Uses Video to Provide Students with New Ways to Learn About Diversity and Identity Tony Deifell, Executive Director, Institute for Public Media Arts Video and other communications technologies can be essential educational tools to engage today's college students in exploring issues of diversity. In the past two and a half years, through a project sponsored by the Institute for Public Media Arts, more than 350 students at colleges and universities across the country have explored their own identities and their relationships with those whose experiences or backgrounds are different from their own by making individual video diaries and group documentaries as part of a variety of diversity courses. For the first time on Saturday, I felt I was discussing with them instead of talking at them. I guess I just didn't feel like a kid anymore.
Students also learn to create media that can have an impact on public consciousness.
The first project is a curriculum and faculty development project that has partnered with 60 faculty members from 19 colleges and universities that represent a diverse cross-section of higher education in the United States. The third project involves the production of a documentary called My So-Called Community . The project is also now in the process of building a broader infrastructure for developing, institutionalizing, and evaluating a wide variety of media-based diversity curricula for higher education and secondary schools. In this process, project directors are looking for educators and other professionals who want to be a part of this growing effort. Consider working with your college or university public information office to ask a TV news director to cover the event and feature the student video.