by Dannie Delvos, BAVC Education Recruiter

The second installment of ROHSTOFF [raw material] is almost here and BAVC’s San Francisco office is buzzing with excitement: walls are being painted, artists are working in the labs, the audio suite, the sound booth, and the innovation lab. The new flat screen TV in the lobby is being installed and artwork hung on the walls.

This Thursday, 5/15/08, from 6-8PM six Bay Area artists will present their latest video pieces, all united under the theme “Site Specific.” Rebeca Bollinger and Anthony Discenza teamed up and created a piece using BAVC’s resources over the past few weeks. Their video is also accompanied by a an installation of 22 frames in BAVC’s hallway. Visitors will be able to get very intimate with this piece, which will be shown in BAVC’s smallest room: the sound booth.

Brook Hinton is using an entire lab for his video installation “Coalesce,” which has the BAVC reception area at its center. From there the eleven monitors in the lab will take the viewer on a journey through the facility – forwards and back. In his piece, Brook is playing with” ideas of presence and impermanence within fixed physical and unmoored temporal spaces.”

Laura Splan, who resides in New York City and can unfortunately not attend the opening, has two pieces in this show. The 1998 “Order/Disorder,” which was produced at BAVC and explores “concepts of normal and abnormal, order and disorder as they are influenced by media, culture, and biotechnology.” Laura will also exhibit her latest piece “Qualitative Analysis.” Created ten years after “Order/Disorder,” this new video takes on the question of the normal and abnormal, but this time through the film The Wasp Woman (1960). “Qualitative Analysis” explores “classic science fiction tropes such as the mad scientist and unnatural transformation.”

Another installation utilizing an entire lab is Sade Huron’s piece: “Andragogy.” This eleven-channel video installation has at its core raw footage of videos produced during her work as an instructor at BAVC. “The piece alludes to the process of learning and the interpretation of information, specifically the art and science of teaching adults.”

The big surprise artist of the night is Nate Boyce – his performance will be kept secret until the last minute.

With this ensemble on board, Thursday’s event is guaranteed to be extraordinary. Please join us at BAVC between 6 and 8PM – and see the premiere of five pieces by exciting Bay Area artists.

By Jennifer Olivia, BAVC Office Manager

“Calavera Highway” by Renee Tajima-Peña won the Television Documentary Long Form category at the San Francisco International Film Festival’s Golden Gate Awards this year. “Calavera Highway” tells the story of the Peña brothers return to South Texas with their mother’s ashes. Through the course of their journey the brothers delve into their family’s history and their own identities as first generation Mexican Americans.

Tajima-Peña and “Calavera Highway” came to BAVC as part of the 2007 Producer’s Institute, where the director, along with producer Evangeline Griego, created an interactive timeline and story project that contextualizes the Peñas within Mexican American history. Via email Tajima-Peña told us about her experiences, “One crucial lesson we learned from the BAVC Producer’s Institute is there are new ways to find those hidden constituencies, like the audiences who would connect to the Peña brother’s story. There are ways to bypass the gatekeepers and connect to people directly. When we were screening at SFIFF we met people who had grown up in the central valley as farm worker kids, who had experienced fathers and family disappearing across the border. When you talk to documentary filmmakers, those are the kinds of screening moments they remember.”

The Opening Panel of BAVC’s 2008 Producers Institute is open to the public this year. Moderated by B. Ruby Rich, the panel, titled Sourcing the Future: Marketing and Sustainability for Social Justice Media Online, takes place on Saturday, May 31st. Find out more >

Another winner at the Golden Gate Awards this year was director Dawn Logsdon’s “Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans” for Bay Area Documentary. “Faubourg Tremé” explores the cultural and political history of the New Orleans neighborhood by the same name into the contemporary, both before and after Katrina. Logsdon is one of the 2002 BAVC Mediamaker Awards winners. The Mediamaker Awards are in-kind grants that provide critical training, technical assistance and post-production services to independent producers.

