Radio-Television-Film - Media Literacy

Media Literacy

JUNE 6 & 7, 2008
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATION
LADY BIRD JOHNSON ROOM - CMA 5.160 (campus map/room map)

Participant Biographies

Sanjay Asthana is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism at Middle Tennessee State University. His research interests are heterodox, and span neo-marxism, postcolonial theory, media studies, and visual culture. Dr. Asthana received his Ph.D. from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota. His book Innovative Practices of Youth Participation in Media, published for UNESCO in 2006 is a seminal text in the emerging field of youth media.

Kristy Bowden is Director, Digital Media Council, Austin, TX. Kristy Bowden is an executive at Skillpoint Alliance and Director of The Digital Media Council (DMC) in Austin, TX. The DMC supports and creates industry-led collaborations with educators and community leaders to strategically advance the economic growth of the digital media and creative technology and design industries of Central Texas. The systemic and long-term initiatives of the DMC provide educators and students, from the middle school to the university level, with knowledge, resources, and skills relevant to these fields, in order to cultivate a prepared and successful workforce, ensuring the continued security, expansion and innovation of these industries in our region.

David Bruce is an assistant professor at Kent State University in the department of Teaching, Leadership and Curriculum studies. Prior to earning his Ph.D., David taught high school English and Media Studies for 11 years. His primary interest of research and teaching deals with reading and composing with video, particularly the way in which students and teachers can use print and video to complement each other. He served as President of the Ohio Council of Teachers of English Language Arts (OCTELA) and as the Director for the Commission on Media for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Allison Butler is assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Western Connecticut University. She holds a PhD from New York University's Media, Culture and Communication Department. Her work is focused primarily on integrating media education into secondary schools and the intersection of young people, media studies and identity development. Until 2008, Butler worked at a New York City public high school whose theme is media education and taught graduate classes in media education at NYU. She is most recently published in the Youth Media Reporter (March 2007) and the Academic Exchange Quarterly (Winter 2007).

Belinha De Abreu is an Auxiliary Assistant Professor at Drexel University. She received her BS from Rhode Island College and MLS from Southern Connecticut State University, and is completing her Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction from the University of Connecticut. Before joining the faculty at Drexel University, she was a library media specialist in Branford, Connecticut and an adjunct professor at both Sacred Heart University and Southern Connecticut State University. Prior to her career in academia, Professor De Abreu worked in broadcasting for an NBC affiliate in Providence, Rhode Island. Professor De Abreu's research interests include media literacy instruction for pre-service teachers and for middle school children. Her areas of teaching include resources for children and young adults, information literacy, and professional and social aspects of information service. Professor De Abreu's first book entitled, "Teaching Media Literacy: A How-To-Do-It Manual" was published this past summer by Neal-Schuman. In addition, her work 21st-Century Literacy: A Look At Ways Teachers Can Embrace the Newest Forms of Language (2007), Collaboration Station (2006) and Using Media Literacy through the Classroom Curriculum (2000) has been published in the magazine Cable in the Classroom.

Aaron Delwiche is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Trinity University. His current research interests encompass ways the Internet can be used to foster education and global dialogue since the early 1990s. His experiments with virtual worlds in the classroom have been covered by publications ranging from Wired to The Guardian (UK). He co-founded one of the first full-service virtual world consultancies, and recently served as co-chair of an international conference (Building the Global Metaverse) that explored the implications of transnational virtual worlds.

Jennifer J. Fleming is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism at California State University, Long Beach. Before joining academe, she worked in the broadcast news industry in Canada.

Juan Garcia is a producer at the Faculty Innovation Center, Cockrell School of Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin. He joined the Faculty Innovation Center in August 2001 and today serves as the Audio & Video Producer with specialties in podcasting and mobile content distribution. Garcia has spoken about new media trends for various organizations, including the Dallas Video Festival, Leadership Austin, and the World E-Democracy Forum in Paris, France. Along with his work, Garcia sits on the board of directors for several educational media arts organizations, is part of the advisory board for the Mobile Film School, and is an avid member of both the Austin Media Arts Council and the Digital Media Council. In 2007 he was the Youth Media Program Chair for the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture Conference and frequently consults for organizations focused on the development of youth-generated media. Inspired by filmmaking and technology at a young age, Juan began his career in 1996 as a radio DJ in Dallas before moving to Austin to earn a degree in Radio-Television-Film from the University of Texas in 2003.

