 Well, hello. I've been sitting all morning, so I'm going to stand if it's OK with you because you're not really here to see or hear me. I'll sit and be quiet later if you're here to see them. I got to put this panel together, and I was really excited about it because, so I'm going to be getting to the moderator, panelists. I will introduce in a second. But I got really excited about this because I'm leading life to teaching. I spent a lot of time in the production world. And when I was talking, I'm sorry, creating a conversation about what do we create? How do we develop creators? How do we get them to take a leadership role and create content? It was fun for me to, I mean, as a professional, it was fun for me to talk with other educators and their different perspective. And what's great is three different major institutions represented by the problem from Champaign College. Well, I just forgot your middle name. David Jewel. David Jewel. See, I should just read his name over there. I was looking through it. But I wanted to look at him. I'm pretty proud of you, B.M. and I'm going to come here and talk to you about the problem. Vermont State University, full disclosure of Megan is my sort of boss. She's the department chair that I teach in at over there. Actually, we all have the same role. Well, he used to be Mike Smith. We're now on to our fourth president. My ninth, so I've lost track. I've lost track. And we've only been there one and a half. What's great about this is they all focus in or around the use of video production in a variety of different ways that engage the community, whether it's through news, whether it's through community arts, whether it's through social activism. So talk about creating leaders that utilize the infrastructure. They're developing the students who then become your staffers, your colleagues, your interns at your community media station. So I will mention a few things about them and let them sort of fill in the gap of introduction. I try not to make people's bios or make them do speeches. So I'll start with maybe the person I know the least about, but I've learned a lot about the last 48 hours. Miles really focuses in and around and been working on a documentary around the history of CCTV and the true activism of that community media changing the way people make decisions, the way they feel about issues, educating them, informing them, engaging them. I had actually an opportunity very politely. He asked to interview me and we were talking about what does community media really sort of mean to me. And I came from the evil corporate broadcast side. I worked for networks and for stations. And there was always someone sort of making the decision for you because they had to make their case to make that content to sponsor, to a ratings number, to an ad agency. So they were able to sort of create content where none of those shackles are on you and making those decisions and be able to make great content that really was about what people were thinking about, what they wanna say and have that production not have any controls on it. Yeah, that was really refreshing to have that conversation with them. Miles, talk a little bit about how long you've been at UVM and sort of what's your focus there? Yeah, so teaching at the University of Vermont got a full-time hire, started in 2020. So it was adjuncting since 2017 and kind of in split between a few different departments. So there's a public communications department that goes by the name of community development and applied economics. So there's a visual design track in that program and it builds itself as a social science. So we're housed alongside other sciences in the College of Ag Life. But also working in film and television studies, which is your traditional film theory, criticism and production. So it's a kind of a interdisciplinary approach. And a lot of the stuff that I teach there is classes called documentaries for social change, community media production, sports media, as well as video production and animation, which would be over in the film and television studies. And a lot of this comes with the lens of how does this work build community as well as the kind of ethics of representation. And I think we're really seeing a strong push from the younger generation to understand what it means to turn cameras on people, the age of misinformation, the crafting of identity and social media. And so we're kind of seeing folks looking for something that maybe feel, even though for a lot of us here, this is really kind of been tried and true, but is a little bit more refreshing to a younger audience to learn about community media and learn about long form documenting and this kind of more civically minded work. Thank you. Yeah. Good government from Champaign College. I had a chance to talk with him because I had connected with some of their leadership. I sort of, another organization for the Little Can of Business Council and conversations with the leadership about reuniting or supporting more of their campaign, their campuses in Montreal. So I want to talk with Lisa Tiffin, who's your colleague in government administration where the worker title is there. I was talking to her about folks in this content and she immediately said, if you guys have to go. Took a look at some of the stuff that you creatively do online. Really sort of try to drive art and creativity into the messaging. So tell everybody a little bit about what you've been working on and what you've been doing and sort of your half CV-ish way of doing it. Right, I'm Gordon, I'm at Champaign College. I teach my areas called creative media and students can major in that. Champaign kind of markets itself as a very job placement, career oriented place and since I've been there since 2008, the game program there has really taken off. So if you know anything about Champaign, it used to be kind of a big business school and the creative arts have kind of just grown and grown and grown as business has kind of leveled out. And so the game program draws a lot of students. It's been for years one of the highest ranked game programs. It's not my area. There's a film program, graphic design. And so I've taught a lot in the film and broadcast area but I was hired to do creative media which is students that maybe don't wanna specialize in graphic design only. Cause most of those career track programs are very kind of rigid and very focused on placing people in specific industrial situations. Like the game industry is they want a certain kind of prep and same thing with film production and graphic design. And so sometimes students are like, well, I want a little bit more freedom to combine graphic design and creative writing or interactivity and animation. And so I have this like sort of bad news bears group of people that are all doing different things, right? And my approach and my whole career in production has been skewed heavily towards media for social change what I call media activism, which I'm a little worried it can be dated depending on people that understand what I mean by that and how much explanation it needs. And so it's a challenge for me is trying to create curriculum, new curriculum that is oriented that way that's media for social change. That's what I'm about right now like trying to make it either a major or a concentration and combination of draw the students that are already there that are so inclined to do that kind of work and also attract the students that I know that are out there. My motivator is when I look at the news every single day I just think there's work to be done. There's so much social change work to be done now more than ever. And in a landscape where the results of digital development and digital convergence have meant a shifting or a collapse in what we have traditionally thought of as journalism whether it's print journalism or televised journalism. My students now are speaking at completely different language visually, socially. And so like our ideas about what we grew up with with print and television journalism it's not that way anymore. And I'm thinking in the next five, 10 years when they're out in the world not only are the work that is gonna require social change is gonna be banging hard. And I think that the way to make those changes involves media. And so I'm trying to kind of take students and point them in that direction and say look any problem that is coming down is gonna involve organization which is gonna involve media, whatever that means now. Because you're gonna need to make your case for whatever issue. Yeah, and understand that maybe it's not newspapers anymore and it's not TV news anymore. How do you save that for more of our private conversation? But thank you for the introduction. So, lastly, maybe each of our chair from our State University oversees news seven at Lyndon when I first started teaching there on the visual arts side teaching for video production and editing and things like that. I got a good understanding of news seven as the sort of the way it was referenced as well by Jody Freed yesterday that the only sort of news outlet that existed in the Northeast Kingdom because it's in that gray area of it's not Montreal, it's not Brooklyn, it's not Manchester. So, don't talk a little bit about Darlene and Dave and that creation. So Megan oversees the station there now with the transformation. You can tell everybody else what you've overseen because it moves too fast for me. Sorry. Like Vermont State University is, Lyndon, Johnson, Castleton and the two campuses at Vermont Tackle and being soon to be happy family. No, we are happy family. I mean, there are days. It, we're still in transition. So yeah, I'm on the Lyndon campus and the communications program on Lyndon's campus turned 50 years old last year. So there's a really rich history of media and community media in particular. The community media part of what Lyndon's campus has always been a part of turns 50 in two years. So not that I'm counting, the countdown is on. 48 years ago, we launched the news station that serves 14 communities around our campus. We use the public access cable channel as our vehicle. Obviously now that consumers have changed, we're also streaming on social media because there's more cutting of the cable line. And so there's gotta be an acknowledgement of how people access information. But so we've got students in a newsroom which pretty much operates like any newsroom over here in Burlington. Hours can range from eight to 10, eight in the morning till 10 at night, depending on students sort of schedules with their classes and how many credits they're actually in the newsroom for. But we're a pre-professional program that tries to mimic reality, but we are 100% sort of merging ourselves into other