PMC Final Report

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REFINING NEW FORMS OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

DOT CONNECTOR STUDIO Katie Elizabeth Donnelly, Lead Researcher Jessica Clark, Editor NATIONAL BLACK PROGRAMMING CONSORTIUM Jacquie Jones, President and Executive Director Leslie Fields-Cruz, Vice President, Programming and Operations Kay Shaw, Director, Public Media Corps Ivana Jackson, Program Associate, Public Media Corps Christian Ugbode, Director, Digital Media

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February 2014

This report does not mark the end of the Public Media Corps (PMC). Instead it captures the past two and a half years of exceptional work by our Fellows and Partners in communities from across the country to connect youth to public media using digital media technologies. Two major events occurred that focused the course and direction of the program: • •

The launch of the American Graduate: Let’s Make It Happen initiative by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB); and NBPC’s production of the education series 180 Days: A Year Inside An American High School.

In 2011, CPB funded the American Graduate initiative, which directed new public media resources towards helping communities implement solutions to address the nation’s high school dropout crisis. As public broadcasting stations looked to models that would excite individual activity, build community capacity and national awareness on the issue, the PMC’s Digital Media Arts Clubs (dMAC) engagement model emerged as a perfect fit for stations interested in connecting to vulnerable youth. The dMAC model tapped into youth’s existing social media activity and use of personal devices to produce and post content online. The dMACs sharpened the participants’ media production skills and redirected their use of the online space towards empowering and validating their voice in the dialogue on the dropout issue and other issues that directly impact them.

In 2013, in support of the broadcast of NBPC’s two-part series, 180 Days, we invited our dMAC students and youth media organizations to contribute short videos to The American Graduate Student Film Festival (AGFF). The online video competition was designed to engage even more youth in the conversation about the high school dropout rate and the issues raised in the series.

The AGFF exceeded our expectations attracting more than 30 entries from across the country.

During this journey, we learned what we always suspected, that the youth voice is as powerful as it is unique and if allowed to be heard, it will change and expand the reach of public media to more generations today and tomorrow.

We are grateful to our dedicated Fellows and Partners and most of all to the young people who trusted us to respect their voice and help share it with the world.

Kay Shaw Director, Pubic Media Corps

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The Public Media Corps’ Digital Media Arts Clubs: Refining New Forms of Community Engagement Public media organizations have a persistent problem with finding ways to reach under-connected, low-income and youth communities. Over the last several years, the National Black Programming Consortium (NPBC) has been developing a unique and innovative solution: The Public Media Corps.

Modeled after national service programs such as AmeriCorps, the Public Media Corps (PMC) was originally designed to provide minority and low-income communities with training and access to public media production tools and resources while promoting collaboration between public media stations and community members, schools, and community organizations.

In 2010, NBPC beta-tested the PMC model in Washington, DC, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). A group of selected fellows from the DC area received intensive training in production, community research and project design, and then teamed up with local public media station WHUT (based at Howard University), American University’s Center for Social Media, local schools and community institutions to connect community members with digital training and broadband-enabled resources. This beta test helped the staff to create a solid framework for both fellowships and community partnerships moving forward.

The original beta test period yielded four demonstration projects that effectively combined youth, public media and community engagement: 3" "

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Digital Media Arts Club (dMAC), a media production and digital literacy training program for underserved high school students;

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What’s Good DC?, a half-hour teen issues show broadcast on partner station WHUT TV;

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The Family Portrait Project, a library-based project that used family photography to connect community members to library and digital resources; and

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Two town halls in which community members and policymakers discussed education reform and broadband access.

The 2010 beta-test period also included the development of tools and resources for PMC fellows, community members and stations, including curricula, training guides, an online resource-sharing platform and a toolkit to help other public media stations implement similar initiatives.

One clear lesson from the beta phase was that it was not enough to simply report on underserved communities. A crucial goal of the PMC experiment was to put production tools in the hands of community participants so that they could co-create their own stories and prepare themselves to participate in civic dialogue. This stands in contrast to other community media programs in which authorities are the ones interviewing community members, who play the role of subjects. The PMC’s focus on collaborative media production mirrors a larger cultural sea change, one in which everyone who gains access to digital tools has the potential to tell their own stories.