James Paul Gee is the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University. He is a member of the National Academy of Education. His book Sociolinguistics and Literacies (1990, Third Edition 2007) was one of the founding documents in the formation of the “New Literacy Studies”, an interdisciplinary field devoted to studying language, learning, and literacy in an integrated way in the full range of their cognitive, social, and cultural contexts. His book An Introduction to Discourse Analysis (1999, Second Edition 2005) brings together his work on a methodology for studying communication in its cultural settings, an approach that has been widely influential over the last two decades. His most recent books both deal with video games, language, and learning. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2003, Second Edition 2007) argues that good video games are designed to enhance learning through effective learning principles supported by research in the Learning Sciences. Situated Language and Learning (2004) places video games within an overall theory of learning and literacy and shows how they can help us in thinking about the reform of schools. His most recent book is Good Video Games and Good Learning: Collected Essays (2007). Prof. Gee has published widely in journals in linguistics, psychology, the social sciences, and education.

Rodney Gibbs is studio head of Amaze Entertainment, a video game development studio. Developing on handheld and console platforms, Amaze specializes in prominent, mass-market, licensed titles, such as WWE Smackdown vs. Raw, The Incredible Hulk and X-Men. After entering game development as a writer and producer, Rodney co-founded Amaze Austin in 2001 and has grown it from four to 44 employees. Prior to game development, Rodney lived in Los Angeles and wrote and produced animated and live-action television programs for such series as Godzilla, Beast Wars, Dead Man's Gun, and Woody Woodpecker. Rodney chairs the Digital Media Council, a workforce development initiative focused on expanding the talent pool for all sectors of creative technology in Central Texas. He co-founded Austin's chapter of Dorkbot, a collection of people doing strange things with electricity, and serves on the board of the International Game Developers of Austin and the Texas Motion Picture Alliance. He is also an advisory board member for Austin Community College's game development program and South by Southwest Interactive's Screenburn festival. He lives in Austin with his wife, Nancy Mims, proprietor of Mod Green Pod, a green textile company, and their two children, Clara and Atticus.

Leslie Jarmon is a Senior Lecturer at The University of Texas at Austin with the Office of Graduate Studies' Professional Development & Community Engagement Program. She is a leader in the university's entry into virtual world environments, specifically Second Life (SL), where she co-founded the Educators Coop. Her avatar's name is Bluewave Ogee, and her research interests focus on Second Life and communication, technology, education, culture, and applications for developing countries. At UT-Austin, she was Principle Designer of the Nanotechnology Civic Forum and of the “nano scenario” civic engagement model. She also served as Regional Coordinator of the Micro-Enterprise Development Initiative for Latin America and the Caribbean with the U.S. Peace Corps.

Korina Jocson is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University's School of Education funded by the American Education Research Association and Institute of Education Sciences. Her research examines the intersections of literacy, technology, pedagogy, and cultural studies in education. Currently, she is investigating youth media arts as a site for literacy and academic development, in particular the ways in which new media technologies and digital multimedia composition shape teaching and learning in urban classrooms. She received her doctorate in Education in the area of Language, Literacy, & Culture from the University of California, Berkeley.

Jim Mathews [not in attendance, but co-authoring a chapter with Kurt Squire] is a doctoral student in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His current research interests include Augmented Reality gaming, informal school-based gaming groups, and location-based digital storytelling. Jim also teaches part-time at a small alternative high school in Middleton, Wisconsin. His communication arts-based curriculum connects students with their local communities through documentary filmmaking, photography, writing, and service learning projects. Students involved in his school-based video production studio have produced numerous videos for local non-profit agencies on topics ranging from aging to environmental education.

J. Lynn McBrien is an assistant professor in the College of Education at the University of South Florida. She teaches courses that fall within social foundations of education, including a graduate course in media literacy. Dr. McBrien received her Ph.D from Emory University in 2005. She is the former Senior Education Editor of CNN's education website, and she was the Project Manager and Senior Editor of a high-school curriculum entitled Media Matters: Critical Thinking in the Information Age. Her particular interest in media education focuses on ways in which media can enhance or deter social justice. Additionally, Dr. McBrien evaluates ways in which her own students respond to the use of new media as teaching tools.

