Discovering Community: Students, Digital Media, and Place-Based Learning

Posted by on February 24, 2006

Discovering Community: Students, Digital Media, and Place-Based Learning at Vermont Technical College, Randolph Center July 10-14, 2006

Sponsored by The Vermont Folklife Center, Discovering Community: Students, Digital Media, and Place-Based Learning brings together the methods of ethnographic field research and the techniques of documentary production to facilitate the development of projects that both draw knowledge from-and return knowledge to-students’ home communities. Over the course of an intensive week-long program participants will work with cultural researchers, documentary media specialists, artists, and fellow educators in a rich, hands-on learning environment. Participants will experience a week that nurtures creativity, modeling ways to structure a similar environment in their own work with students.

The Discovering Community Summer Institute builds on our many years working with teachers on community study projects, the near-universal availability of digital cameras and recording equipment in schools, and the do-it yourself editing capability that digital technology now allows.

Participants will gain the tools and means for building students’ knowledge and relationship to their home communities, as well as for using the community, its people, its cultural heritage, and its institutions, as a powerful resource for teaching. Institute faculty and participants will also form an ongoing network of like-minded peers who will provide feedback and support for each other’s classroom and program initiatives.

More extensive information on the/ Discovering Community Institute, our nationally recognized faculty members, rich workshop offerings, and a downloadable brochure can be found at: http://www.discoveringcommunity.org. Or contact Greg Sharrow at 802-388-4964 gsharrow@vermontfolklifecenter.org