We congratulate the makers of both “Calavera Highway” and “Faubourg Tremé” on their recent success! You can catch “Calavera Highway” on PBS’ POV program on September 23rd. “Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans” is available for individual and institutional purchase through http://www.tremedoc.com/.

by Robert Collins, Manager, BUMP Records

Our third day in NYC allowed us to recharge….a little. We didn’t have any screenings or performances scheduled, but we did have a little networking to do. Two of the “Going on 13” funders, Chicken & Egg Pictures and Working Films, held a reception for 3 films they produced that were part of the festival. The whole crew attended and got a chance to rub elbows with some big wigs. After dinner I had to make sure I kept my promise to Ryah to take her to Times Square. Lets just say she was on top of the world!

On the fourth day, we found ourselves back in the mix. We had a short screening and performance on the agenda. We were scheduled to visit the Lower East Side Girls Club(a very cool place BTW) and have Ryah participate in their weekly performance workshop with local female musicians. The LESGC also had a private screening of the movie trailer and film shorts that were produced by the some of the young ladies in the film.

The LESGC is an awesome space where the girls learn entrepreneurship by running a cafe, can work in a multi-media lab, and learn about environmental awareness and leadership. Ryah was asked to participate in a workshop where the girls would ask questions about her performance experience and background as an artist. Ryah was joined by Eagle Nebula and Erika Rose, both of whom are well regarded independent artists. Once the talk ended it was time to ‘Rock the Mic’ as they say. As the opening artist I wasn’t sure if Ryah was nervous about her first “show” in New York City. But, like the consummate professional that she is, she stepped up to the plate and hit it out of the park.

Watch the video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=baoCi9YclcI

After Ryah received her applause it was time for the other performers to hit the stage. I could tell they were ‘nervous’ seeing as how Ryah lit the stage on fire and all. Eagle Nebula is an amazing MC originally from Los Angeles but currently residing in Brooklyn. Erika Rose is a singer/songwriter who lives in New York and actually co-wrote “A Woman’s Worth” along with the one and only Alicia Keys. After Erika’s performance Ryah took a picture with her and was given an incredible compliment. Erika asked Ryah if she would be interested in singing back-up for her when she comes to perform in California this summer. That’s pretty cool if I do say so myself.

To be continued…

by Robert Collins, Manager, BUMP Records

Our second day in NYC was all about business. We had to put the sampler CD’s together. We had to prepare for the sound check. We had to shake off the jetlag. And, most importantly we had to get ready for the World Premiere Screening of “GOING ON 13.”

We met up at the production office and began the assembly line for the Bay Area Video Coalition/Vaquera Films Sampler CD’s. I was really pleased with how these turned out. Thanks to my BAVC Photoshop class was I able to design the cover for the CD(my first). As the ladies in the group got beautified we found out that Ryah’s performance at the 1st screening wasn’t going to happened as originally planned. Like a champ Ryah brushed it off. We thought about just going “Guerrilla Style” by grabbing a mic and taking over the Q&A accompanied by some beat-boxing by yours truly. We kept it professional though.

Once we arrived at the theater we did our best to hide our excitement. With Tribeca Film Festival handlers pulling us in every direction it was hard to just stop and soak it all in. There were interviews from foreign press, pictures with celebs and then the infamous “red carpet.” In this case it was actually a concrete carpet but it had all of the red carpet glitz & glamor.

Once the screening began it was great to see the how people responded to the film. People laughed, people ooooo’d, and people aahhhhh’d. There was a heartfelt round of applause as the film came to the close all to the tune of Ryah’s song “A Girl’s Life.” Once the last film credit rolled the moderator from the festival called the cast and crew to the front for a Q&A. Dawn & Kristy(The Director & Producer) did a great job fielding questions and gave a lot of credit to BAVC for their support. I didn’t even know that some of The Factory students actually worked on the film. They highlighted Ryah’s participation in the film and she received a round of applause as well.

Once the screening ended we were on our way to the post-premiere dinner party at Arturo’s Pizzeria. I wasn’t familiar with the restaurant but apparently it’s a New York institution. That became evident once we noticed the pictures on the walls of all of the celebrities that had eaten there in years past. After settling in we noticed a piano and PA system in the main room. Someone suggested that Ryah step up and perform. Seeing as how she didn’t get a chance to perform at the screening she jumped at the opportunity. I think she was a little nervous because she is a self-taught piano player and was performing a brand new song. Needless to say she killed it. Standing ovations all around. They day ended exactly on such a high-note that is was hard to believe they could get any better.

