by John Papadakis

The Next Step In Media Production: Media Literacy Through AI

by John Papadakis, Director of Communications, Enrollment and Technology

Multimedia production has been part of the ACS Athens education model for many years. However, since the founding of the “Suheil Sabbagh Media Studio” in 2017, students have come to the Learning Commons to delve into a wealth of resources and ideas. They get inspired to discover the amazing new and continuously renewed world of the Media Studio productions that ultimately transform their journey through international education. With over 400 student and faculty projects a year, the Media Studio provides the school’s learning community with the latest digital tools and methodologies for video and audio production. As many experts in educational technology suggest, the ’20s will surely be the decade of Artificial Intelligence as it’s peeking through the educational models around the world, attempting to assert its value, advantages, and practicality. The Media Studio has employed Artificial Intelligence in its practices and methods since its inception in the previous decade.

AI is used to make tasks easier and provide better services to more diverse groups of media consumers. From journalistic projects that require faster access and media sources through specialized algorithms, to accessibility options that serve everyone, AI can bring tedious tasks to fruition with a click of the mouse or tap of the finger – or even with the movement of the eye.

Students can utilize AI tools to collect content for projects and classroom assignments through specialized data pools, and its distribution can serve more purposes. At this point, the advice and guidance from the Media Studio experts keep them away from what’s known as “automated journalism,” (where stories are produced automatically by computers rather than human reporters), but rather curate and re-produce with logic and critical thinking skills.

AI can be an invaluable tool, especially when it comes to transcribing video for editing and re-writing purposes. Speech recognition is a staple AI function in media production that employs ASR technology (Automatic Speech Recognition). Using this makes it easier to caption videos and audio productions, serving the accessibility goal of the Media Studio. This leaves more time for creativity in the precious free time of students and faculty.

Video production software that employs AI can analyze entire footage to select the best possible shots for a proper color scheme, the right emotion, the best place to cut or merge scenes, etc. Streaming of content is also important. AI utilities are also used here, to ensure that the best possible image quality is streamed with fewer data streaming faults for the most optimal network usage and speed.

As the new AI / Innovation Lab comes to the Learning Commons in the 2022-23 academic year, the tools of Virtual or Augmented Reality will make the Media Studio services much more relevant. Productions in the metaverse will increase, providing the media producers of the community with the tools to explore the next level of human activity. The Media Studio has been exploring and utilizing tools to produce mixed reality and augmented reality projects, robotics and human-computer interaction, computer vision, and others. By learning how the metaverse works, young people - who are the most impressionable - will now be less prone to accept the buzz of virtual life, but rather use it to their advantage to make their life and the life of their community better designing better applications and improving the workflows of their projects, focusing more on their goal than the process.