platforms. We are constantly on social media. We are developing or have been developing a podcast that reaches parts of our community, sort of more long form community conversation, topics that are important to the region that in a broadcast setting would only get two minutes. We're sort of making it so that they're getting 20 to 30 instead. And really honing in on how the next generation of consumer is consuming news and information and making sure that we're acknowledging that but also acknowledging the limitations of the community in which we serve as the kingdom is not super well connected with high speed internet. And there are a lot of people who still depend on those old fashioned ways of gathering information. And I say old fashioned sometimes in my head with quotes because they're not that old fashioned. I also work with a lot of cinema production students who are sort of telling those types of stories in a more documentary style lens. And I also work with what we call new media students sort of in that PR marketing social media space and how we communicate all these things in short bursts across different platforms. So I'm everywhere and in between. Tim, that's my answer. And so thank you for your engaging introductions. What I like to do is I don't like to panel just to be we're all gonna talk at you. So I'm gonna moderate a discussion if you want to engage in that topic just raise your hand and then questions are good, comments are tolerated. But I am gonna definitely leave time at the end for general Q and A if you're just so enthralled that you don't want to interrupt the conversation that's going on. I hope that happens. So let's start with sort of a really crazy question but why are you here? Why did you want to come talk about this topic? Why is it so important to you that when I asked you to do this you took time out of your busy days and demanding students? Why is this an important discussion to have when we're thinking about what are the next generation of folks that we're developing and maybe a tip into some of the ways that you think about your curriculum to train them, educate them, engage them. I'll just toss that out of whoever wants to jump in first. If you want me to force someone to answer I can say what do you think? I mean I can start. I don't mind starting. The problem with starting though is I always get other ideas as other people talk. So that's the downside of going first. You can go ahead and get an idea. Woohoo! So one of the things I really love about the community media conversation is this is sort of, it's been a conversation that shifted especially since COVID and sort of how we all depend on media platforms to get information. But there's been a real shift generationally on sort of what is considered media and community media. And to some extent it's been a larger national conversation first and then it's sort of been sort of trickling down to that community level. I think what's important to remember is that the view of especially journalists has changed exponentially in the last five, six years. When the term fake news hit the general sort of hive brain, I cringed a lot. But it really shifted how journalists have been treated and how media in general has been treated. And so getting back to the roots of information when I think about community media, that's sort of what I come back to is it's not always about statewide or national issues. It's about community issues. And that's why sort of teaching students how to be good storytellers within their communities is the starting place. Because if they can be good storytellers they can start to push out the fake news comments or the relevancy comments and they can find ways to sort of penetrate through different media channels an audience that will start to listen and trust. And it all, it really comes back to where it starts in the community because if the community is not trusting news and information, then you have nowhere to start. You've got to sort of get them to understand that you're a trustworthy person. And so community media in my brain is so important because if you put yourself in a community, your students are storytelling in that community and the community starts to trust, they can also start to learn how to filter out what's going on beyond the community. And sometimes it takes a little bit of education on the part of those who've built that trust to show how you can learn what's good to listen to and what's not. So I think that community media in general is pivotal to how we all consume information moving forward. How's that for a start? Yeah. You're nodding your head big usually. So you've nominated yourself to follow up. See, look at that. That's great. Well, I mean, I really admire Megan's point about trusts. I think that that is something that there's a deep mistrust these days. And I kind of want to preface all this by saying like in no way am I placing any value judgment on different lanes that people take. Like journalism is not over here and community media is some other pure form over here. Like there's absolutely interdisciplinary ways that they can inform each other and they glean ideas. And documentary filmmaking is not on some pedestal over here either. So let's make sure that we understand that. And this is kind of what I've learned from being in the classroom with students is like a lot of the time I get checked on the fact that like we need a very diverse ecosystem of information. It's not in one lane. It should be coming from all directions and they can all inform each other. So I think on top of that, like back to Tim's question about why come here, I think it's part of it is about collaboration, right? And the idea that being in a privileged position to be at a university and being able to collaborate with the local community media access station, I think opens up a lot of real world experience for the folks. And so I think that that would be one of the main reasons that brought me here. And I had something else to say, but I'm going to pause there because I don't remember what it was. It's gonna come. That thing I was gonna say. I like what you said about the diverse ecosystem that really resonates with what I think about all the time. When Tim said, why did I want to come and be here? I ran into this thing in my sort of media studies universe that a filmmaker actually pointed me at. It's this thing online called the Crash Course by a guy who's, I think he's an economist actually, he's named Chris Martinson. And it's this series of like little micro video lectures. Some of them are only like 10 minutes. Do you know this thing? And it kept getting brought up to the point where I was like, all right, I guess I need to look at this. And I made the mistake of starting it at like 11 o'clock at night. And it's, and they're like potato chips. Like you watch one and then you're like, I'll just watch one more and I'll just watch one more. And there's like 30 of them. So. By 3 a.m. Yeah, by 3 a.m. I was like, I'd taken this Crash Course, but one of the things he says in this Crash Course is that we are living in a world that's approaching very hard limits in our life, in our lifetime. And he calls them the three E's. It's energy, economics and the environment. And he's like, the way we're doing everything in these areas either has to change or we're gonna be forced to change it because it's gonna, the way we're doing it is gonna collapse. It's gonna stop working in our lifetime, right? And he makes a very compelling case for that. And it's, you know, it might sound kind of like doom-scrolling and alarming, but I felt like it was really empowering because one of the ways he, one of the things he says is that we tend to look at the future, like the next 20 years are gonna be sort of like the last 20 years. It's just how we kind of situate ourselves. We say, well, it's gonna be like the past, but with new technology. And he makes this really strong case that we're at a point right now where the next 20 years are gonna be nothing like the last 20 years. Like we can't even really think that it's gonna be the same. Just because of major disruptions in those three areas, what does that have to do with media? I'm at this point where I'm getting students out of high school and they're pivoting, looking at their lives in the next 20 years, you know? And so I feel compelled to address that, to say, what does that mean? And I think it applies to everything. It's not the least of which is media. How do you maintain a diverse landscape? What does journalism mean now when print journalism and television journalism, you know, if you just look at the numbers of newspapers that don't exist anymore, that means those journalists are not employed there anymore. That means, and it's not like a newspaper print journalist just is gonna go online. It just doesn't work that way. There's been kind of a cratering of what we had thought of as journalism. And my 18 year old students, it's been their whole life. Like that's news to them. They don't know anything else, you know? So what is the actual landscape look like in the next 20 years? And so that's what I wanna kind of understand by seeing what people are working on. So part of it for me is, that fascinates me is that we all develop curriculum. And so while we are in the, all of us in this room are in the sort of media world, industry, how whatever word you wanna put on it, right? We're creators of something we should perform. It's not just about understanding the Zoom and focus and editing and cross-fades. You know, I think some of the things we talked about that I think are important, right? Historical understanding, regulatory understanding, legal understanding, you know, community impact. How would you think about educating students? How do you work that in? Because they're not taking a history class, they're taking a video production class, they're taking maybe journalism class. You can justify, great, we're gonna talk about, you know, broadcast rules and ethics around FCC. But how do we begin to sort of have this conversation with creators to not just think Zoom and focus, but to think, what am I capturing the lens? Why am I capturing it? You know, I laugh every time my 24 year old, 23 year old daughter tells me about be real on Instagram. And I'm like, well, that also has to get taught in the classroom, not just technology. Talk a little, let's talk a little bit about sort of, maybe, Megan, again, I'm gonna start with you first. Because journalism, you know, you're running a new station that sometimes has to teach people how to act like a new station. And there are rules or norms that new stations have. But if you don't teach students history about history, right, maybe if you talk about history, you know, I'll