More to come…

by Robert Collins, Manager of BUMP Records

Arriving in New York City always seems to give me goosebumps. Having been there, to many times to count, I never really know why I get so excited. Is it the anticipation of how much fun I’m GOING to have? Is it the natural energy of the city? Or, is it just my own nerves getting the best of me. Who knows, and who cares. I love New York.

I was especially excited to go on this trip because I was going to have a chance to take one of my youth(Ryah Nikole) with me. Our trip was centered around the much heralded Tribeca Film Festival. Ryah wrote, produced and performed a song for a film called “Going on 13” which was being screened at the festival and they asked Ryah to perform. I would argue that it’s one of the top 5 film festivals in the US. So, the opportunity to not only attend, but also have a chance to perform is major.

The group stayed in a really cool apartment in the lower east side not far from Soho. After arriving at the crash pad the young ladies in the group had one thing on their minds……”SHOPPING.” I won’t get in the nasty details but lets just say that Canal Street received a real dose of Bay Area swap meet negotiating skills ;).

The director/producers(Dawn & Kristy who are awesome BTW) of the film had some friends that were from NYC and hosted a BBQ in my favorite borough(BROOKLYN), so the youth got to experience the New York Subway. It was a day of firsts and it was great to know that we had so much more to experience throughout the week.

More about our trip to come soon . . .

by Alicia Schmidt, Marketing Strategist

Jennifer joins BAVC after spending the last two years earning her Master’s Degree from San Francisco State University in Women’s Studies with a focus on Performance. Prior to moving to San Francisco, she lived in San Antonio, Texas, where she attended the University of Texas. Wanting to take a break from academia, we’re thrilled that Jenn has decided to get her hands non-profit “dirty” here at BAVC. As the new Office Manager, she will be responsible for making all our office systems hum including facility and supply management, some human resource management, and a little bit of accounting thrown in for good measure.

Like all the newbies, we asked her a few get-to-know-you questions:

10 Questions for the Newbies

1. The story of your life starts out with which 10 words?

You can take the girl outta the trailer park, but…

2. Do you know your astrological sign? What is it?

Gemini, some of us are very nice people, I swear! (yeah, right)

3. How do you take your coffee?

With soy milk…and sugar when indulging.

4. Name two things you believe in.

Creativity and laughter as vectors for change.

5. What’s the last song/movie you paid money for?

Movie: Juno or Persepolis, both were great!

Music: Rolling Stones December’s Children

6. Who would play you in the BAVC movie and why?

A fabulous drag queen who inexplicably bursts into song and dance at inappropriate moments.

7. Most embarrassing job (you can’t say BAVC)?

Pizza delivery person. Demoralizing more than embarrassing.

8. What snacks do you eat at the movies?

I like Sour Patch Kids and Junior Mints…but who has 50 bucks for snacks?

9. What are you most likely to be doing at 9pm on a Thursday?

Getting home from the gym, eating a huge dinner and watching some trashy television.

10. What are you looking forward to most in your new job at BAVC?

Learning, learning, learning…oh, and not smelling like coffee and bacon after work.

Mobile at the nonprofit tech conference,
New Orleans 2.5 years after Katrina,
and a jazz archive in peril . . .

by Jen Gilomen, Lead Developer of Strategic Initiatives, BAVC

When Hurricane Katrina hit, David Freedman was thinking about the history of jazz. Specifically, he was thinking about how to save the 5,000+ original recordings, 50,000 LPs, and 25,000 CDs housed at his community radio station, WWOZ, in New Orleans. The first emergency — besides evacuating — was saving the vaulted archive of original recordings. David and I were both at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans in March, and the story of his station, combined with the overall vibe of the conference and some exploration of New Orleans two and a half years after the flood, got me thinking about what the ‘community’ in community media and technology really means.

