Fabricio Olsson; Student #1101224; breeze@ucsc.edu; 831.459-1919

DANM 297-02; David Cuthburt

Environmental Digital Video Project

Mount Madonna School and Renaissance H.S.

Comparison Between Two Schools:

Mount Madonna M.S. and Renaissance H.S.

Working with young adults (middle and high school level) is always a challenge in that the original plan HAS to be modified constantly and adapt to each school, class and individual students involved.

Once the calendar, goals and basic 'plan of attack' had been established, I set out to implement at each school.

Consciously, I chose to work with these schools specifically because in some aspects, they were polar opposites.

Students and Classes involved:

I worked closely with a Mount Madonna teacher, Weston Miller, in creating a curriculum that would complement that which the students had already been following this year. The class of 16 eighth graders worked with me once a week for 10 weeks (2 hours per meeting) to create their group project final presentation. This presentation was presented at school-wide activities and were posted on Youtube for peer review and as means of distribution to a larger audience.

See Student Video Analysis for samples of student work.

At Renaissance, two rounds of classes would be taught: one, a voluntary after school program and another short-term, small group project.

Early in the first round of classes it was evident that my experience at this school was to be dramatically different from the project at Mount Madonna. Student commitment is inconsistent, which forced me to lower my expectations of the type of project(s) I was to realistically accomplish in under the conditions set before me. Rather than working on a large final project, students successfully completed a number of smaller tasks. To some, merely learning to use a digital photo camera proved to be a huge accomplishment. Others, already with digital editing software (audio and/or video), pushed forward with technically challenging exercises.

The second round had more focus... but not much. Still the project we developed was overall a success. Though the end result differs form the originally conceived idea, we did follow through a number of successful steps towards creating an intriguing video project.

See RenaissanceProjects for samples of student work.

Geographic Location:

MMS at the top of the mountains, on the ridge between Watsonville and Morgan Hill. Both schools are located in the Pajaro River Watershed, but they are located on the opposite ends of both their geographic location as well as their placement within the Watershed and how they affect and are affected by the Ecosystem.

Demographic of students and families:

MMS is a private school where the majority of students come from families of middle/upper class. Renaissance, on the other hand is a continuation school and students for the most part are considered 'at risk youth,' from low-income families (large number of Latinos and minority groups).