Staff Blog
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Posted over 3 years ago by Akili Lee.
We wanted to take a moment to reflect on a few (well, actually 20...) of our high points from 2008. As we approach our 5 year anniversary, we've hit plenty of planned and unforeseen milestones...here are a few from 2008:
20) PearlFest '08
This past summer our neighbors at Little Black Pearl hosted their annual arts fest. As a part of this year's festival they had a host of youth performers take the stage. It was a great forum for some of our DYN students to perform their music live.
ABC and De'jaun definitely gained some new fans that afternoon!
19) DYN Awards
As we grow, the students never cease to amaze us. We chose to end this past school year off with an awards ceremony to recognize our standout students. The 2008 DYN Awards saw a good mix of students showcasing their best work for parents and peers.
Our 'Renaissance Award' for the most well rounded media producer went to graduating 8th grader, Marcus Prince. Marcus is an accomplished music producer, poet, graphic artist, 3d modeler, game designer and more! Marcus' surprise gift was a drum machine he could use with his laptop to make beats at home. Check out Marcus' mpc video, its approaching 10,000 views on YouTube!
18) iRemix.org
Third time’s the charm! After we went through 2 other incarnations of iRemix.org we’ve finally got it right!
The great guys over at One Design did an amazing job of coming up with a design that really matches the spirit of the program! Hope you all agree!
More than just a pretty face, the new site is a much more comprehensive source of info on DYN. Whether you're looking for student work, research, team info or interested in hearing what our team has to say, its all here!
You're also able to keep up with DYN across multiple online communities as well: Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr!
17) Obama for Education Event + Arne Duncan Interview
We got a last minute call from the Obama campaign to film a Chicago ‘Obama for Education’ event. The event featured Arne Duncan, CEO of Chicago Public Schools and recent Secretary of Education appointee; Jon Schnur, Education Advisor to Senator Obama; Linda Darling-Hammond, Education Advisor to Senator Barack Obama, Prof of Education at Stanford.
The highlight was definitely DYN Jr Mentor Terrence grabbing a great interview with Obama’s selection as Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan:
16) DYN Junior Mentors
We've got an amazing team of teaching artists that work with over 300 DYN participants. I think the biggest testament to the quality of their work is the development we see in the skills and disposition of their students.
Noticing that our most advanced students had unique needs but had also earned the right to have new responsibilities, we established the Digital Youth Network Jr Mentors. These high school students have been active participants in DYN for at minimum 3 years and have proven themselves to be responsible, multi-talented and extremely motivated to grow.
The Jr Mentors are paid members of the DYN staff with some teaching responsibilities for younger students and a host of special projects. Currently they're working through an advanced video production project with Jr Mentor Coordinator Raphael where they'll complete their second short film (here's the first) by this summer!
Meet DYN's FIRST group of Jr Mentors: Shani, Terrence, Malcolm
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5 down...15 more to go!