As our plane circled over Lake Pontchartrain, I looked out the window with anxiety. I had been to New Orleans a few times prior, but not since the late ’90s, and I wasn’t sure what I expected to see from the airplane, but whatever it was made me nervous. I’ve seen the post-Katrina images online, of course, but what I hadn’t seen was much about the reconstruction. I later learned that this is because in some places, after over two years, little has changed except the water table.

From the tourist perspective — usually the view from one of the many open-air establishments in the French Quarter — you wouldn’t know Katrina had ever hit. Jocelyn Yin (BAVC’s program officer from ZeroDivide) and I strolled the streets at night, powdered our faces with Beignets, and stayed in a quaint if somewhat musty old hotel in the French Quarter near the conference site on Canal Street. In the evenings after the conference sessions had ended, I walked to the riverfront, took a couple hundred photos of the architecture and quirky offerings of New Orleans, had some Absinthe (certain brands are now legal in the U.S., thanks to the ingenuity of a New Orleans chemist), and walked through the residential areas that neighbor the French Quarter.

Downtown, there are some buildings boarded up, and in a few cases, I had to remind myself that this was not flood damage — it was flood aftermath. Any city that loses half of its population suddenly would show signs of economic decline, but seeing so much vacant downtown real estate is disorienting and bizarre. What, after all, is a city without its people — simultaneously its employees and its patrons — besides a destination for visitors like myself?

NTC08

At the NTEN conference, the reason 1,000 nonprofit technology buffs descended on New Orleans (as opposed to any other American city) this year was evident: tourism, and especially business tourism, are at least keeping one industry alive in New Orleans. According to the New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau, the tourism industry is the city’s largest employer, and the hotel tax feeds $10.5 million annually into the Orleans Parish Public Schools. The NTC attracts what I call Good Geeks, who care about these facts. These are people who are more concerned about teachers communicating effectively with diverse populations of students, about noncommercial media, net neutrality, open source, and other technology-based grass-roots efforts. They’re the ones who even things out, so more people (and specifically, nonprofit people and the communities they serve) have access to the technologies that shape our lives. It’s important stuff that often goes unnoticed, but the NTC is a chance for all of the Good Geeks of the world to get together and, well, be Good Geeks together.

Besides catching conversations containing terminology you don’t hear in your daily life unless you’re a Good Geek yourself — Joomla vs. Drupal for your CMS, Salesforce database management, individual donor widgets — there were some new buzz words at NTC this year, and they centered around mobile applications. David Pogue, a New York Times blogger and the first conference keynote speaker I’ve ever seen burst into song and play the grand piano, offered a hilarious parody about the iPhone. As the final verse came to a close, iPhone enthusiasts across the conference room lifted their little glowing devices with glee, participating in something that we all knew should contain a little more sarcasm than it did. (But we can’t help ourselves! An open API!) That’s the NTC.

At a session called “The Ever Expanding Role of Mobile Devices,” I got my first grasp of how to run a text message (SMS) campaign. And I admit, I saw of future of text-message spam that I currently live without, and was a little afraid. But Ben Rigby of Mobile Voter (who works in the BAVC Annex at Koko Studios, but who I didn’t meet until the conference) made it all worthwhile by teaching us how to buck the system — a system controlled by just a few companies who own the “short codes” that make mobile campaigns possible. (For a few takeaways, stay tuned for a related BAVC blog post on mobile campaigns.)

Jazz archives, a call for help, and the big ol’ van

Bucking the system with a combination of grass-roots effort and technology brings me back to David Freedman and that jazz archive, and what David did when the water was rising, New Orleans was on lock-down, and he had to get that music out. The water came within a foot of the loading dock where the bulk of the original recordings were stored, and they were rescued. But there were still 50,000 LPs and 25,000 CDs in a temporary storage unit with a damaged roof. David located a roofer, and with a Rolling Stone photographer in toe, created a fake TV station ID and (nervously) passed the state trooper checkpoint to get into the city, following a caravan of legitimate TV station vans. This motley crew then repaired the roof, hoping to at least salvage the CDs, but without much hope for the albums.