Of the pilot projects that emerged from this incubator, the Digital Media Arts Club (dMAC) proved to be the most robust and replicable. Below, we’ll trace the evolution of the dMAC over the last two funding cycles and explore how the NBPC staff built upon the Public Media Corps to develop a new, highly efficient format for educating community members about how to create their own media: the Flash Festival.

Digital Media Arts Clubs An afterschool multimedia production club designed to engage youth at underperforming high schools and build their skills as digital citizens, the Digital Media Arts Club (dMAC) was originally developed in 2010 by two Public Media Corps fellows based at the Academies at Anacostia High School in Washington, DC—Brittany Clemons and Danielle Scruggs. While other fellows also implemented student-training projects with varying structures at other schools involved in the PMC beta test, this program rose above the pack. The fellows succeeded in attracting interest and participation from both students and teachers, and involving students in another PMC engagement project—¿What's Good, DC? —a teen issues show produced at WHUT. Afterschool sessions and workshops focused on teaching students in grades 10-12 about broadband literacy, media production, and civic engagement. The club functioned as an extracurricular activity, and participation varied; in Spring 2011 Clemons estimated that up to 12 students a day might stop in, with a core group of about six regulars.

Initially participation in the dMAC was slow. In September 2010, Clemons and Scruggs held a “digital mixer” in order to attract interest but found that many students had already chosen their extracurricular activities. In order to build participation levels, the PMC fellows began offering 4" "

workshops on particular production techniques, such as a “one-shot” production exercise using Flip cameras. Basic literacy and career preparation skills were also a focus for the trainers, including grammar, writing, and interview skills.

Students also produced content for ¿What's Good, DC?, mainly vox-pop segments in which students interviewed one another about the issue that a particular show addresses, such as bullying or school reform. By late October, students also began producing a related podcast in preparation for the voxpop interviews. Students were also enthusiastic about both participating in ¿What's Good, DC? tapings, and viewing the show, which in turn built interest in the dMAC. Students participating in the dMAC gained not just technical and professional skills, but a new comfort with producing and participating in conversations about difficult issues—key skills for acting as informed citizens. In a story about the project that appeared on the District of Columbia Public Schools website, faculty advisor LaVaughn Turner noted the shift. “I have several students in mind who I have seen progress in and who demonstrate more assertiveness and confidence in their work,” he said.

"Using the club as an outlet Having developed a working curriculum, Clemons and Scruggs worked with PMC staff to roll the dMAC out to another high school that had participated in the PMC beta test: Washington Metropolitan High School (DC MET) located near WHUT. The DMACs eventually expanded to include DC MET, Eastern Senior High School, Anacostia Senior High School, Ballou Senior High School, CentroNia, and Anacostia Neighborhood Library.

While not without challenges, the DC rollout was a success, and set the stage for a second round of funding and program design. Led by NPBC’s Executive Director Jacquie Jones, the PMC formalized its new DC headquarters in a building adjacent to WHUT. Public Media Corps Director Kay Shaw worked with Program Associate Ivana Jackson—a former PMC fellow who had proved herself an able producer in the project’s beta phase—to prepare for a new round of fellows and sites.

Moving the Model Outward

has helped me open up in other areas of my life. Besides learning about the equipment and making new friends, I’ve learned to make public service announcements and so much more. I’ve grown a lot from my dMAC experience."

Victor Estes, Washington Metropolitan High School!

While first phase of this project focused on closing the digital divide and enhancing participants’ use of digital technologies for civic purposes in underserved communities, the second phase built upon American Graduate funding and focused the training around helping students to explore issues related to the dropout crisis. A national collaboration spearheaded by CPB, this funding initiative involves hundreds of national and local partnerships aimed at supporting public stations in implementing solutions to the national dropout crisis (http://americangraduate.org/) After the first year, it became clear that the dMAC model had legs as a promising model for stations to engage students directly in producing content related to educational and social issues, and distributing it across rising digital and mobile platforms. With American Graduate funding the PMC staff decided to not only continue the program at WHUT with fellows from Howard University but 5" "

to implement the model at four other sites around the country, selected through a grant application process: Mississippi Public Broadcasting, Vision Maker Media (formerly Native American Public Telecommunications), Public Broadcasting Atlanta, and WYES New Orleans. Although the overarching goal was the same, the project took on different forms in each location.

