media Smart Day is a win-win for local schools and local cable companies, giving them a positive focus and great media opportunities to share with the whole community.

What’s been proven so far is that (not surprisingly) the students have exceeded expectations with their enthusiasm, creativity, and organizational skills. We deliberately did NOT provide a checklist of “Media Smart Day activities”. It’s a good thing, because we could not have imagined the fabulous ideas they have come up with.

Next week, I’ll be traveling to visit three more Media Smart Days. Stay tuned!

Sylvia