To put it in perspective, you have to remember what most community radio stations are like: resource-deprived, grass-roots, run by (and usually funded by) the community they serve. In the case of WWOZ, the program hosts are ninety volunteers who, when the station relocated to a temporary location in Baton Rouge shortly after Katrina, drove two hours each way with their collections to run their three-hour time slot. Community radio stations rarely have the resources to do larger projects like digitization, preservation, and metatagging. WWOZ’s membership provides 70-80% of the station funding, and the station was just weeks away from their semiannual pledge drive.

“When I finally tracked down my bookkeeper in Atlanta,” Freedman says, “I asked her, ‘How much do we have in the bank?’ And she said, ‘You ain’t got nothin’ in the bank!’” So they had no resources to draw from. From a hotel room in Hot Springs, Arkansas, David broadcasted pleas from “WWOZ in Exile,” an online station. Several people from the ‘community radio community’ acted quickly to help — both listeners and other community radio stations. Ultimately — and here’s the true ‘community’ in the story — 32 different community radio stations from around the country supported WWOZ to get them back on the air. One station, KSDS in San Diego, even tied their own pledge drive to WWOZ, offering up 10% of their pledge drive funds to the cause.

What David did with the money is another success of the community media effort. The station purchased a van and equipped it with broadcasting capabilities, then put the call letters of each contributing community radio station on the van. The van not only allows them to stay up and running in the event of a natural disaster, but also to broadcast from live events. David let the group of stations know that they were part of the “Katrina Network”: when any of those stations has a disaster of any kind, they can use the van.

Once the recordings were rescued, the Grammy Foundation stepped in to help, and WWOZ, the Grammy Foundation, and the Library of Congress now have a three-way partnership to preserve the entire archive. The partnership, and the story of community support itself, are emblematic of the unique value of community radio in documenting and preserving local culture that we all can enjoy and learn from. It’s too bad the value often isn’t fully recognized until its loss is eminent, but still.

In the end, because the city couldn’t provide their building with power, the station had to relocate to the French Market building in the French Quarter. They have more space, but David has mixed feelings about it. “We were in Armstrong Park, a historic area. Those are the roots for that music,” David says. “The French Quarter is like the marketplace, not the place the music comes from. It’s like good okra that you get at the market — it wasn’t grown in the French Market, it was grown in the land outside the city. Music grows in the neighborhoods. I think those are the cultural wetlands of not only New Orleans, but America.”

Post-conference, post-Katrina

When the conference was over, I had the opportunity to visit some of those wetlands, including one of the wettest ones, the now infamous Ninth Ward. On an informative post-Katrina tour with a small local company called Tours by Isabelle, I got the local’s perspective of the reconstruction process, if it can even be called a process. And — except for a few rows of brightly colored Habitat for Humanity homes called “musician’s row,” designed with local musicians, the status of the process is very, very dim. On a given block in the Ninth Ward, there could be one or two families back in their homes, surrounded by constant reminders of the storm — the absence of their former neighbors, the FEMA vans that many families are still living in, the piles of debris, and the somber, relentless quiet. The biggest tragedy, besides the failure of the reconstruction, is that the very guts of this community have been ripped out.

What will happen to noncommercial media if it moves into the French Market of America?

The explosion of community radio was a result of not only the foresight of the original Carnegie Commission and Congress to allocate part of our dials to noncommercial media, but also the actions of a guy named Lorenzo Milam, a subversive all-star who learned the technology and tricks and published a how-to manual for FM licensing and community radio in 1972. He called it “Sex and Broadcasting” because, Freedman says, Milam’s grandmother assured him that it would sell more copies than a descriptive title. She was right. Freedman himself, starting up a community station in Santa Cruz at the time, “created a corporation of a bunch of nobodies, walking around Santa Cruz,” he says. “We were bare-footed, long-haired, and not something CPB wanted anything to do with.” Thirty years later, the nation’s network of community radio stations, connected through the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB), are “good citizens in the radio world,” he says, and “CPB not only involves us, but there’s a place for us there now; they’d be upset if we didn’t have a role.”