Student content was shared across a variety of platforms: Series1,"Other," 2,"5%" Series1,"Social" Media,"8,"19%" Series1,"Mobile" MMS,"0,"0%"

Series1,"Aired"on" local"TV,"3,"7%" Aired"on"local" TV" Series1," Shown"at"a" community" screening," 13,"30%"

Series1,"Mobile" SMS,"0,"0%" Series1,"Shared" privately"with" stakeholders,"7," 16%" Series1,"Aired"on" local"radio,"0,"0%"

Series1," Posted" online,"10," 23%"

Shown"at"a" community" screening" Posted"online" Shared"privately" with" stakeholders" Social"Media"

The models emerged largely from the bottom up, through an iterative process that allowed the program to be adapted to each location. Fellows at each site experimented with various production tools, training, and outreach methods and reported back on successes and failures. As Kay Shaw, director of the Public Media Corps, noted, "There's something about the Internet that makes everything temporary and evolving, and that's the situation that we find ourselves in with our programming."

Here's how the projects worked at each site: Public Broadcasting Atlanta: At Public Broadcasting Atlanta, five Digital Media Arts Clubs were originally formed, with up to 50 students attending. Students created PSAs and short videos on health and wellness and dropout prevention which were aired on the local TV station, shown at a community screening, posted online and shared privately with stakeholders.

In the fall of 2012, three Digital Media Arts Clubs were formed at three locations, with approximately 16-18 students per location.

These students created similar content, which was shared in the same way. In addition, student-created videos were shown at Parent Summits—with excellent responses from parents.

Project Manager Bernice McLean explained that student feedback showed that 6" "

participation in the dMAC "made education more interesting and improved their motivation and participation in school." In addition, she noted that project staff recognized significant changes in students' attitudes, confidence levels, and willingness to try new things.

Public Broadcasting Atlanta is involved in multiple American Graduate projects, but according to Leah-Lane Lowe, Director of Grants, this project stood out from the rest: "The dMAC program was one of the best for American Graduate," she said. "PBA wanted to do direct service with kids, and this showcased our skills as a public broadcasting agency." McLean added that the program influenced students' attitudes toward school as well: "It gave them a sense of achievement, improved their self-confidence. Once they received that, they opened up to their classroom experience, going to school, staying in school."

Vision Maker Media (Lincoln, NE; White Eagle, OK; and Minneapolis, MN): The dMACs took on a different form with Vision Maker Media (formerly Native American Public Telecommunications).

Here, they were implemented in three separate locations across three states as part of outreach efforts related to Standing Bear’s Footsteps, a one-hour documentary that tells the story of the Ponca tribe and how they’ve come to be geographically divided today.

Over the summer, Vision Maker Media worked with media fellows in Lincoln, Nebraska; White Eagle, Oklahoma; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. At each site, the fellows worked with up to 15 students once or twice a week to develop media projects that centered on the theme "Meaning of Home." By the end of the program, students across the three sites produced 13 documentary and personal narrative projects, including interviews with grandparents and tribal elders. These were shown at a community screening, posted online and shared through social media including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blip and Pinterest.

The next phase of the program in the fall of 2012 took the form of an afterschool program at two of the sites: Lincoln, Nebraska and White Eagle, Oklahoma, and resulted in six student-produced PSAs, which were posted online and shared through social media. Attendance at each site ranged significantly, ranging from five to 26 students.

According to project manager Blue Tarpalechee, "The project was very successful for the students.

They enjoyed themselves and were exposed to new and exciting opportunities. The participating communities are very proud of the work their students produced, and point to this project as a milestone for their year."

Mississippi Public Broadcasting (Jackson, MS): In Jackson, the DMAC was linked directly to existing dropout prevention efforts. Can I Kick It?, an original Mississippi Public Broadcasting production, is part of the station's dropout prevention efforts and features a series of testimonies from prominent Mississippians. dMAC 7" "

students joined the existing "Can I Kick It? Crew" to create a youth media campaign around dropout issues.