throw one or two of the other topics. That's either the other two of you as we go. Yeah, I mean, it's tough when you're in a college newsroom in particular, because you only have students for two years. So historical context for juniors and seniors is hard to plant. Because, you know, I'm in my 18th year at Linden, which is terrifying, by the way. But I have a lot of historical context and knowledge that they do not have. So a lot of times I'm like, butt, butt, butt. And they're like, I had no idea what you're talking about. But I'm gonna go backwards to sort of what you started talking about, which is about curriculum and how you sort of take a curriculum and help sort of feed this a little bit. I've gotten a little loosey-goosey in my curriculum in the last few years. Obviously, there are foundations that carry no matter what. Everybody has to understand good composition, good audio. And they have to understand the basics of editing. Like that's like, duh, okay? If we wanna produce good content that people are gonna consume, we need to understand some basics. But where I have really started to hone in and change the approach is the storytelling component. It's the who, what, where, when, why. Let's go back to the five, the five basics. And in a lot of cases, I really just put parameters on a course, but what happens within it is different every semester because we're having conversations about what's happening in real time. And instead of using history as the crutch, we're looking at the present and saying, okay, how would you approach this if you were in that position to tell this story? Or when it comes to legal and ethical things, let's take things from the real populist space and talk about how things are unfolding and how you might approach things differently if you were in the position of running this company that was basically putting themselves over a cliff. So it has become more conversation in real time than historical context. But when it comes to the storytelling, you need the historical context. So there's this funny balance. And what I have noticed about this next generation of consumer of media is they really hate research. Like just load it. If you tell them to go Google things and to do research, they're like, but why? I like, I don't wanna do that. I want it to be right in front of me. It's like this instant gratification generation. And so you have to show them why it's important to do research. And in a lot of cases, I make it a game because why not? If I can make it a speed race of who gets the most information back story on an information or on a story, then that's engaging and it gets them involved in the process and it sort of makes them understand why that history piece is important. And it makes the storytelling better because if they're writing vanilla and I want a little meat, then we gotta go find the meat. And so you gotta make it sort of engaging and understanding. I will say that sort of, and it's slightly tangential, but not. I had a fantastic conversation with a retired psychology professor who called, she's teaching one course this semester and she called and she was, she said to me, Megan, do you understand that nobody watches traditional news anymore? I went, yep. And she was like, they're not even reading the newspaper, Megan. And I said, I know. And she goes, you know where they're getting their information? I went, TikTok. And she goes, yes, TikTok. And she's like, how do they even know what's real? And I said, you have to understand you have to put yourself in that person's shoes. There's some fantastic storytelling on TikTok. If you know where to find it, there's a lot of garbage too. But how do you take the platforms they're living in and sort of branch off that and engage in them so that students understand the importance of historical context and the importance of storytelling in its root format. There's some great people doing some wonderful things in TikTok. And I will tell you that there are some students who still cringe when I say, we're jumping into TikTok today. But man, there's relevance. And I think it's important to acknowledge where they are versus where we want them to be because as community media people, we don't get better unless we understand the consumer themselves. So that's a very long answer to your very simple question and I'll shut up now. That's okay. From the sides of that understand, right? Legal, regulatory, you know, Miles, part of what's a hallmark of community media is broadcasting town meetings, select board, public school hearings, which are required by law. They're mandated public disclosure. I think someone said that one of the panels or one of the conversations last today is that one of the good things, actually I'm trying to understand that sense, one of the positive effects of the bad of COVID is that more people were able to utilize community media to see their town meetings. They wouldn't, because they physically couldn't go there. They normally wouldn't. Now they can actually watch it, stream this broadcast. Is that important part of stuff to share within your curriculum that there are some mandates of things that state, federal, local government does and media can benefit from that? Yeah, I mean, so part of the community media production class is to kind of teach this history of where this came from, right? So you look at the history and I kind of actually touch upon public broadcasting and you even need to contextualize the tools of communication, which were bulky, couldn't move, very exclusive, et cetera, et cetera. So most of us probably know the name Lauren Glendavidian who started CCTV. And if you go back to that history, I mean, that is a history of activism that took a legislative approach, which was it was like banging on the door and putting things in place so that there was funding to kind of create these stations. And I think that, you know, Lauren Glendavidian often comes in talks to class and basically says, you know, that the community is one piece of a larger role of activism, but that legislation point in doing that hard work of getting in the weeds there and also collaborating with people that like like to read law. Like I can't read it, like I'm not, I'm not gonna do that work, but if I'm good with a camera and compare with somebody that can do that work, you know, those collaborations is what kind of starts to push the needle a little bit. So, you know, I think the other thing that, you know, even in anthropology, there's a long history of visual anthropology being the kind of the stepchild of colonialism, which was like, oh darn, this is starting to look a lot like people with privilege going into other areas, documenting and coming out and then continually trying to self-reflect and undo that process and say, how can we do it better? And it's, you know, coming from that background, they said, you know, ones if we put the tools of communication into the people, ones if we train the people. So to kind of draw that through line in the COVID, I think the one thing that community media has always done and that Lauren Glenn tends to put a fine point on is the resiliency, which is the need to pivot, the need to figure out how to do hybrid meetings so that city council and local politics can still be transparent. The need to provide when the internet comes out, internet training, cyber security, like whatever these advancements, these technological advancements, whatever these were, community media is always responding and kind of like, you know, leading the charge or at least leveling the playing field to make things more accessible. So I think, you know, the history is really important and part of that history is how the process, like the process at which this is all engaged. And so then how do you teach process? Like you can show, you can do case studies, you can do all this stuff. But I think part of the goal too is to teach people good processes outside of the tech as well. And that kind of hits on what Megan is gonna hint on, like kind of point to that. And I'm sure, you know, Gordon's ready to touch on that. Well, and I'll put it because I'm saving these parts for each of you with intention. So history, regulatory, legal Gordon, you know, it came from a student who created something and put a logo on it and I went, you don't have the right to use that logo, right? And now we're talking to students who are video production students and we have to start teaching them about, you know, licensing and rights and reuse and rebroadcast and retransmission. Cause they wanna just grab everything and pull it off the internet and cut it into a show and go, I'm like, you can't use a clip of Gilligan's Island because that company that owns that is gonna come, you're gonna get a cease and desist letter. In the sort of the creative side, how do you challenge students to be creative, maybe, you know, take advantage of, you know, some of the federal rules that you can, if you're mocking something, you can, you know, retransmit something. How have you approached that from a curriculum side, right? On the sort of teaching students legal when they're not in the class to teach legal, in the class that learned creatives? Yeah, you're not gonna like my answer about this. That's all right. Because artists, because artists, like the whole art angle on that, like if you step outside of broadcast and like art schools are like steal everything. They're just like artists steal, that's what we do. And, but I do, you know, I mean, that's a flip answer, but I find it's, I'm kind of working from the opposite end. I find students are extremely terrified. They've spent their whole life being told, don't plagiarize or you will die. That intellectual property and like intellectual prop, the idea of intellectual property, which is just, I mean, not to get all Marxist, but it's a capitalist construct so that artists could profit, right? And they just take that as like holy law from down, like that that's the thought of, the thought that they can borrow and appropriate is news to them. So, and to actually, I actually encourage it and try to teach it because it's an important part of our art making and have them say like, they would be terrified to use a clip from Gilligan's Island. And I will say, if you're doing it for student work, you're learning something, it's covered under fair use. Don't worry about it. If you're going to try to monetize it or claim that it is yours, that's where the problem comes and like, so to get under the skin of like what intellectual property really means and why it exists and how, how does it stand up to the fact that you can Google damn near any image and have that content? You know, it's like, it's, and their ideas about it are really kind of, they're simultaneously