 Welcome everybody thanks for joining us this morning. I know we're on the third day and it's been overwhelming. My name is Leah Klapman. I'm the managing editor education at the PBS news hour and with me is Lucy Flores a student from Salt Lake City who participated in the student reporting labs and we're going to see work that she did, another student from Salt Lake City from West High School and talk about our project which is really journalism as a form of learning. I'm actually kind of an outlier here at this conference. I'm a journalist instead of an educator or professor or a programmer but I really believe that journalism can be one of those new kind of forms of of teaching and learning and experimenting and creating that's really powerful learning tool which the students can talk about. Also Chris Carpenter also from West High School actually just graduated who made some of the media that I'll be showing. So the student reporting lab started around a year and a half ago. It combines mentoring with an open collaborative platform where the students exchange ideas they also exchange scripts and rough cuts and they get feedback from mentors and the other students around the country who are participating in the program. Right now we have over 15 schools and two after school programs who are doing this and they also combine video that they go out and shoot with Creative Commons rights cleared video that the news hour provides. We've gone through our archives and every time we talk about a topic that the students are going to cover we comb through the archives and we look for video that they can use in their reporting or to cover you know some of their narration as b-roll. And then we've also developed a really strong journalism curriculum out of their projects so it's an open curriculum it keeps growing as more students participate as more teachers kind of use this in their classroom. They give us suggestions, they give us handouts, they give us key components of the curriculum so it's constantly growing. And I think also a key part of this project is that it's an authentic learning experience it has an authentic purpose. These students are creating reporting that's going to go on a national site. We've had one of the pieces from New York City at the end of the PBS news hour broadcast so the national broadcast over two million people per night. It saw a piece of student work because it had it was it was a great piece of work and it gave the students and it gives everyone who participates in the project a real sense of this is why we're doing this and this is why it has to be really high quality because it has a chance of going on the on the national broadcast. And then it's also an authentic audience of their peers so the students are producing this work for the other students around the country who are who are working on these projects and then also for the national audience of the news hour. So I'm gonna first play one of the videos we'll see how long I know we have a really short on time and I want the students to be able to talk about the experience and how it was you know different from the other classes that they take and kind of you know have conversation with you guys. But let's look first at Chris's piece about the refugee program in in Salt Lake City. Refugee process is one of the hardest and most complex processes a human being can go through. The ones who go through it are truly miraculous people. Here's one such story. Well my family when I was young they decided to go to different countries. They wanted to go to Kenya and then we came to Kenya and with me and my brother and them. Yeah you have to just admit it. And I'm gonna play a little bit of Lucy's which hopefully also is a buffer. And then talk a little bit about why PBS is doing this and let the students talk about what they gained out of the experience. Immigration is something widely known throughout our nation especially here in Salt Lake City, Utah. Immigrants are widely scrutinized and they don't want to be hard for them to live a life here in America. They come into America and do our work. They want to at least be perceived as being the humans that they are. Of course the tensions around immigration are not new. On the one hand we've always defined ourselves as a nation of immigrants. Well we came to Kenya to say. Well who's willing to embrace American immigrants. It's watched most of the same time, it's really. All we have to follow the immigrants to Atlanta, Utah is who simply said we'd all be gone. It wouldn't exist especially in this country since as immigrants this is a country of immigrants. In Utah the level of discrimination put on immigrants may be small but it is there. Socially it depends on which group of Latinos you're with and each one of them multiplies a different place in the society. So there are people that mix very well with everybody that's here are well accepted into the society as a whole. Typically undocumented immigrants in Utah are objectified. In other words not seen as people. They're objectified two ways primarily. One is criminals. The other objectification that actually goes on here from corners of Utah society that welcome undocumented immigrants is that they only see them as workers. You know we as Americans have gotten used to the idea that if I live in this house that space in front of my house is my parking space that's BS. It belongs to the city and anybody can park there. So these are all problems of customs, problems with social integration that some of our people still haven't picked up. And as a result of that there are some very unforgiving people who live in neighborhoods. Our nation's federal immigration laws have displayed our government's hostility towards immigrants who cross the border illegally. Immigration laws are affecting a very negative way right now because we're perceived as being hostile, resentful of immigrants in this community and that's not the Italian. Throughout the years immigrants have fought to make their place in America. We've protested. We've tried to bring the facts to the forefront. We've written letters to the editor. We've gathered in the Latino communities. We've given them pamphlets to let them know what their rights are. You know they too whether they're documented or undocumented they do have rights in our country. Immigration laws have always been afforded with their politics. No one wants to touch it until we have some people to do that. Nothing's going to happen. The law put into effect in Arizona has made it so even people who may not be undocumented immigrants are scared to go out with the public without being scrutinized. The bill I'm about to sign into law Senate Bill 1070 represents another tool for