The Can I Kick It?: Youth Movement Through Media Summer Institute engaged students in a week of leadership development and community engagement, followed by three weeks of media production training to create mini-documentaries that addressed the dropout crisis. The 50 participating students were divided into 10 groups and created mini-documentaries targeting problems and solutions related to the dropout crisis. A student showcase was held for parents, community leaders, and other stakeholders. Students presented their final video projects, received awards in various categories, and received a $400 stipend for successful completion of the program.

Project manager Maggie Stevenson said the Can I Kick It? Crew provided "the power of leveraging the student voice . . . everybody wanted to know how to be a part of it."

In the second phase, Can I Kick It? Crews were initiated in four targeted high schools: Wingfield High School, Callaway High School, Provine High School, and Lanier High School. Staff, along with teacher advisors, conducted weekly sessions at each school and focused on media production and dropout prevention. Up to 14 students attended per site, and 67 one to two-minute videos were produced and shared at a community screening.

Mississippi Public Broadcasting also hosted "Stop the Drop: A Dropout Prevention Summit" to discuss solutions to the dropout crisis in Mississippi. Students from the Can I Kick It? Crews attended the summit where they shared their videos and conducted interviews with educational professionals in attendance. The Stop the Drop Summit was streamed live via MPB’s web site and video highlights from the event were sent to media outlets across the state.

WYES (New Orleans, LA): In New Orleans, about 10 students met at the Central City Library throughout the summer where they learned production basic skills as well as storytelling strategies using online presentation tool Prezi.

Students created video interviews (for example: "What I Want to Be When I Grow Up") that were shown at a community screening, posted online, shared privately with stakeholders, and shared through blogging and Facebook.

This program was not continued in the fall. Instead, in January, PMC staff kicked off the American Graduate Flash Festival with 25 participants at WYES’s new station that replaced the facilities destroyed during Hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

Project Manager Monica Turner noted the significant effect the program had on middle school students. The culminating event "meant so much to them. They named [PMC Fellow Daria Harrison] as a great mentor. Some of them said they now want to attend college because of her."

The program was meaningful for Harrison as well, who said, "When we give our students hope, a vision, and realistic steps to obtaining that vision, we can change lives."

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WHUT (Washington, DC): In DC, the program continued to grow, with two six-week dMAC summer institutes engaging an average of 10 students per site. Participants in these institutes produced 10 Prezi projects, a blog, a musical track, and two videos that were shown at a community screening, posted online, shared privately with stakeholders, and shared through social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and SoundCloud.

In the fall, the program continued at four area high schools and one public library. Each club met twice a week for two hours. Up to 10 students attended per site. They created nine blogs, six podcasts, six websites/portfolios and 17 videos. These productions were also shown at a community screening, posted online, shared privately with stakeholders and shared through social media.

Student productions in DC addressed a wide range of topics beyond the dropout crisis, including, obesity, love, music, and Black History Month.

According to Ivana Jackson, NBPC’s program associate responsible for coordinating the dMACs for station partner WHUT: Overall this was an exciting experience, the students learned new skills, they refined other skills and pushed each other to work together as a team and excel. I am very proud of the work that was accomplished. It's even more exciting to see how we have touched these students' lives forever. We have six dMAC students graduating from high school this year. Some who came into the dMAC with no real idea of where they were going in life, but now see themselves as leaders and creators.

Since Washington DC served as an incubator city, Public Media Corps staff there were able to observe a significant impact over time. As Jackson remarked, "Making a difference in one kids' life is important, but we've made a difference in a lot of kids' lives."

Said Victor Estes, a dMAC student from DC MET: The Digital Media Arts Club (dMAC) at DC MET has helped me to express new ideas about everyday things such as college and high school. For example, many times in our club meetings, Torrance, the American Graduate Fellow, would ask us for our opinions about a certain topic at hand and whether it’s through a Prezi project or a short video, he encouraged us to express ourselves verbally and creatively. This showed me that my opinion was important even when I felt like it wasn't. Using the club as an outlet has helped me open up in other areas of my life. Besides learning about the equipment and making new friends, I’ve learned to make public service announcements and so much more. I’ve grown a lot from my dMAC experience.