terrified that they're going to get sued, but also have access to everything in ways in which that nobody ever has before, you know? And so my thinking of it as like a creative person is to, you know, I don't think it's served them to be that terrified of that because it's not, I don't know, you know, it's like, what's more important now? Are you going to get sued by Disney or that you understand like how to be critically media literate, which when you talk about curriculum, there's a whole school of that of creative, not creative, a critical, critical media literacy. Like stepping back and understanding like, what are the systems, why are things the way they are? Do they have to be that way? Have they always been that way? You know, and a lot of that stuff, like ideas about intellectual property, like in the history of art, it's not very long and it's very specific depending on where you are in the world, you know? And I love your answer. Thank you. Steel. That's why I want, because there's that, there are not hard, fast, long-term problems. One of the things that I was very excited to work on when I first got involved in the television academy, full disclosure of the current treasure of the television academy work, I was in England, the output of the chair of the strategic planning for the television academy. The reason why that's relevant is because I was frustrated when we did away with a program called Creating Critical Viewers, where we created programs that the television academy could take into schools. We've replaced that with the National Student Television Awards, which is a nice way to engage students to create content and send it for recognition and it allows them to practice the craft. But we basically traded education off for a war show. Yeah. So I'm there, that's why I said I love your answer. I bring that up because, you know, part of some of how do we create what's, I'll say, you know, the title, slide, leadership, like critical viewers, critical assessment, critical, you know, one of the things sometimes I think we also worry about as educators is like pitting, not pitting students against each other, but having them, I think it's important that students, when I have students give visual presentations, all the other students in class have to do an anonymous survey of those presentations. And usually the first question is, did you learn something from this presentation? Because I can tell a student, say, you gotta give a three to five minute PowerPoint presentation, no more than eight slides. And they could do that and I'm like, what the hell did they just say? They didn't follow the rubric. So let's talk a little bit about leadership and how do you empower in production classes where sometimes that naturally rises. You see the producer, the director, the person that sort of takes control of a group. How do you sort of look then at developing the leadership talent, right? I'll get a curriculum. Do you instill things in specific assignments? Do you see how the dynamic of a classroom plays out? It's probably a little bit of both and I'm not gonna make you start first. I appreciate it. I don't like course, sorry. Yeah, did you have somebody in mind or should I take that? No, you were, I think you were connected. I was thinking about that, yeah. Now that, what was I gonna say? Oh, well, not to echo exactly what I said before, but that the whole critical thing, critical media literacy, I think that what I've come up against with my students a lot, and I have a lot of first years right now, in like you were mentioning a three minute PowerPoint, did you learn something? I find it's pretty easy to just target two things that I'm like a broken record with students, specifics and substance. I find that my students, and it reminds me of what you're saying about, not reading newspaper, it's like they by and large need to be coached to replace vague language with specifics and it's like they've been taught to have a high word count, so they will kind of go on, but not say anything. So it's just like unlearning retraining to be like cut all that fluff and like it can be short if it is specific and substantive. It doesn't have to, you don't have to go on at length, just make your point. And it's like what you're saying about the apprehensive, being apprehensive to research, it's like their idea, I think their ideas about research and reading, it's like they've been kind of miseducated about work and specifics and substance. And so I kind of feel like I have this Yoda meme where it's Yoda saying like you must unlearn what you have learned. And so I find there's a lot of that where it's like it's not taking medicine. It's like this is what you want. You want to get what you said, the meat. You want to get the juice. Like, where's the juice here? So to sort of travel the conversation to Miles, do you see students grasping that and lead others? Do you have to sort of motivate groups? Do you put it into assignments to sort of have students want to say, all right, I'll be the researcher on this group. Again, a quick example, when I give students group assignments and it's someone writes the paper, someone does the presentation, someone does the power, but they decide they go, those are the three things, there's three people in your group. You decide who does that best. Do you figure out how to sort of build leadership within groups or production groups or in the classroom? It's a little bit nuanced, because I think to kind of Gordon's point like this term rubric, like putting them in a box that has very direct learning objectives and kind of speaks to them and lets them know what's expected of them. And it's actually a great learning tool. Like pedagogically, people have developed this for a reason because it's clear for students and it serves a purpose. It gives them a small box to swim in, so to speak. I take a little bit more of an individualized approach and I think the biggest concern that students have with me is like, there's no structure. I'm like, but there is structure, but I'm also just allowing you to be an individual and kind of allowing you to find your own place in it. So again, yeah, and I think that the biggest unlearning that I've had to ask people to do is like, I want you to fail. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Make mistakes, break things, forget to turn on your audio, and then tell us about it. Don't hide it, and I think it's normalizing this behavior that you have to fail fast and actually giving them credit for that. Being like, write about it and I'm going to be more impressed and be more proud of you overcoming these mistakes than I am with you coming in with a very polished product. Now, this is in a very safe contained environment, right? And I understand that this is within the parameters of a 15 week semester in a college classroom where I'm the only barrier or like the sole evaluator. But a lot of the time I say, I'm not even evaluating your work. I'm just giving you credit to get it done. And my whole role is to provide feedback and allow you to do an iterative process. So like, I think to just kind of drive home on that is finding what students are pulled towards. Like some students naturally go into a leadership position, but then also creating environments that allow the students that maybe are not feeling as compelled to go into that leadership position, trying to get them there too, which does take some facilitation. So I'm not like hands off. And I think that there's like a lot of times where, you do a camera tutorial and there's a few cameras on the table and the people that know how to use the cameras are normally the first ones to put their hands on them. So how do you make sure that you get space to get other folks in there? And there is like, there's just like a baseline of like good tech, like it is true. Some things out of focus, it's out of focus. If something sounds bad, it sounds bad. Like there is a level at which you need, they need to understand also like the potential expectations of what it means to tell somebody's story. And if you do that a disservice technically, are you doing that person a disservice? And so now we're getting into effects. So I'll pause there. And what you talked a little bit about was the craft. And so Megan, you're mixing the craft, right? And we, the Television Academy, Megan's also on the Television Academy board as well. The last of the trustees, as we refer to them, our long story. So the current trustee, and we have craft categories, yeah, that changes in the dynamic of a newsroom where there has to be a hierarchical system. So how do you teach leadership, taking good advice and bad advice when someone is in charge of a newscast and they're telling other students and that other students go, wait a second, you're the same age as me and I might even be older than you. And who are you to tell, how do you teach that and have students be open to that if they do want to end up within a news organization they're gonna have to be ready, willing and able to deal with that? Sure. I'm gonna say this first thing and then I'm gonna tell you that I completely broke the rule. Our curriculum at Linden is stair steps. So there's at least three semesters of sitting in this newsroom and you kind of start at the bottom and you work your way up. And the reason we do it that way is because obviously somebody new to that environment you don't expect them to rise to the top but they also need to get the lay to land and just getting leadership skills to like approach somebody they don't know to get a story is a complicated feat. And so starting them at base level of like my expectation is this just produce a story on your shift, please day turn it and multiple platforms, broadcasts and web. Let's do that, let's start there. So that when we start to sort of bring them up the ranks to the point where in their final semesters they're directing and producing there's not only an understanding for the first person who's in the door knew who might be scared out of their mind so that you can sort of go I've been there, understand that let's sort of worked with each other to make it better. But I will say this and this is where I flipped the script a little bit. We have two first year students, first years they should not be touching the newsroom that came to me with drive that I have never seen before one of whom was involved at Northwest Community Access who quite frankly I needed to harness the energy because if I have a student who's showing leadership qualities I don't want to belittle it. I want to sort of make it grow. I want to plant it and grow it. And so I dangled a carrot and I put it in a course that they're currently in and I said, hey, do you want to come direct new seven? Do you want to