Christian Raymond is Director of Outreach & Education at the Austin Film Society. Christian honed his craft as a screenwriter in Los Angeles, working with Walt Disney Films, Touchstone Pictures and the Jacobson Company through the Disney Screenwriting Fellowship. Christian has developed scripts for production companies and studios, has received a variety of writing awards, and been honored by the Writers Guild of America, West. He also spent several years as a writer/producer of educational films, creating fifty-some projects ranging in subject matter from multilingual hotel security training to stories about living with traumatic brain injury. Many of these films have been distributed and screened for educational purposes around the globe. Christian earned his M.A. from Wayne State University, studying Radio-Television-Film in his hometown of Detroit. As an educator, he has developed curriculum and taught in a variety of school and community-based settings for nearly a decade. Christian directs AFS' multifaceted education department, is a film instructor in the program, and editor of the journal, PERSISTENCE OF VISION.

Paul Resta holds the Ruth Knight Millikan Centennial Professorship in Instructional Technology and serves as Director of the Learning Technology Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He teaches advanced graduate courses in instructional technology, including technology planning and management and computer-supported collaborative learning. His current work focuses on web-based learning environments, computer-supported collaborative learning, and planning and policy issues in the use of information and communication technologies in teacher education. He serves as s Chair of the Association for Teacher Educators National Commission on Technology and the Future of Teacher Education and as Chair of the United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Working Group on E-Learning for Teacher Development.

Alice J. Robison (http://alicerobison.org) is a postdoctoral fellow in the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT, where she writes about literacy and new media, especially videogames. Her primary research is focused on how game designers and developers write, think, and talk about the ways their games are made and interpreted. She then shows how designers' and developers' interactive composing processes can help inform literacy education and writing instruction across K-21 curricula. In addition to her research and teaching, Alice also acts as the academic advisor to MIT's Project New Media Literacies (directed by Henry Jenkins) and is the writing and literacy coordinator for The Game School in New York City (directed by Katie Salen); both projects are funded under the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Learning Initiative. Before she came to MIT, Alice was a founding member of the Games, Learning and Society research project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, directed by James Paul Gee. Dr. Robison holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2006).

Jeff Share is faculty advisor in the Teacher Education Program at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He earned his Ph.D. in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA researching critical media literacy. Previously, Dr. Share worked for ten years as a freelance photojournalist documenting situations of poverty and social activism on three continents. He spent six years teaching bilingual primary school in the Los Angeles Unified School District and two years teaching in southern Mexico. He worked for several years as the Regional Coordinator for Training at the Center for Media Literacy. His current research and practice focuses on the teaching of critical media literacy in K-12 education.

Kurt Squire [not in attendance, but co-authoring a chapter with Jim Mathews]is an assistant professor of Educational Communications and Technology, and Director of the Games, Learning, and Society Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on new media and learning. He is a former Montessori and primary school teacher and, before coming to Wisconsin, was Research Manager of the Games-to-Teach Project at MIT and Co-Director of the Education Arcade. Squire earned his doctorate in Instructional Systems Technology from Indiana University; his dissertation research examined students' learning through a game-based learning program he designed around Civilization III. Squire co-founded Joystick101.org with Jon Goodwin and currently writes a monthly column with Henry Jenkins for Computer Games magazine. In addition to writing over 30 scholarly articles and book chapters he has given dozens of talks and invited addresses in North America, Europe, and Asia. Squire's current research interests center on the impact of contemporary gaming practices on learning, schooling and society. Along with several other University Wisconsin-Madison faculty, he runs the Games and Professional Practice Simulations (GAPPS) initiative at the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab.

Kathleen Tyner is an assistant professor in the Department of Radio, Television and Film at The University of Texas at Austin. She is author, editor, producer and co-editor of numerous books, articles, documentaries and curricular materials related to literacy and new media, including Literacy in a Digital World: Teaching and Learning in the Age of Information, A Closer Look: Youth Media, and the award-winning Scanning Television II. Professor Tyner conducts research and evaluation projects internationally about the uses of digital media for analysis and production in formal and informal learning environments. Early in her career, she worked as a news and public affairs producer/director for Viacom's city station in San Francisco and as an arts and entertainment editor for the San Francisco Chronicle videotex division.