In addition to learning how to better use media to discuss complex issues, the clubs had a positive effect on the students’ educational experiences. Students in the clubs are on the path to graduation or have graduated. Their attendance and behavior improved because if they were suspended or 9" "

absent they couldn’t participate in the clubs, and participation improved relationships between students and faculty advisors. LaVaughn Turner explained how one student with "atrocious" attendance turned herself around through participating in the dMAC: "Her attendance is where it should be now. She comes routinely. And I credit that to her success, her participation in that particular program, in the Digital Media Arts Club."

Over the course of the projects, PMC staff tracked with Project Managers the ways in which the clubs affected the “ABCs” (attendance, behavior, and classwork), which indicate risk for dropout.

Said Kay Shaw, "Our goal was not just to train new producers but to use digital media as a way to build commitment to education and build skills that are transferable to the classroom."

Flash Festivals At the same time that the dMACs were taking shape around the country, another outcome of the initial PMC experiment was the decision by NBPC’s Jacquie Jones to produce a documentary about the drop-out crisis as an additional American Graduate project. 180 Days: A Year Inside an American High School follows the lives of the first graduating class of Washington Metropolitan High School (DC MET).

Over the course of the production it became clear that the screening of the documentary provided an anchor for showcasing student-produced media.

NBPC staff worked to develop a new format using lessons learned from previous dMAC iterations: the Flash Festival.

"The Flash Festival worked well because it provided focus. And the experience of viewing other peoples videos really made [the students] feel connected and know that other people were looking at their films."

Bernice McLean, Public Broadcasting Atlanta

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The Flash Festival was a short, intense weekend production workshop in which Public Media Corps staff worked with students to create dropout themed short videos for an event they dubbed the “American Graduate Student Film Festival.” This coincided with the airing of 180 Days on March 25, 2013. Student-produced videos created at various sites across the country were posted online by their creators, and winners were selected by popular vote. The Flash Festivals provided a filtering mechanism, allowing the best videos to rise to the top through crowdsourced voting and community outreach. Over the course of the festival, 33 films garnered 16,160 views—well surpassing the Public Media Corps' goal of 10,000 views.

The Flash Festivals served as a compressed version of the dMAC model that worked for stations to provide immediate content and immediate impact. They fed into the broader American Graduate Film Festival, with the prospect of prizes and national exposure creating excitement and buy-in.

"The competition was an effective way of getting the young people invested in moving the content beyond the web," said Nonso Christian Ugbode, Black Public Media’s Director of Digital Media.

Kay Shaw explained that the Flash Festivals provided "a way to engage communities in a tangible way, have impact, and have some ongoing response and feedback."

Experiences on the Ground PMC staff organized four out of five dMAC sites to hold Flash Festivals, with the exception of Washington, DC—which already had greater access to Public Media Corps staff throughout the 10" "

year. Flash Festivals were also held at two American Graduate stations which were not dMAC sites: WHYY in Philadelphia and ETV in Columbia, South Carolina.

By all accounts, the Flash Festivals were a resounding success. "Everywhere we went, the Flash Festival was a memorable experience for the kids," said Shaw.

According to Bernice McLean of Public Broadcasting Atlanta, "The Flash Festival worked well because it provided focus. And the experience of viewing other peoples videos really made [the students] feel connected and know that other people were looking at their films." Kristine Keen, a high school student who participated in the Philadelphia Flash Festival said it was "the best experience of her life."

"The Flash Festival was the best thing this station has ever done.

I have heard so many comments from colleagues: 'Who thought that up? That was just the best thing that somebody could think of!' To be a station and to impart

that process to kids and then to Blue Tarpalechee of NAPT found the Flash Festival have meaningful subject matter. gave students the chance to experiment with different facets of production. "During the Flash Festival, the . . It was amazing." students seemed to really enjoy getting to be both in front of and behind the camera in multiple roles. The students collaborated on each other’s projects, and as Monica Turner, a result, they each got to try something new." He also WYES New Orelans! noted, "It was a highlight getting to see different skill sets: some were very creative and had great ideas about the film. Others enjoyed helping out with the technical side of things. Being able to act alongside one of the students who had natural talent for acting was very rewarding."