sort of see what that's like? Do you want to do some pre-production work? Do you want to sort of understand what's going on behind the scenes? And there was like, there's not even a pause. It was a yes. And I went, okay, great. So now I have first year students who are driven who quite frankly look at the seniors and go, you're not cutting it and have no problem doing that and are respected because they have stepped into roles that normally they would not touch. But what has happened is it's all a matter of, yes, there's the stair step and there's a deliberate reason for a stair step. But what I have sort of resigned myself to understanding is that there are some students who quite frankly exhibit those leadership skills right out of the gate and who are confident enough. And so if you can put them in a position to counteract those who may not be rising to the challenge, perhaps it's an opportunity to show those who should be in better leadership roles, how they should be running their newsroom and how they should be treating their peers. And so yes, I flipped the script. No, I'm not mad about it. But I will tell you that it has changed the dynamic of at least in a four year program, how someone looks at a first year student. And it has changed the conversation to, okay, I need to really pony up and show what I'm made of because I now have a first year student who's kicking my behind and telling me that what I'm producing is not good enough in the right. So I think you gotta, there's a balance. Well, yeah, leadership shows itself as a difference. Yeah, it does. So one phrase that I love to take and repurpose, which is all politics is local. In my opinion, all news is local. How do you all with the current state of sound by city national news tied with maybe a little bit of, I'll say stuff that people don't like as well. The echo chamber of social media when young people are on it, they're in it and it's a whole group of friends and it's just this little, everybody thinks they're hot when they post their hot cover. How do you get in between the two of that and sort of explain to them that local information, local content, local news, hyper local is what people are interested in, what's happening in my area, what's happening in my neighborhood. I can't really change what's happening on the other side of the country or in DC or in the gosh strip. I can only change what's, I can only go outside and figure out how I can help the homeless that are on the battery park. How do you sort of teach to understand that local is really where it starts and understanding your community and then you can engage, communicate to and impact that community. How do you sort of teach that part of the curriculum when sometimes students think, I'm gonna go to college and I'm gonna learn about the world. Well, actually you should be learning about your backyard. You're, all right, Miles. Yeah, I can go ahead. You know, I think the good thing about teaching project-based classes is that they have the choice to go out in the community and learn and I think going back to history, there's a ton of modeling for this. Like I think a great example here in Burlington is I get to show a film called The Photo Lounge Chronicles, which is about Dan Hagens who's a local photographer and Dan was teaching at the University of Vermont for a long time and would require students that after they would need to pick a place, whether it's a dorm room or a local grocer or whatever it is, the requirement was that they need to go back and exhibit the photos in the place that they were taking. So it's actually built into the curriculum and the project description that the design of the class needs to do it. I do it by hosting a community screening so if anyone engages with a local community partner that they can bring those folks onto campus and screen the film form. So there's certainly ways in which it can kind of like, it can be built into the, you know, the being it, having it be project-based, there's a lot of like modeling for it. I think the other thing too is like building social capital about why the local is cool is kind of like something that folks are getting interested in with the students in community media production this year. I think to be honest, like for them to go back and so one of the exercises is like, go find something in the archive, go search cctv.org, find something in the archive that you like and then reflect on it and talk about, you know, what you're getting from it. And upon doing that, inevitably everyone's like, I love the, this, they don't use the word aesthetics, but I love let it look like a home movie or I love seeing Burlington in 1980 or 1990. And so they start to kind of, there's like this nostalgia that starts to kind of come into play. And then I think that paired with good examples can kind of like really excite folks to want to, you know, approach this work. So, yeah. Greg, Gordon, you see that with sort of, you know, looking at local artists, looking at what you referenced that before, you know, the students, you helped them think about learning from the local to help them expand their vision nationally or internationally? Yeah. And I'm listening to this makes me think about like, rather than what kind of serve them, like gather resources and present it to them, there's that, but then also not presuming what they do or don't know. So like, I don't have to remind myself but I like build into my practice that there's a certain starting there, like taking the temperature. I don't want to presume like, that they don't read the newspaper or like that they don't know anything about what's going on locally. Cause I'm often completely wrong or I want to be wrong. Like if I assume like you guys don't really know what's going on, it really can do you. And sometimes I don't. And then I'm like, well, you know, what do you like, where are you coming from? Like what is, what matters to you? What's important to you, right? Rather than me saying, well, you should know what's going on locally. Like kind of coming in back, like backing into it and being like, what drives you? Yeah, well, what's, what's important to you like this year? Like, does it matter to you that you don't feel safe going into this place? Or like, are you aware that this is happening? Kind of rooted in their own experience so that it matters to them. And it's not like, what do you want me to do? And it reminds me of like what you were saying about, we understand the structures of like how to, how to motivate people with rubrics and say like, here's what I want you to do. And I find that students are very well educated in that. So much so that again, with the unlearning, like when I don't tell them exactly what to do, when I say, what do you want to do? What's important to you? They're just like, lots of times, well, that's where the leaders come in, right? Those are people like, I know exactly what I want to do, get out of my way. And then other people are like, will you please tell me what to do? And they can't, it's difficult, I don't want to say they can't stand it. It's difficult for them because they don't, no one's ever let them do that, you know? Where they're like, well, just please tell me what you want. Yeah, I mean, it's different for me because the new seven serves 14 communities. It does not serve our campus. And I won't let them cover campus news unless there's a reason it connects to the 14 towns in which they serve. And so I forced the issue. I forced them to get to know their communities. I forced them to get to know the players in those communities. I forced them to build relationships with major players, town managers, you know, select board folks, school board folks. I force it because at least in the kingdom, you know, there has to be a murder for Burlington to pay attention to that region. And so it's sort of saying to them, look, you are it. You are the way other than the local paper, how people are going to know about what's going on in the community. And if you don't sort of harness that and respect it because you're serving the people of these 14 towns, this isn't the place for you. Like this is our job and we make it a job. The newsroom, the way it's set up is not, yes, it's a class, but it's running like a news organization and that is their job. And if we treat it like that, they tend to respect it a little bit more. And they also, because they're interacting with the community every day are told how important it is that they're out and about doing what they're doing. And so it doesn't take me to reinforce it. The community is doing that for me, which I really appreciate. And when they miss something, the community has no problem telling them they miss something and I really appreciate that. So it's a two-way street. And in a lot of ways, the community is coming to us and saying, can you please make sure that they know that we're doing X, Y, and Z. And so we've created this relationship that's sort of symbiotic, that just sort of naturally falls into place, but don't get me wrong. The students who come to me know what they're in for and they actually, that is part of the drive for them being at Linden is that it's real time, real community, real people, not make believe. So you talk a little bit about sort of, the community will tell them, and maybe I'll start with you, Miles or Gordon. Part of one of the things I also think is important is much people talk about integrity or journalistic integrity. Let's talk a little bit about how do you teach or not teach, how do you educate students on the concept of ethics and do you challenge them to do their own ethical decision making when making a story, when creating a creative product that is going to motivate someone to do something. I say, sometimes students like, you want a reaction from someone when you make a film. Laugh, cry, fear, you sit in your chair seven minutes after a film ends because you're just a little bit by what you saw, but you've created an emotion. When somebody goes, oh, that was okay. Nothing's happened. When you start talking about community media, we start talking about journalism, we start talking about creative messaging to instill change. Ethics comes into play in a big way. How do you tie that into, because you can't, you can teach it, but do you want to teach it? Maybe, you know, I'm sorry, Gordon, sometimes you talk about, there seem to be a reoccurring theme with your classes like I'm going to let them make mistakes, and maybe that's where the learning comes in. A little bit of ethics in that world. Yeah, that's a place where you don't, it kind of runs counter to my instincts, which is what you're talking about, like fail up, you know, like go ahead and make mistakes. You don't want to make ethical mistakes. Yes, yes. It's