our state to use as we work to solve a crisis that we did not create and the federal government has refused to fix. I think they're hostile. I think they're wrong and I think they're hurtful. I think they're hateful in the sense that you want to punish people. It's not a matter of punishing. It's a matter of finding how do we reform our laws to make it possible for people to come here and live in dignity and contribute to the American dream. In contrast to the harsh bill in Arizona the Utah pilot accountability permit program gives immigrants in Utah the chance to come forward and register for an accountability card that would give them the ability to work and live here in Utah. Les Robles has partnered with Paul Merrill from the Sutherland Institute to create this comprehensive plan to aid the lives of immigrants in Utah. It's based on the idea of accountability and as long as an undocumented immigrant just like any other human being is a person of good will well then we ought to provide opportunities for those individuals. Not only will this bill help those in Utah but could potentially help immigrants all over the nation live a life they've come to live here in America. One of the things we have to realize is that we live in a period of globalization. We shouldn't be turning inwards. We have to be welcoming immigrants who read and we know the American word for us the American dream all the time. I'm Lucy Flarez reporting for TV West. So yeah Lucy. So I'm going to let Lucy and Chris talk about the process in a moment but you know why is PBS doing this the previous news hour? Well we always knew that teachers were using news hour content way back through when they you know set their VCR, taped the perfect debate, scaffolded their class so that the class could watch you know two people discussing it or take peace and then use that as a way to make connection between what they were teaching and current events what's going on in the world. So we knew that those teachers were working with news hour content and we wanted to make it much more accessible. So we had lots of focus groups and we did a lot of experimenting and we came up with a couple of tools for teachers to use current events and these are all free you don't have to register it's just it's very open. Twice a week we publish a story written for a kind of ninth grade reading level that comes with teacher tools that we developed with teachers so it has warm up questions, reading comprehension questions, discussion questions. We also publish a daily video clip and these are pieces from the news hour that we that are short that are engaging a lot of tape we talked to a lot of teachers who said we want to take our students out of their classroom and into another world so we also created teaching tool with those videos so again warm up questions and discussion questions it can be between you know a five minute activity and or it could be half an hour or it could be a whole class. We made these tools very flexible because that's what teachers told us that they wanted. They also sign it off often for homework and other parts you know kind of to round out their classes and we also publish in-depth lesson plans so these are all free they're all written by teachers practicing in the classroom and we have a panel of teacher advisors who tell us what topics they think that we should do a lesson plan so we did a lot on the geography of North Africa and the Middle East about social media and protesting we did a lot during you know kind of the Arab Spring and what's going on right now um but through our conversations with teachers they told us again and again you know traditional news sources don't engage our kids they it's still like we can just show it to them and it just kind of it doesn't it doesn't click it doesn't latch on so we've developed student voices where we go around and we try to find how the news is affecting young people and have them tell their story you know how did um the tornadoes in Alabama affect young people and you know their their lives um we had actually during the Egyptian uprising we had a 17 year old girl who lived in Alexandria talked about going out and protesting and she you know she was kind of blogging for us and she you know after Mubarak stepped down she you know she came back right away and she started writing her story for for the news hour site for the student voices area um and then when we decided it was time to hit the video you know the video world's enter um 21st century the quality of the video that the students were able to submit just wasn't as good as what they were able to do writing or or slideshow so we we developed student reporting labs where the local PBS station sends a practicing public media reporter into the classroom and they work with the students from kind of start to finish what's the story well we give them we gave them topics I mean this was not about kind of augmenting um high school television production we wanted them to cover the supreme court we wanted them to cover the immigration you know issues we wanted them to cover the economy climate change we gave them big topics we gave them resources and then the mentors worked with them to find the right story angle in their community and then they go back and forth they tell their mentor um you know this is the story we want to do these are the people we're thinking of interviewing a lot of times the mentors um have given them kind of access here's called this person asks to do you know to get in touch with this person um and then the mentors go over the scripts and then they go over the rough cuts of the videos um and then they uh you know they help the process all the way along um and we we've done this for a year and a half we're in 15 different cities right now but it is it's open so there's an application process um on the site and we've had um over a thousand applications um from all over the world as well we have um a school in Bahrain that is looking to to work with this reporting labs model we have a school in turkey we've partnered with a couple of international organizations um we're working on the translation issue so to translate our curriculum um into different languages so that you know it's very it's easy anyone can do it and submit it if they want the um mentor relationship that's like the next tier that's where they kind of um they kind of apply officially and then we can take who we can take and and set up that mentoring relationship um so that's really an overview of the reporting labs project and I wanted the students to be able to talk about how the experience is different from other experiences that they have within school but yes before that questions so who owns the content for this