NBPC’s Jackson agreed, noting that the American Graduate Student Film Festival was "the most well-received activity by the students; the students were really excited about the competition." In addition to providing students with a strict deadline, the Flash Festival also encouraged them to develop new skills: "It wasn't just about them writing, producing, filming and editing. It was also them coming up with marketing strategies about how to market their films."

Competing with students from all over the country, also helped students overcome self-doubt and fear of failure. Jackson noted that the winning team from Washington, DC —Anacostia High School's Be the Change team—initially doubted themselves. "It was exciting to show them they could do things they didn't think they could do." Jackson also traveled to several of the Flash Festivals in other cities and found the experience transformative: "To go somewhere where you never met students and you're in the trenches and motivating them and they walk away with a different perspective, to make that impact in a weekend is phenomenal."

According to Monica Turner of WYES, "The Flash Festival was the best thing this station has ever done. I have heard so many comments from colleagues: 'Who thought that up? That was just the best thing that somebody could think of!' To be a station and to impart that process to kids and then to have meaningful subject matter. . . It was amazing."

Maggie Stevenson from Mississippi Public Broadcasting (whose Flash Festival participants took second and third places) said that the "exposure through the film festival proved to be really 11" "

effective for us." The students didn't really understand the inner workings of public media were able to interact with station staff, and the people at the station were able to appreciate the caliber of the students involved in the project. The students also benefited from collaborating with other stations, interacting with students and seeing the similarities in their stories.

Some of the participating stations already had a strong educational focus, which allowed them to dedicate staff to working on this project. However, often the staff members came out of the newsroom—a set of production approaches that proved to be limiting. By bringing in additional trainers, NBPC staff expanded the capacity of stations to support new types of production more in line with students’ ambitions and voices.

"[The students] were already content creators.

The Flash Festivals helped sharpen their production skills, bumped up their storytelling skills, and brought their voices into a national dialogue,” Kay Shaw Public Media Corps Director!

In contrast to the news-focused production formats emphasized by other American Graduate initiatives, the Flash Festivals tapped independent filmmakers as trainers. This broadened the possibilities for genres that the students could try and allowed them to craft stories that moved beyond their own experiences. “This pushed not only the quality higher but also the creativity and storytelling," said Shaw. "It gave the kids permission to work in any genre they could think of.” As a result, the students produced more dynamic and nuanced stories that allowed them to understand their role as experts in the issues at hand.

For example, a trio of stories about bullying show the different approaches to the topic: The Invisible Bully (Jackson, MS) features a female student being chased through the woods to the sounds of growling in a classic horror movie setup. When she stumbles, we see she is being chased by three fellow students who tell her she is not good enough, representing her inner struggle and self-doubt. She is transported to a school hallway where she is encouraged by a sympathetic teacher and eventually tells us how she graduates.

Interview with a Bully is a scripted examination of the backstory of a bully, who says "I don't know really why I bully." We see flashbacks of her parents fighting and her being bullied. She asks, "What's the worst that could happen?" And we see a bullied student walking through a graveyard, surrounded by images of death.

Education Talkback (Washington, DC) is a panel discussion, moderated by a PMC fellow featuring Ballou High School students who discuss their own experiences with bullying (as victims and perpetrators). As the students tell their stories, we see statistics about the prevalence of bullying and its effects on students.

The Flash Festivals emphasized the growing role of media as a two-way communication channel.

The youth participants were positioned as experts on their own experiences and storytellers with a fresh perspective who could counter stereotypical representations and prepackaged narratives about who drops out and why.

"They were already content creators. The Flash Festivals helped sharpen their production skills, bumped up their storytelling skills, and brought their voices into a national dialogue,” said Shaw.

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Creating Content that Matters In addition, the Flash Festival subject matter proved to be especially meaningful and relevant for students. The winning team from Anacostia High School created a compelling video, Be the Change, which encourages adults to look beyond stereotypes and become mentors who can change young peoples' lives.

In South Carolina, the Flash Festival included a talkback session with Raven Quattlebaum, one of the main students featured in 180 Days. The resulting discussion was profound. The students "spilled their guts and poured their hearts out," said Amy Shumaker of South Carolina ETV. "Almost every student had a story about a hurdle they were facing. Even the students who were doing well in school had hurdles that could prevent them from graduating. It was amazing to see what kids are really facing."