not the best way to learn that. I don't know, I mean, maybe it is, but it's going to be painful or dangerous, which we don't advocate or, you know, want to steer them into harm's way. So, boy, I just said, you know, don't want to steer them into harm's way. And when you were talking earlier, I was thinking about like ultimately, because there's so many different ways students can come up against an ethical problem, whether it's aesthetically or journalistically, I think just kind of putting the baseline of do no harm in there, you know, because that can take many forms. And there's, you know, whether or not it's legal or ethical, ultimately it's like, are you going to hurt somebody here? And it, you know, unintentionally perhaps, or yourself. So I know maybe that's cutting below, you know, an ethical classroom or a legal thing, but that's kind of where I land with that. While simultaneously trying to say that like things are safe and reassure them that like, you know, maybe boundaries need to be pushed, or, you know, are you timid about being transgressive when like in this situation, that's where the interesting thing is going to happen if you transgress, you know, journalistically or artistically, can you do that without doing harm? You know, so it's a tight rope dance. And when you're saying about, it's like a safe place to make mistakes, I like almost weekly or ever, you know, sometimes every class, I'm like, we are like the cliche of learning from your mistakes is, you know, we all say, we all know like, we learn from our mistakes, but nobody gets up and is like, today's mistake day. Like I'm gonna do nothing right today, I'm gonna do everything wrong, you know, and I'm like, when you were saying really resonated with me because I'm like, look, it's okay to do it wrong or students would say, I'm really bad at blank, you know, I'm really bad at screenwriting and I'm like, I've learned to answer, do it badly. You know, just, okay, good to know, do it badly. That's why you're here. And then we'll fix it, you know, do it wrong. Miles, how do you take ethics into, yeah, learn to fit, learn by failing, but how do you set it to a good point? Yeah, I think you could be literally physically dangerous. Yeah, it gets really sticky very fast. Like for instance, I had a student, you know, partly because everything culminates in a community screening, which is, you know, so I put time restrictions on their projects, they should be less than five minutes. A lot of people show up with things that are 10 minutes long. And then, you know, for an ethical example, for instance, like a student went and documented, did some long form interviews with an organization called AALB, which is the Associations of Africans living in Vermont. And so they work with folks in the new American space and they went there and they conducted these interviews and came back with a 10 minute video, which kind of like, the point of video was to give these folks some airtime, so to speak. And the ethics became like it was, the audio was so bad, you couldn't really hear it, it was long form, we played it in class, students are kind of tuning out. And so it's like, okay, like what happened there? And so like this is a really interesting case study of holy smokes, like the social change of this was to give these people 10 minutes of airtime, which really is not that much time. But then the problem was that it didn't execute well, so like, what happens then? You didn't do right by that. Yeah, so teaching, so it's, you know, you have to manage that a little bit. And there's this framework that kind of came out of what's been happening in the documentary world, specifically as documentaries become commercially viable and there's a lot of pressures from large studios to buy up these documentaries, push deadlines, push story beats, the ethics of true crime, like it is just wildly messy right now. And there's something called the Documentary Accountability Working Group, DAWG, which lay out a framework around like, really good practices in ways to kind of check yourselves and methodologies. And you know, I think what Communimeter offers is basically like a real ground level and transparency around the fact that they're there to serve the community, right? Like it's pretty well established. And so one of the things that sometimes I focus on to kind of undercut it all and to not put value judgment on like, some students that's so interested in production can make like a wicked flashy super slick piece is gonna really make another student in the class feel really bad about the fact that they have no production skills. So how do you manage these different levels? And one thing I say, and this actually comes from a movie called Come On, Come On, which is a Mike Mills film. It's a fictional film. Joaquin Phoenix plays an NPR reporter and kind of spoiler alert. But like the point of it is as an NPR reporter, he's questioning why it's important to go interview people. And I think all the time sometimes we're like, oh, this is extractive or we kind of like worry about the bad things that it does but the point of that movie and what I've really tell my students is like, actually maybe the most and don't wanna maybe use the word empowering but maybe one of the most meaningful things that you can do and maybe the most social change you may enact is to go up to somebody and say your story matters enough for me to put a microphone and record it. So baseline, everyone has the ability to make some change just by saying you're important enough to be recorded. And so I think community media does this which is like, come into our studio and talk. We will archive you. Your words are important and are meaningful and are worthy enough to be recorded. So I think that that's kind of that's where I found a baseline to be able to say like you wanna just interview your roommates because you're so scared to go out. Like maybe that's the way that you can enact social change or things like that. So maybe you have more in the news that you use business. There are more hard and fast rules, right? There's standards of practices that networks have. There's journalistic societies that have sort of rules and standards. There's newsroom policies. How do you sort of teach people to sort of be creative and be journalistic knowing that there are then some little train lanes or the bowling alley. It all comes back to the storytelling, right? Who's impacted by the story that you're trying to tell and how do we tell that story creatively in a way that's engaging so that everybody wants to be part. And I will say that like if you have been living in a cave there have been a lot of ethical moments in Vermont State College history in the last, I don't know, six months. So it has been a real think tank of journalistic ethical standards when we're working with student journalists whose roof is the story. And sort of balancing how they do that with making sure that all voices of that story are told and that they're not going to be put under a microscope in a way that sort of challenges that journalistic integrity by those above me. And it's sometimes just a matter of like putting that to the side and just saying who is impacted by what the story is here and who should we be talking to and we'll get that. Like we'll worry about the ethics part when you talk to the people who are impacted and then it's a matter of threading that story together in a way that doesn't show bias and doesn't sort of cross that ethical line. I feel like I should be thanking the board of trustees for giving me such water for this last semester but it definitely has created a lot of conversation about when you become the news and how you do that in a sort of tricky balancing act kind of way. So I guess that I should be thanking them. Yeah, I mean, I do a lot in public relations when I say personal PRs do not become the story. So I want to make sure we use the time for questions. Look at that. Are you going to give a hand up for a question? Now we're just scratching? No, I do. I love it. You're running away. Yeah, I want to make sure we get some time for questions. Just tell everybody who you are. So I know where you're coming from. I'm Carlos Grins that I work over in GNAC TV which is a program on a content producer and communication person and I run their education programs there. But I had a question about the journalism aspect of it especially in regards to local journalism and the integrity of that. I want to get more into producing content for that and teaching how to do that to the people that come into their station and to the kids that I'm educating. I get frozen, and there's a couple things that freeze. Because I love stories. I love telling stories. That's my favorite thing. But when it comes to reality, it becomes very scary to me. And I think it's because it feels a little bit, especially on a local level, like I'm spreading gossip. And there's that sort of fear about, and why am I telling this story? Do people actually need to know this information? And is this information just going to cause more problems down the line? And then, yeah. So I just had a question about that because I had more, but I don't know. That's okay. Full disclosure. I actually did all of my graduate work at GNAC and ran part of their educational programming for a while. So there you go. There's part of my resume you probably didn't know existed. I will say this. Journalism is a public service. And our job, and to some extent, it's sort of coupled with what community television is all about, is to hold people accountable for what's going on in communities. It's how we're holding our elected public officials accountable for the things that they should be doing and making sure that our community knows about. But it's also statewide. And so I understand the cringe factor that you're dealing with, but I think it comes down to, instead of sort of holding yourself back from it, saying, is this something that the community needs to know, may need clarification on, or maybe they don't understand all sides of it and just find the people who can clearly articulate what's going on and use them as the base. Ultimately, you could leverage them to get other stories around whatever it is that you're talking about. But the first step to sort of getting over it is to dive in head first. I mean that in the nicest way. You're not spreading gossip, though in that community, I can see how you might feel that way. Because I know that community well enough to know how it rolls. I think you have to start it. You have to push it. You have to get a small number of people to get behind putting the truth out there that serves the public, that may not be hearing things in all the possible ways they could be. And that, if