and are you um selling this content on their their productions yeah okay so so who owns the content um once the students produce a piece for us um like we own it they own it I mean it's um they can do whatever they want with it um we can distribute it we can't sell it um we're looking for you know different platforms we have a lot of community partners so um right now what we're doing is having the students go out and report about dropout issues so what is you know the dropout rate in our school what are different schools what is the why do students drop out they're interviewing their friends they're interviewing parents who have dropped out um and then we're using these pieces of media and community forums about the issue uh so in that way the public television station is using it um the united way we're working with the united way to get these pieces on you know the community issues around the dropout issue um as a way of fostering conversation as a way of telling the story of looking at the issues from a student's perspective because while the mentors are advising the students it's all and and these guys can talk about it it's their ideas it's their planning it's their going out and reporting um and it's their editing and it's their production um and and just to note about the curriculum so um while we were piloting this and these guys can talk about this a little we discovered gaps you know it's one thing to go out and say go out and report about the supreme court or go out and report about immigration kind of here's how you do it but there are very specific skill gaps or or knowledge gaps about journalism that we tried to fill in the curriculum and that only came out of the the process of doing it so even things like um students had trouble leaving a message if they were calling an expert in their community uh to do an interview they had trouble leaving a message you know because they're used to texting so you know the whole we had to like work on a script that was like you know hello my name is i'm calling from this school i'm working on this project i would like to interview about you about this here's i will call you back or here's how you reached me like we had to write out those scripts um there's a lot about ethics that we discovered a lot of students were they would do a piece about recycling and they you know stuffed the recycling bin or they they had kids kind of acting out scenarios and you know that's just a journalism no no so we had to so those are the kinds of things that we've built into the curriculum and as I said it's a living curriculum we keep on getting amazing pieces that the student that the teachers figured out like there's a there's a pitch document how to pitch a story that came out of the school in Philadelphia and it's great and it really helps students feel like think about why their story is relevant to a national international audience and that you know it's not it's not us it's not our curriculum developers it's the actual teachers who are doing this so um lucy why don't you come up okay and and talk a little bit about the project that you did and how it's different from what you've done in the past okay so my story was the immigration one um in Utah and i have always been somebody who has been hands-on and creative with things and that's how i got into the tv broadcasting program at my school and you know first year we did stories about football games different things like that but when pbs came to us and kind of pitched this you make a documentary here four topics you choose from them we're going to give you the b-roll you need to go out there and find the story and find how it relates to your community it was something that i took a lot of initiative to you know learn more about the immigration uh more about the immigration subject and the immigration topic in my society and in the in our nation as well i am of hispanic descent so my grandfather is somebody who is integrated and works with the immigration community and works to stand out for illegal immigrant rights and immigrant rights in our nation has been doing it for a while so there was a pretty good resource for that so when i chose the topic of immigration i went in depth to talk about talk with him and as i learned more about the bills and laws that are actually that were trying to be passed in arizona it made me think well me my grandfather my aunt my dad my cousins could get pulled over on the side of the street and asked for their citizenship records which hit me hard to know that this topic really could affect me and my family and my grandfather in negative ways so it helped me get the drive to go out and find interviews and figure out how it related to my society and how to relate it to kids in my school as well who are in the same situation as me and who are in worse situations where they are here legally i kind of am a pretty outgoing person so i think making connections and being able to call people and working with adults and getting them to do interviews with me was pretty easy for me but i think the hardest thing for me was you know setting up the interviews and worrying about what kind of b-roll i need how am i going to fill this story and i think um pbs really helped me with that and with getting me the b-roll and kind of giving me an outline of what i should do and i'm not the kind of kid who's going to sit in a math class who likes to sit in a math class or an english class and do assignments all day and then just get a test at the end of the quarter i learned so much more from working with pbs and making this documentary than i ever have in class and just looking at a board or looking at a powerpoint or listening to somebody lecture out of a book it's something that helped me connect and be hands-on with something that is in society and something i could learn a lot about and it's pushed me to make other stories about different things happening in the world i've recently done a story on the Occupy Wall Street when i went to new york i'm thinking about doing a story that looks into kind of how um how the sorry i can't think of what i'm trying to say how the economy affects everybody around us especially because it has affected my family as well but i think this pbs is a really good way for me and kids who you know don't like to sit in class and read out of the book really learn something and kind of branch out in their society so yeah do you actually do the production side of it as well the technical recording yeah yeah i did have um a partner who helped me with editing but for the most part you know i'd go out with the interviews just have somebody there to work with the camera as well but yeah i did both sides of it the interviews and that's in the