And while community media may have lost some of the renegade reputation that it had in the ’70s, when BAVC was born and the organization consisted of a few guys were running around with Porta Packs, it has grown into its own without losing, we hope, the community spirit in which it began. As BAVC and our own ‘community of community media’ continue to think about technologies of the future — who will have access to them, use them, profit from them, and learn from them — we need to remember the importance of localism, the preservation of the “authentic space” for people to create, collaborate, express themselves, and enrich themselves that is the heart of community media.

by Jen Gilomen, Lead Developer, Strategic Initiatives at BAVC

At the annual Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans this year, the rooms were all a-buzz with mobile — and it wasn’t just the 1,000+ attendees’ phones on vibrate. In 2007, we saw an explosion of nonprofits and activists beginning to use mobile to, well, mobilize their constituencies. With the ONE campaign, U2 collected the names of over 280,000 concert-goers for a petition to end hunger in Africa. When Verizon blocked the messages of abortion rights group NARAL (against, of all things, its own economic interests), the act of censorship became symbolic of net neutrality and corporate America’s political influence over consumer communications, and after Verizon received over 20,000 messages from their appalled customers, they backed down. Larger nonprofits have used mobile campaigns to remind young people to vote, to disseminate information, and to gather txt-signatures for petitions. But as we look toward BAVC’s upcoming Nonprofit Producers Institute (the first of its kind), how can smaller or more localized nonprofits participate in the mobile revolution?

Ben Rigby of Mobile Voter and Katrin Verclas of MobileActive.org provided some great information at the conference. Here are a few takeaways:

D.I.Y. It

There are two ways to run a mobile campaign: do it yourself, or hire a company to do it for you. There are many advantages to using a service, including reporting, reliability, and above all, their expertise. (If you are running a suicide prevention program, or other critical service, for example, you wouldn’t rely on the D.I.Y. approach.) But if you’re just getting your feet wet or doing something on a small scale, a mobile campaign can cost no more than one dedicated cell phone (with unlimited or large capacity txt service) connected to a computer. Using a free, open source application called FrontlineSMS (now only for P.C., but soon for Mac and Linux), you can set up a basic text campaign, track all of your mobile contacts, disseminate and receive information, conduct text-based surveys, and run text campaigns at events from a laptop with no Internet connection, anywhere that has cell reception. Which brings me to the next point:

Location, location, location

If any point was driven home by the mobile practitioners at the NTC, it was about context. The user must receive a text when and where they’re ready to act upon it. Several companies are working on applications that use GIS to text people when they’re near a service location or store. If you’re collecting constituent mobile numbers for the first time, for example, do so at an event, and tie it to a prize or piece of information that they’ll receive immediately. The future of shopping could be that when you see something you want, you send a text, and are billed through your phone company and automatically delivered the item by mail. This can also be the future of donations — asking people to act at the moment of inspiration. Will your constituents feel motivated to act when they pass a billboard? What about if they’re asked to pull out their phones and text during an event?

Trust me not 2 txt u @ 2am

The Mobile Marketing Association recently released a set of Mobile Advertising Guidelines for marketing on mobile devices. You must allow users to opt-in in order to receive texts, and you should also offer them a way to opt-out later.

Mobile penetration still outweighs Internet penetration amongst not only global audiences, but here in the U.S. And while many of us still can’t stand reading much but text messages and headlines on our phones, and dread the mass-marketing that will no doubt invade our personal communication spaces in the next year, these always-with-us, always-on contraptions are here to stay, and it’s time for nonprofits to take baby steps toward embracing mobile.

Resources

Mobile how-to for nonprofits:

Ben Rigby’s new book:
Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web2.0 Technologies to Recruit, Organize and Engage Youth

Katrin Verclas’ April 24, 2008 blog post about why advocacy groups should embrace SMS, and practical how-tos:
Using Mobiles for your Cause: Do’s and Don’ts of mAdvocacy

Companies that provide campaign-type services for nonprofits:

MobileActive’s list of U.S. mobile companies
Mobile Accord
Mobile Cause
Mobile Commons

What BAVC’s Next Generation Programs is using for mobile social marketing and artist self promotion:

Kadoink

More on the NARAL Short Code Controversy and mobile neutrality:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/us/27verizon.html?hp
http://scrawford.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2007/9/28/3258382.html

by Matt Price, East Bay Manager, BUMP Beats (a program of Next Gen Programs at BAVC)

Middle School is a lot different now compared to when I attended 15 years ago. In many ways, the world has become much more accommodating to early teens. No longer is the joke about a teenager hogging the family phone all night applicable because today everyone has their own cell phone. Embarrassing notes are no longer confiscated and read by teachers because such top secret information can be passed over text messages, typed in a pocket, without even looking at the phone!