anything, is what gives you, it's truth to power, right? It's the community access part of what you're trying to do actually may shed light on things people don't know about. And so instead of being nervous about it, put it all out there and see how people react to it instead. Because for all you know, they're not getting all the information and you are the ticket to getting the pieces they don't know about. So you're sort of like the gatekeeper. Which is a scary thing in itself. Yeah. It's a good responsibility. Embrace it. It is. It's important that you take people in that and any media outlet take responsibility to spread information. Gordon, Bob, is there anything to add? What does that have to do with that? No requirement. Just feel for it. This means that you have to curate over knowledge if that's anxiety producing. Producing is not all of it. It's not all of the knowledge, it's part of it. So you're a contributor. Yeah, there you go. So you only need a little bit. Not a lot. Other, Miles, anything else? No. Any other questions? I have a second question. I know. Do you guys mind if I take another question? Does anyone have questions yet? Or you're first in line then. Collaboration. And you guys are talking about leadership and finding natural leaders and stuff. I'm asking for my students but I'm also asking for myself because I don't work well with others. How do you encourage collaboration? Miles is the way, hold up. So it's going to be one important year to go last. That's why. Literally, I'll go out and laugh. A bird of chocolate from here is going to go first. Yeah, I mean, it's a self-reflective moment. I don't want to say I was a terrible collaborator but I certainly thought I knew it all. And I think that there's just like a sign of maturity that comes with being able to take feedback and also just negotiating. I think that that's what you have to boil it down to. And then the big thing that I do is I get away from right and wrong and I start to boil it down to like, these are just different tastes. So I'm just gonna be like, your framing's wrong. It's like, well, the framing may or may not technically be wrong. Depends on where the direction's coming from and if there is a leader that wants it a certain way and you don't believe that and you're the camera operator, like where's the negotiation? And I think people mule in to kind of find their roles. So either pre-establishing that, but I think it has lightened the disagreement to start to say, okay, let's like really boil this down to if two people are in a space and there needs to be negotiation that it comes down to taste and style. And I think that that helps alleviate some of the things when it comes creatively. But then I think putting people, if you've been a camera operator that's dealt with a really crummy director, I think that that's a really good way that when you're directing you won't have your camera operator or treat your camera operator crummy. And so making sure people kind of, and this is why people work their way up the ranks is because hopefully they don't forget what it's like to have been on the bottom rung. So I think sometimes those processes and then getting rotations and getting them going through a rotation is a good way to kind of like create some empathy. Gordon, Asa? Yeah, your question's about collaboration when you were talking about the idea of identifying needed leaders came up and when you were talking about leaders, I was like, well, lots of times students, that's not their strong suit. Like what they're really good at is contributing and they don't want to be a leader and so like you need contributors, like not everybody can be a leader. So just the idea about collaboration, I actually teach it because I find, like I want students to collaborate, I want them to value collaboration. And what I find is that I have to approach it, I don't have to, but I approach it in a way that unpacks it because again, I find that the best intentions of students coming to me, they've been kind of miseducated about group work. Like I start off by saying like, what goes through your mind when I say we're gonna, like let's form groups, let's do a group project. And I'm like, you know, everybody's gonna roll their eyes. And then I say, okay, why you roll, what are you expecting now? You know, like you've done this a lot of times. And so I unpack like, you're anxious that you're gonna do all the work and other people are gonna get credit or your contributions won't be valued, right? Like there's all kinds of group dynamics is a thing that people study and teach, right? So I kind of unpack that and say like, okay. And then I also, I kind of do a tricky exercise where I have them do a group project that they don't know is like an exercise in class that I don't say this is a group thing, but it is. And they do it and they have fun. And then I say, what did you notice about that? What happened? You know, and I'm like, haha, you just did a group thing and nobody complained. And I'm like, you know, what are the things that make you not wanna do group work? You know, it's like the grade, you know, it's like, well, we're gonna be unfairly graded. You know, it's like, I'm not gonna get an A because there's slackers in my group, right? So there's like all these things built into it that make people go, no, no group work. But then when I do a project with them where they get a really fun result. And then I say, that thing you just made, none of you would have made it individually. Like the only reason that exists is because you all work together. And then they're like, oh, you know, and I say, I say like, so seek that out, you know, like, and then the other thing is they all come to me with like, you know, you get into film because you, because of films you love or you get into game design because, you know, you're kind of drawn to it by the things you like. And I'm like, you know, school is telling you that you need to do everything yourself and you need to, it's all DIY and you're where the buck stops. I'm like, all those things you love that brought you here, films, books, television, they're all collaborative. Like even things that you don't think are collaborative. I'm like, you think Beyonce is a superstar? She's got a team. Like she can't do that herself. She has a publicist and a, you know, a staff. And I'm like, everything is collaborative. So just stop thinking that you have to do it all yourself. And then easier said than done, like how can I facilitate practicing that in a way that maybe like removes the stakes a little bit or like takes the boot off their neck about like, am I gonna get an A? I can, you know, maybe go into that a little bit with, within production, not just news, but for great production, there's actually teams put together, you know. Yeah, it's gonna save. It's a camera person, it's a sensor person, at least for here, a producer and a truck pop. Media is a team sport. It doesn't even matter what part of media you want to be a part of, it is a team sport. And you will always work with people who drive you crazy and you will always work, you know, you'll find those gems of people who make you better. It's a matter of putting yourselves in those situations and understanding how to work with both of those extremes. And in a media environment, like I am constantly saying that from semester one on with my students, like you're gonna work with people who pull their weight and you're gonna work with people who don't. But I also provide opportunity for them to let it out so that at the end of a project, tell me what everybody did, tell me how you all fared from your perspective so that I understand what worked, what didn't, where people pulled their weight, where they didn't. And I sort of just, I let it sort of be an avenue for them to let it out so that I have an understanding and every one of the team is doing the same thing and they all know it, which ultimately ends up making them work better because they know that there's an opportunity to tell me how it really happened. But there's also a, if something really went south, reassuring the students who did pull their weight and pull it off that that one team member who did not contribute at all is not going to be a factor in how I look at their work, that collective body at work and that I take that situation into account when I look at the whole. And so it's, the rubric may change a little bit, right? But I think creating reason to enforce the, this is a team sport and sometimes you just have to be able to manage different personalities and different perspectives, but if you can harness what people are really strong at and collectively as a group discuss where strengths and weaknesses are it always ends up being better. And so providing that opportunity for people just to lay it on the table and say, you know, I really am horrible at editing and I really shouldn't touch that, but I have no problem lining up a whole bunch of interviews and being that community outreach person that's where my strength is. It's allowing those conversations to happen. Yeah, I'll just touch on Flavage for a little bit because it comes for me, it came early on and it's a good story, so it's a quick story. So six months out of University of Maryland did he read a toaster for a student? I don't know, I got a PA job, a commercial and my job at the end of the shoot is I'm loading scaffolding into the van at two o'clock in the morning. And the producer comes over so it's time to be loading scaffolding and I go, I got this Jerry, I'm going to his name, Jeremy Smith, don't know him, don't know him, where he is, so vivid. This is my job, he goes, I'm the producer. Every job is my job. Here's my, as he helps me load scaffolding for the next half hour, he gave me one of the best training I did not get in college. He said, every job as a producer is your job. Here's what you want to be a good producer, here's what you need to do. Learn how to be a camera man. You'll figure out, are you a good camera man? Who's a good camera person? Who's a bad camera person? How do they get paid well? How do they pay somebody based on their skill set? Learn every job. Who does it well, who doesn't do it well? You know how to assemble a team. You then know how to build a collaborative team because you know how to make the skill sets work. And I think that's an important part about collaboration is letting people sort of, what are they good at and can they excel at that? And can you team those folks together so they're all having fun? They're all feeling really powerful about what role they're taking and they're doing it collaboratively with other folks. And at the end, you're gonna hopefully have a good product because they've enjoyed the experience. So that's a little