Abstract

I have been working with students for several years in collaboration with global organizations that support the UN Sustainability Goals.  This introduces my public high school students in North Carolina to issues that tend to be left out of the public school curriculum.  I teach videography/photography so our work lends itself to elevating student voices into the public commons and building democratic structures.  This work unites our young people and ties the community to a wider world view.  This global approach to local issues creates change in meaningful and tangible ways.  Included in my article is a link to student work that provides an overview of how kids from a rural town in the south can articulate and share their ideas about important issues on a global scale.

Keywords

Democracy, Voice, Student Film

Public education is a cornerstone of democracy.  Universal education for citizens ensures all people are represented in government, commerce, and the arts.  I introduce the UN Sustainability goals in order that students have a context to contemplate issues they face in their own lives and how they are reflected on a global scale.  Students create blogs that include writing, photos, videos and other media.  These media projects empower participants and enable important perspectives to develop and get shared.

My students work with 360 video, digital media, comics, screenplays, storyboards, photography, to successfully share their ideas around global issues.  Their work is in contrast to what they experience as shared by corporate/industrial entities. They become the creators instead of mere consumers of digital media around topics they care about–as well as new topics they discover together with their classmates.  This creative work is rewarding for students, educators, the local community, as well as our global collaborators.  

The goals we have covered are environmental goals, fair work and employment, equality, and farming.  I am opening up the conversation this year for students to choose whatever goal resonates.  The first step is to develop interview questions around their chosen topic and over the course of the semester they will create memes, short documentaries, screenplays, graphic novels, stills, and writing in order to probe and reveal their process of discovery in their chosen sustainability goal.  

Many might not be aware of the UN Sustainability Goals so I link the website here for further information.

In the first iteration of this novel approach in my curriculum I relied on the text Ecomedia LIteracy by Antonio Lopez (who created this essential tool/POV for viewing media literacy via the environment in toto).  This immersive approach led me to “Just Add The Environment” to each lesson, topic, and project in the Videography and Photography curriculum.  Throughout this process I learned how to incorporate such a perspective lens into my Media LIteracy Through Filmmaking program.  

Over the past few years I became familiar with the nonprofit Digital Promise Global which supported a 360 video project around local farming from diverse students who discover: 

 “Not everyone plays sports or goes to church, but everyone eats!”  

This project brought one of my students to the United Nations General Assembly in Sept 2019 Oculus viewings of his film:  Around the Same Table.  After the 360 project, we began the journey into incorporating the UN Sustainability goals and aligning with programs that were sharing classrooms across the globe.  This ability has been made possible by the normalization of Zoom (and similar) technology, and is a welcome new environment working to open students’ eyes to the wider world.  

One of the advantages of elevating student voices within a global forum is the impact students believe can be possible when they can move past their own four walls that provide both support and limits.  The connection with students from classrooms across the globe brings a human element to the internet experience.  The opportunity to talk to peers, (sometimes on streaming video) in the context of school is especially motivating and helpful for acquiring media literacy skills.

As each student creates media to represent their ideas, their comprehension of how media is used for communication increases accordingly.  Once students learn how an idea becomes a script, then becomes a video/audio production, is edited and uploaded…all of this creates a “producer/creator” mindset.  Once a student gains these production skills they will comprehend digital media messages going forward, and with that inherit the power to view and review their own communication.  Once a passive consumer is transformed into an intentional producer of media, they will be able to critically analyze messages produced by others.

One area that is sometimes difficult to navigate with my high school students is creating interest in subjects outside their experiences.  For one example, I noticed certain students balking at the idea of tying the environment into their assignments, but what makes it work is the underlying concept as laid out in Ecomedia LIteracy with the foundation:  all living things are interdependent.  This supports any subject or theme (as long as it involves humans, animals, or the natural world) included in the term:  Environment.  This is a clear victory for introducing the topic to students from every background without alienating individuals or monopolizing the conversation.  (Truly this represents a means toward building ecomedia literacy from the student perspective).

We also worked with Goal 8:  Fair Employment.  This goal is easy for students to relate to from their personal experiences, either as a working person, member of a family, and wider community with those who work.  The projects we completed for Goal 8: Sustainability Fair Employment were varied in format, genre and concepts.  Students brought their own ideas and experiences into the work that we shared globally through two venues.  

One advantage of the Media Literacy through Filmmaking program is students are able to produce from where they are: there is a project or job that works for every personality and experience level in a production environment.  Each student is able to excel at delivering their stories and ideas through a project that works for them–video, script, comic, meme and many more!

My Spring Semester students are currently working on developing their questions for documentary projects around the SDG Goals, learning how to ask questions about the topics they have chosen.  I am excited to add their projects to last Fall’s photos and videos.  Fall 2024 Student Sustainability Goals.  This group has many topics to choose from.  They are passionate about environmental issues, equality, justice, housing, and combinations.  Where do the crossovers occur when mapping space where democracy and media literacy connect local communities to global concerns?  Will student created work resonate with their peers in class and on the internet?  We will find out again this spring as we follow the Ciena Challenge and submit this year’s work to the Challenge Grant set up by Digital Promise which we have participated in the previous two years.Stay tuned for more student work as well as the ongoing project and check out the last Challenge Project we are building in our program:  DeGette’s Memory Lab which is a preservation project for the community.