Tower of Youth Celebrates Teens' Creativity

The second annual Tower of Youth awards gave Sacramento Valley regional high school youth and teachers, as well as employees of UC Davis' New Media Centers, the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of their labor. The awards and showcase, held in March at the Veteran's Memorial Auditorium in Davis, were the culmination of the three-month long Teen Digital Reel Competition sponsored by a consortium of Sacramento area high schools, private interests, and public organizations and institutions. All work under the umbrella of Tower of Youth, otherwise known as TOY. Through this competition, TOY provides area youth with multimedia tools to enable them "to express themselves, modernize learning, create beauty, promote civic values, build partnerships in the media industry, and forge lifelong careers in telecommunications and the arts."

High-school teachers act as mentors to pairs of students, who take part in the competition by creating 10-second to three-minute digital films that address compelling societal and planetary topics. Students are provided with a diskette containing software and various image, sound and video files, which the entrants may or may not choose to use in their presentations. First, second, and third prizes are awarded in each category, and a Grand Prize is awarded for the best produced digital media creation.

"This is about youth taking charge, building their own network, their community, their future," said Margaret Byrne, coordinator of new media projects on campus. UC Davis is part of the New Media Centers Consortium, a national organization whose members host a range of outreach programs for high schools and high school students. "Our involvement with Tower of Youth is in keeping with UC Davis' own commitment to outreach," Byrne said.

This year, training sessions for competition participants took place in the multimedia lab in Meyer Hall. Byrne lectured on film editing techniques and storyboarding, a planning strategy for creating videos by which key frames are sketched in advance. Computer Resource Specialist Phuong Nguyen discussed the production process, and Arbor Faculty Consultant Joseph Coulombe provided focused training sessions on topics including image manipulation, video and audio editing, and 3-D imaging.

Training sessions provided participants with valuable hands-on experience. "There's a great variety of technical skills represented," said Coulombe. "Some kids have access to expensive equipment and others are struggling. They're all working at it -- that's the point." Six to 20 students took part in each session, along with mentors and additional high school teachers who aimed to train students in their own schools. "I would take three or so people at a time and give them hands-on time," Coulombe said. "I would also work one-on-one with students. Everyone had sufficient time for experimentation and exploration of the software."

Coulombe, Nguyen, and Computer Resource Specialist Armando Arbizo traveled to Roseville's Success High School and Placer High School in Auburn to provide further training.

"We enjoyed the process of teaching things we know and the satisfaction of making a contribution to a larger concept, to the future," Coulombe said.

"Through this project, we are able to demonstrate our commitment to helping young adults achieve quality and excellence in digital technology," said Byrne.

Resources

Tower of Youth Web site:

http://www.towerofyouth.org

UC Davis New Media Centers:

http://nmc.ucdavis.edu