bit, you know, that's a good comment from my world. Ten minutes. We've got 10, 12 minutes. Do you have a question, sir? Where you from? I'm Curt, the Executive Director of Millbrake Community Television. I'm a former middle school, high school teacher and taught video production at Greenland College so they could, as college level educators, what is your take on best experiences and best practices for younger kids? Sort of singing out the, you had two first year students who were a notch above, but what was it that sort of developed those kind of students for you before you got into it? Thanks, Dash was nice to start. Yeah, I mean, so one of those students approached me during her interview process and said, I wanna be an editor for CNN. And I was like, rock on. You wanna be an editor for CNN. And I am of the mindset that when someone comes to you that directly, you just sort of go, okay, we're gonna get through there, that's fine. We may change your viewpoints on what you wanna do by the end of it, but that's what you wanna do now, that's fine. I have worked with students who come with a lot of experience from high school, whether it be a tech center or a regular sort of high school video program. And I have worked with some who come from none of that. And there's pros and cons to both. In a lot of cases, the students who are coming from programs, I have to unprogram them, because they have really bad habits. And so I've gotta strip them back to basics and not bore them to death, but get them at least back up to speed. Where the student who comes with nothing sometimes is a little bit easier out of the gate. It's all about harnessing the passion and the drive and providing opportunities to sort of, even outside the classroom, engage them. And whether it be in one case with one of these students connecting them with a local access channel so they can continue to do this kind of work outside of the classroom. My job is not just to teach it's to provide connections and pathways and to network, to help them network because they don't know the span of people in which they can touch. There are good programs and bad. The ones that I've seen be really successful at the high school level are the ones that allow with some sort of boundaries as far as like, this is what we're producing. What you produce within it is totally up to you. They're allowing for that creativity to blossom and to not put such strict confines on sort of how we get there. The students come with more passion and drive to want to explore and learn. And those are the students who I find are more successful. The ones who are, here's the project. This is how we're executing it. Don't tend, they lose that creative spark. And so by the time they hit the collegiate level it's harder to pull that back out of them because they've been so programmed to just do projects based on very tight boxes. And so, yeah, it's a matter of obviously having overarching goals or objectives in the end but allowing for that spark to happen that makes one student different from the other. You want to respond to that or just, I was just asking. Yeah. Hi Ashley from Austin Network. So my interaction with students is normally like through internships at my station. And I'm a studio director. So my time with them is very limited on a daily basis. And what I've noticed more and more is that we have a lot of local schools, like kids doing internships there. But more and more they're like not like go getters, I don't want to call them go getters. They just, they're in that shell where it's like they've always been taught how to do, like what to do, not how to do something. And so it's hard for me to try and instill that in them even though like I've been doing this for a long time. And I'm wondering like, what is it? I want to say quick, easy, but like what is a good way or an efficient way to break them up as habit that I have to tell them what they need to do instead of me saying here is your general direction. This is what you like. This is what you can produce if you feel like doing it and like go for it. If they want to bounce ideas off me, that's cool too. Like how do I phrase that to them or get that through their head? You have to take charge in this because I can only take you so far because there's no right or wrong way to make community media. Right, hopefully we have time for all of you to answer. Miles, do you want to start? Sure, yeah. I mean, I think even just going back to the last answer, two things is just, you know, I think, you know, a lot of times I just really explain what this work is mostly is just problem solving. And I have learned or I think that modeling is one of the best things. And so if you're like, hey, look, I have an idea. I'm just going to go do it and you're just going to shadow me. And sometimes I get super skittish that like, oh, nobody just wants to watch me do it. But then I get feedback where they were like, that was the most informative thing was just to watch you go through the motions. And so maybe taking them out and like just normalizing the behavior and letting them see, you know, what it's like to just walk up to somebody or how to kind of generate an idea. And then they'll watch you problem solve too. And I think that that would boost some confidence. Gordon, you want to ask? I agree, modeling. And then as much as possible, I think it reminds me what I was saying before about there's a fear factor where students just are apprehensive about doing it wrong. And like if it's just like, you know, sometimes that's really true. If it's like a safety issue or something or quality control, but you know, if you can kind of find that valve of like, is it, are they needlessly fearful? Like just out of habit, you know, like I want you to tell me exactly what to do so that I don't do it wrong. Like it's probably just making really clear expectations about like you're not going to hurt anybody or you know, if it's not a safety thing, if they're just kind of skittish because they're fearful of disapproval, you know. It could be that they're overwhelmed. Yeah. I think there's, when we're in this environment, just as working professionals, we sometimes forget that the environments we're in are very complicated and very overwhelming. And there are a lot of moving parts. And so it is quite possible that they don't know how to be creative because they're overwhelmed and don't even know where to start. And so stripping it back to basics, finding out what it is that has them interested in this particular media industry and then harnessing that one little bit to show them a small piece of a whole. Whether it be a shadowing, whether it be giving an opportunity to do something that is special to them. Finding ways to sort of break down that barrier of uncomfortability and making it an environment that they know they can fail in, but they can be comfortable in so that it become, you're turning the uncomfortable feeling into the, hey, I kind of want to be here and do all this stuff. I just, I sometimes think, especially with high school students, they don't vocalize the uncomfortable part if at all, very well. I think also just verbal affirmation sometimes of like, you did a great job right there and then they're like kind of close. You know, like you're allowed to tell them they're doing great. Even when it's like, it could be something really simple. See the program and if there's any difference between the kids that are coming from a more traditional education background and those who might have it. Yeah, the curiosity factor is a lot different. Higher and lower? It's higher. I will say sometimes, I've only worked with a handful of homeschool students, but the collegiate environment is very overwhelming for homeschool students. So when you can narrow the overwhelming down to like, let's just do this in the moment, they tend to do better. But sometimes they take too much on at once because they're so curious. They almost like overwhelm themselves with all these things they wanna do. And so it's a matter of showing them how to parse out that creativity and make it a lot easier to attain. It's more than homeschool students who have that issue, but I've noticed it more with them. But I will say that sometimes that perspective is one that adds to a conversation collectively as a whole, that perspective of not having gotten through the traditional way of doing things. And it forces a conversation about this, depending on the story, like who really is impacted by something because perspectives are different. It's because it's a growing trend. Jordan, Miles, homeschooling, you see a difference and how do you help that difference in students that are homeschooled versus traditional schooled? Yeah, I mean, I don't have any specific examples. So I'll pause. This is kind of related. I'm still have to remind myself that, oh, by the way, we just went through two years of lockdown where everybody was not homeschooled, but everybody was at home. So I'm still dealing with the fallout of that, frankly. Like sometimes I get done with the class and I'm like, what is going on? And I'm like, oh, right. They've been, they were in their bedroom for two years. Do you know what I'm saying? And like, that's not going anywhere for a while. Like it's been a, let's not forget that we just, I had a colleague who made a speech coming back that said, the, he's the term anti-diluvian, which is like means after the flood, you know? And he's like, let's just not forget. We've been through, like we were under water for two years. So like it's things aren't gonna dry out for a while. I'm gonna end this with one last question, which is a single sentence answer for each of you. What is the favorite class you teach? Not to tell anybody why, everybody's gonna go look at your CV at university or your mirror. Here's what I teach. What's your favorite class you teach? Megan. Mobile Storytelling. Mobile Storytelling. Miles. I'm actually gonna do something different. I'm gonna point out to my favorite students right here that I've worked with in the past, Jordan Mitchell and Daly right there, both working at CCTV. And they have taken community media production. So I'll say community media production. Of course. What I did this morning, making media activism. So do you have a prop? You said you had a prop. This isn't from my class, but this is the kind of stuff that is out there. It's people making posters and we had a conversation about whether or not people actually do QR codes. It's signal to noise ratio, like is it? Signal or is it noise? So making media activism is my favorite. Jordan Glover, thank you. Miles, David Jewel, thank you. Megan Meacham, thank you very much. Thank you all. It's a pleasure to respond for everybody. Thank you. Enjoy the lunch.