However, with all these modern conveniences come modern distractions. I teach middle school students how to make digital music on a computer using the software Reason. Since we are on computers about 75% of the time, the Internet is a constant distraction. In my first year teaching the class, I fought the use of the Internet and turned it off while the students were doing their lessons. This year, it wasn’t so easy since I couldn’t just pull out an ethernet cable like I could in my old classroom. This lead to daily battles for students’ attention between lessons on how to make drum beats and the newest online games. At some point, I had enough. I would never win a fight against the Internet. Instead, I decided to embrace the Internet and put the lessons online on a blog. This way the students would get the satisfaction of being on the Internet, but also keep focused on their daily lessons. I took it a step further and working with middle schoolers’ natural social tendencies, I asked each student to create their own blog so that they could have a place to post their songs, thoughts and interests. Right now I am in the middle of the second class in which I’ve incorporated personal blogs and so far, I like the results. The underlining goal of my classes is to improve the computer literacy of the students and the blog has been an excellent way to meet this objective.

You can check out the lessons online at bumpccpa.blogspot.com or ccpabeats.blogspot.com.

By Mindy Aronoff, Director of Training & Resources

Does meeting director Morgan Spurlock in person help one like the movie more? Hell yes. Well, let’s put it this way: about 13 minutes into the screening at SXSW in Austin where Mr. Spurlock was in attendance, a spring thunderstorm knocked all the power out. When the lights came back on, the projectionist was having a hell of a time re-booting the digital projector, so Mr. Spurlock–oh, let’s call him Morgan, shall we?–shouted out, “drinks for everyone on me!” Sure enough, 10 uniformed ushers began passing out cold cans of Tecate to the entire theatre (thank you, Texas liquor laws).

If you saw SUPERSIZE ME, you know Spurlock has the same kind of fun Michael Moore does (but he’s a lot cuter). In this doc, which premiered at Sundance in January, he shleps us through Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jerusalem and other colorful Middle Eastern sites, shoving the mic in people’s faces and querying them about bin Laden’s whereabouts like he’s asking if the food is good at Moti’s Falafel Stand.

Is the movie a joke? Not really, although I did laugh a lot. True to character, Spurlock comes across as the guy next door, an everyman who tells it like we would if we had the cajones. We see him, pre-trip, going through a rigorous faux-FBI training program aimed at teaching rookies when to duck and how to avoid being blown up into shwarma bits. It really is silly at times—outside of a Tora Bora cave he sings out “yoo hoo! Osama bin LAH-den…!” Ridiculous. But isn’t that kinda what you would want to do?

Good Neighbor Morg tries to cajole everyone he meets but we find that not everyone loves our Ugly American. Agitated orthodox Jewish men angrily evict him from their hood. He’s given the boot at an Islamic high school. And he looks pretty darn stoopid infiltrating an Imam, where the main guy is giving instructions on how to destroy America. Oh, sure, we meet mothers and grandfathers and teens who proclaim to hate only the government–not us, of course, not the regular folks. [insert eye rolling here]

I knew some of bin Laden’s background from reading The Looming Tower, an excellent read, btw, so I got extremely nervous at one point in the movie when Spurlock and crew get very, very close to finding The World’s Most Dangerous Man. You can’t help but wonder what will happen when they come face to face. Supah SCAH-wee. I give the man props for traveling that far and then re-examining his naïve premise. Yet, when the lights came back on, we all followed Spurlock outside the theatre, drinking our Tecates in the humid parking lot, and it was easy to suspend disbelief and blissfully think that we can all get along. Now where is the world did we get that idea?