In Education there is always a plan and outcome goal for every lesson. The Youth Voices Project begins with this framework, but it is meant to adapt and change. With each project, we work with students from different areas of the city with different backgrounds. We work in different facilities with varying resources. Education Notes helps to mediate between plan and reality by looking at the weekly workshops from the educator's perspective, and how the process of developing the project relates to larger social and educational issues.

We invite you to take a look at what's been going on inside and outside the walls of Environmental Charter High School.

Meet the Youth Voices Student Producers from Environmental Charter High School through their "Meet Me" PowerPoint presentations that they created. It's a straightforward but powerful process where the students create a PowerPoint presentation using found or personal images that represent several aspects of their interests and personality. It's a great way for students to present themselves and their interests, learn their strengths and weaknesses as media producers, and get a glimpse of the technological tools they'll be using throughout the Departures project. A major part of this production involves students using visuals to tell the story of their relationship to their neighborhood, so what better way to begin than with an exploration of the self? So, come and meet our student producers!

Students produce digital interactive panoramas (aka murals). Through the development of this project, students learned to use design principals and graphic elements, such as repetition, hierarchy, texture, color, and transition. The student murals curated an experience of walking the paths of the places on the map, and the textures of the experience at a street level. Students were challenged to see what kind of juxtapositions or narratives they can create through these “linearesque” audio/visual presentations. They were taught to use Vuvox, an online application that allows you to cut and collage images, embed video and audio, and create stand-alone multimedia panoramic experiences. They were encouraged to apply the graphic principles learned and perhaps integrate some of the styles of collage artists and designers.

Check out the murals by clicking on the entries below.

The Student Producers from Richland Farms' Youth Voices consisted of 10 high school students from Environmental Charter High School. Students first researched thematic elements of the project like localism, environmentalism, sustainability, watershed, as well as the history of Compton. Then they worked in groups to acquire various multimedia production skills in photography, cinematography, sound recording and design, video editing, and interactive design. Through several activities, they were able to then create and post their work.