curriculum as well um definitely well let's let chris talk about his experience and then we can you guys can ask questions of you know close to you okay so firstly i just want to say that there's more to my video than just those three seconds so i i do recommend checking that out afterwards but i think that the beauty of um his news labs the fact that as student filmmakers we are able to take a story that otherwise wouldn't be told and related to a high school community and really tell it and uh i met mohammed asan uh to the debate program that um utah is known for and he struck me as an individual whose story was worth telling um and just by sheer coincidence these pbs news hour um representatives came to west high school and gave me the perfect opportunity my gave me my friends the perfect opportunity to tell this story and this was um i think the heart of what pbs news hour is it's that empowerment to really go out and become an active productive member of the media community and like lucy was saying she definitely hit the heart of this is that as students we still do need a little bit of structure and a little bit of guidance because it's a big bad world of media out there and if we don't have a script to kind of go off of this kind of professionals we can then we aren't going to be seen as professional we aren't going to create a product that um is as quality as we want it to be um and through those those resources that news hour gave us we were able to create things that i think both of us are very proud of i i know that lucy is very proud of her piece um i'm proud of uh what you saw and what you didn't see i'm proud of both um and i really look forward to to doing more and um i've also taken film classes at other places i i've done fiction filmed at spot hot productions in salt lake city utah and they although they um also kind of gave us the the same sorts of technical resources it was not as relevant or as important as what pbs did because um muhammad is on is as you would see a refugee who was just trying to find his way in salt lake city community and he although we got involved in debate he just didn't feel like he had a place to call home and as we talked to him as we followed him we started off at a soccer match that uh just a community soccer team that he's he's a part of um as we followed him we we realized that basically what we all want is just a place to call home and the fact that he didn't have that was just a driving force in his life and that's something that is universal what west high school has its fair share of refugees east high school highland high school i'm sure park city high school has at least a few right um and that is sometimes a story that doesn't go or isn't told um unlike i was saying it was just a perfect opportunity to tell a story that otherwise wouldn't be told and that deserves to be told and i thank bbs news out for that right yes um so i'm flora hunter and i manage the public television station that helps uh pbs news out i'm like the dating service that set something up so i'm just beating with pride back here um but i want to tell you without the open access to the b-roll that bbs news hour provided this would not have happened so um we're located in set lake and we've been working with high schools and community college journals and students to try and get them to produce things but they don't have access to b-roll of immigration marches or um you know the supreme court's wearing in ceremony or the kinds of things that pbs news hour just had sitting around on the other floor you're figuratively um and for them to be able to open that up and say here's you know the people but what you have is the story that's unique to you it's just been a great model i think for the value of having open access to that content and what it could do when it's in the right people's hands and i want to say um both chris chris and lucy represent a whole class of students that just produced some amazing work um we ended up hiring chris after we graduated from high school last summer and he's now doing editing work um production work and um i mean that's something that has happened throughout our sites we one of the um if you've seen ken burns's prohibition documentary that's been recently uh student in texas edited a piece about prohibition in the border region of texas that was aired on the texas pbs stations um right after that so five minutes about prohibition in the texas border region um edited by student reporting labs student so it really is career skills it's you know those 21st century soft skills about teamwork and collaboration you guys both talked about working in teams um and the critical thinking i mean i think that one of the pieces one of the first pieces that i wanted to show but we still have time was chris's piece about the supreme court and these students in utah did an amazing you know reflection on how supreme court cases were how they compared to utah lot and how utah law was influenced by supreme court and vice versa um and some really like you know unique perspectives that we in the media feel really important um yes i actually had a question for lucy lucy said that um she didn't really like the blackboard and texas approach i was kind of curious after doing this now did it help to go back to that now do you see how does it help integrate the blackboard and the textbooks more into what you're doing now definitely um i feel like they're all hear something in class or hear about something in class and think well here's what i i could do you know a story on this or talk more in depth about this and you know i'll watch the news and everything and it's really helped me especially find my passion which is journalism and it's helped me kind of narrow that down especially as a senior in high school it's good to kind of know what you want to do and that's yeah it's pretty good so and i should say that oh we're out of time i should say we're also looking at the small um in the sciences so um having students go out and apply what they're learning in biology or sciences to issues in their community going out and using those investigative reporting kind of skills um and making those connections about what they're learning in the classroom to what's going on in their community to an authentic piece of media for you know an audience that will um you know i think appreciate what this unique perspective of the young people shows them um i know there there are some other questions but i think we're out of time um so you can come see me i have some flyers you can talk to the students and we'd love to hear your ideas about how this can be expanded or integrated into all of the great open educational resources that you guys are building