Programs like the Flash Festival help to mitigate these challenges. "We learned that programs like this really do engage students who are normally bored and disengaged at school," said Shumaker.

Making such connections in quite difficult in the day-to-day operation of most public media stations, and supports their educational mission in the community.

Kay Shaw described the Flash Festivals as "The culmination of taking an effective model and packaging it so that we can have an immediate impact." In terms of both impact and costeffectiveness, "The Flash Festival was a project that keeps on giving."

Lessons Learned Along the way dMAC and Flash Festivals have faced challenges, including bureaucratic hurdles, variations in equipment and skill levels for students, fellows, and faculty. Top lessons learned include: 1. Community engagement projects benefit stations in multiple ways. The dMACs and Flash Festivals provided stations with a conduit to communities they are not otherwise tapped into, repositioning them from a broadcast-only role to one of community convener, catalyst and hub. Not only did these projects offer the stations digital content, but they also allowed them to report more authentically on issues of education and social disparities.

2. The Public Media Corps serves as a powerful educational and employment pipeline for minority students and fellows. Not only did participants cite the program as a catalyst for seeking further education and vocational training, but numerous PMC fellows have used their experiences as springboards for finding employment in stations, national public media programs, schools, other media outlets, government and civic organizations. Despite facing academic challenges, not a single student who has participated in the dMAC program has failed to either move on to the next grade or to graduate.

3. The dMAC programs are the most effective at stations that already have a strong staff focused on education topics and outreach. For example, the statewide Mississippi station already had a presence in schools and communities throughout the state, and so the dMAC program could more effectively be integrated into the existing infrastructure. An ongoing initiative that can be tied to student media production, such as the outreach related to Standing Bear’s Footsteps can also provide much-needed funding, networks, and structure.

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The longer-term dMAC programs effectively support students and raise awareness of public media in underserved communities.

4. Flash Festivals provided the most efficient way for sharing top-notch student work. dMAC schools had a tough time generating audiences for student productions, with most venues for student work (including online and community screenings) generating audiences of a few hundred viewers at best. The Flash Festival provided an effective model for showcasing student work within and outside of local communities. In this format, student productions garnered thousands of views instead of hundreds. The design of the flash festivals mirror similar rapid production and protoyping events that are happing across the media environment, such as hackathons, which turbo-charge innovation and generate new models for engaging users and communities.

5. Flash Festivals provided the structure and focus students needed. Participating Flash Festival sites consistently remarked on the benefit of having a firm deadline for student productions. The Flash Festivals provided the structure students needed to focus their energy on achieving clear goals within a short time period, enabling students to devote their concentration solely toward the project. In addition, students were inspired to create their best work knowing it would be shared as part of a national competition. This model was particularly effective for stations that are not already oriented towards serving students and community members.

6. The challenge for closing the digital divide has changed. While access to digital technologies has grown, the new frontier is use. Shaw explained how the dMAC and Flash Festival models are aimed at teaching students and community members to "use technology as a tool instead of a toy," in order to demonstrate how youth can shift their content production skills from personal expression to participation in cultural and civic debates. The goal, said Shaw, was to “truly empower the youth voice.�

7. Mobile is the next frontier. 34% of Flash Festival videos were played on mobile devices, and in a survey of 1281 individuals in DC surveyed conducted by the PMC in 2010, Black/African Americans and Hispanic/Latinos reported that they were much more likely to connect to the Internet through their mobile phones (70.7% and 76.1% respectively) than White/Caucasian respondents (57%). Given the introduction of increasingly cheaper and more sophisticated smartphones and tablets since then, this trend seems likely to continue.

This suggests that Flash Festivals should continue to focus on platforms that are accessible through these devices.

8. Student production skills take time to develop. While student enthusiasm was high across the board, production skills remained inconsistent. Throughout the course of the program, "the storytelling and production process improved," said Shaw, "but the quality of technical execution is still a work in progress." Some of these production challenges can be chalked up to lack of consistent access to professional editing software. Part of the challenge, however, is that professional editing skills take time to develop and four hours of weekly club time, which must cover not only production activities but literacy training as well, isn’t enough for most students to hone their skills. Students will not immediately produce broadcast-quality work, and perhaps they should not be held to broadcast-quality standards.

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9. Streamlining is important. Over the course of the developing the dMAC process, the PMC staff and fellows experimented with training participants in many different platforms including presentation software, blogging, interviewing, video production, audio production, and more. However, they often found that neither station staff nor faculty members had the capacity or skills to maintain expertise in so many areas. Sticking with one format—digital video—allowed for training to be deep rather than broad and dovetailed with the stations’ goals.

10. Students require additional incentives to participate in afterschool programming. A common concern among sites was the challenge of competing with athletics and other afterschool activities. Without this competition, summer institutes and weekend Flash Festivals were better able to capture and sustain student attention. In Atlanta, station staff also noted that the summer institute was more successful than the afterschool program because it included a stipend for participants. While stipends may not be always be a costeffective option, other incentives may inspire students to participate consistently in the program.

11. Station staff need digital production training too. Levels of digital literacy were uneven among station personnel, and many could have benefitted from additional training. One station asked for more specific technical direction to be integrated into the curriculum so that stations with less digital literacy training have a more clear roadmap towards success.

12. There is a need for consistent tracking mechanisms and centralized administration across all sites. Many of the station sites involved mentioned the difficulty in implementing programming with changing groups of students, restrictive school policies and unforeseen logistical challenges. Streamlined administration may help to alleviate some of these concerns, especially for projects that were spread across multiple locations. Stations also expressed the need for support in dealing with school administration.

Next Steps As of summer 2013, three years after the very first Public Media Corps fellow training boot camp, response to the program has been enthusiastic. Existing sites have asked that the projects continue and new dMAC partnerships are emerging from the community as well as the corporate sector. The project continues to serve as a connector between communities and stations, offering stations the opportunity to produce content that appeals to younger online viewers. All of the sites involved expressed a desire for the program to continue. Kay Shaw recounted the requests from schools and stations: "The demand is there—the question is: is the funding there, and can we train enough people?"

While there will be challenges to address in the next phase of implementation, the model will continue to generate interest and enthusiasm as it continues to grow. After the successes of the last several years, and the Flash Festivals in particular, Shaw reflected, "I just cannot get over how good people feel after having participated in the program."

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PUBLIC MEDIA CORPS AND AMERICAN GRADUATE FELLOWS 2010 Kibwe Chase-Marshall Brittany Clemons T. Je’Nein Ferrell Brennan Gerald Khalil Gill Robin Hamilton Ivana Jackson Mike Jenssen Gerardo Medrano Ashley Mosley Selina Musuta Latoya Peterson Olivia Rubagumya Danielle Scruggs Ariel Valdez 2011-2012 Sandile Ashford Kendra Burton Daria Harrison Christian Jones John Knight Tyrell Vaughn

WHUT HOWARD UNIVERSITY TELEVISION Jefferi Lee, General Manager Luma Haj, Director of Administration Sharon Drayton, Production Manager PARTNERS Anacostia Senior High School, Washington, DC Anacostia Neighborhood Library, Washington, DC Ballou Senior High School, Washington, DC Central City Library, New Orleans, LA CentroNia, Washington, DC Comcast, Washington, DC Eastern Senior High School, Washington, DC Guerilla Media Arts, Washington, DC Mississippi Public Broadcasting, Jackson, MS Public Broadcasting Atlanta, Atlanta, GA Public Media Commons, WHYY, Philadelphia, PA SHINE, Atlanta, GA United Planning Organization, Washington, DC Vision Maker Media, Lincoln, NE Washington Metropolitan High School, Washington, DC White Eagle Ponca Reservation, Ponca City, OK WYES, New Orleans, LA Young People’s Project, Jackson, MS

2012-2013 Semia Hamlin Daria Harrison Torrence Hill Shamela McClain Tyler Scott Ronnie Shaw Jordan Stewart Tyrell Vaughn HOWARD UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK AMERICAN GRADUATE FELLOWS Christian Johnson Angelica Mooney Junell Taylor Samuel Perry

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