the best part is that in the teacher’s follow-up reply he wrote that noam essentially has problems with authority figures. he corrects them when they’re wrong. or otherwise. i wonder where he gets that from???
———-
On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Marc wrote:

Mr. Rothberg,

I just wannted to touch base with you and see how you thought the meeting went yesterday while I was there and after I left. I saw the final IEP, without any changes, and just wanted to make sure that your feelings were expressed.

Additionally, Noam is complainiing of a sore throat and wanted me to ask you if someone could drop of lozengers for him.

—– Original Message —–
Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 2:21:32 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: IEP

Hi Marc,

Unfortunately I just got this email, and school is coming to a close anyway, so I’ll bring him some lozenges when I pick him up. Thanks for letting me know though.

I thought the meeting went well. Noam seems to have improved greatly since last year. I think a lot of it just has to do with him getting more mature as he gets older.

Honestly, I’m not sure how much meeting with Ms. Rizzo is actually helping. He seems to seriously dislike her. I wonder whether or not it would be better to have a ‘happy’ kid who isn’t frustrated at school. Or have a frustrated kid, who might be helped by her tutoring even if he dislikes it.

However, he’s always taken it personally when he gets corrected. As you mentioned yesterday when I saw you, he’s been aggravated by your corrections. Which is interesting because, that’s what teachers do… and he’s never mentioned it to me before I brought it up with him after school.

On another subject, I was concerned to hear that you told the students that “illegal” immigrants do not pay taxes. That is unfortunately not true. Undocumented immigrants work often resort to using false social security numbers in order to work. This way they pay into the U.S. social welfare system yet reap none of its benefits. Further, more and more immigrants are being detained for no good reason. Our very unfair economic system depends on undocumented immigrants to do a lot of hard work for little money. You can find out more about all of this here: http://www.amnestyusa.org/immigrant-detention/page.do?id=1641031
and a .pdf fact sheet can be found here: http://archdiocese.la/ministry/justice/peace/pdf/Factsheet-JusticeforImmigrants.pdf

Also, all of this nation’s residents are illegal immigrants, unless you’re 100% native american.

If I understood the lesson incorrectly – because it was translated through Noam, then let me know. I’d be happy to be wrong about that.

Best,

Fivel

———

Mr. Rothberg,

I neglected to mention that we spoke of Migrant workers, not illegal immigrants. The story mentioned “aliens” and Noam was fixated on that. He also felt the term was not appropriate, which he stated in class. I brought up the definition to show him what it really means (he thinks it means little green men from space).

We do need to work on his understanding that since he is a student, it is not appropriate to correct adults, especially Administration, regardless if they are correct or not.

—–
Mr. Rothberg:

I think the issue with Noam’s information was the fact the that he neglected to tell you WHEN the story and facts took place. The story we were discussing took place in the 1880’s, not in recent years. The facts are presented to the teacher to share with the students by the company that creates the textbooks. I interpret them and share what I know. I also showed a video presented by a different company, however, again, this information is from the 1880’s.

Maybe that added insight helps explain the lesson.

++++

The animation was made in about two days because it needed to be ready for a NYC City Council hearing about the above issue.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

It’s day four of the GDC, more or less.  The first two days of the GDC were only open to pass holders who paid for the summits – which included the Serious Games Summit, which I was interested in attending.  However, upgrading to the two day pre-main conference pass provided by the IGDA scholarship was prohibitively expensive.  The all access pass costs around $2,000.  With the high prices of passes, it’s pretty clear who this event is aimed at.  The average attendee seems to be white, male, 30’s to 40’s and an employee at a major game firm, i.e. Midway, Sony, Nintendo, and the like.

Seriously, I think the conference is about 80% male.  I’ve seen more men with a combination of beer bellies, goatees and pony tails in the past few days than at any other time in my life combined .

UNITE HERE and CUPE joined forces on Wednesday, October 17, 2007 to march against poverty and draw attention to the twenty locked-out workers of Toronto’s Holiday Inn on King Street. This video contains photos from the rally and a short interview with one of the locked out hotel workers.

i attended a panel discussion about “citizen journalism,” which is one phrase that could describe what the Media Mobilizing Project is doing. However, MMP folks don’t seem to like it and i think i am beginning to understand why. thus far, the mainstream groups seem to treat the work of “citizen journalists” as “user generated content” that they can exploit to their own means – cheap or free labor that adds information to their content-hungry sites. it’s not necessarily an altruistic relationship.

that doesn’t mean that all such projects need to be viewed so cynically.

the folks at creating community connections (creatingcommunityconnections.org) are working with students at columbia college who in-turn work with a number of neighborhoods and cover them. okay, so that’s not the immpressive part. i don’t think that having privileged college students cover “bad” neighborhoods that they are not from is a good thing. it was unclear whether or not they trained folks from the neighborhood too. or maybe i just took bad notes.

yet they incorporated an innovative call-in feature to their site that allows people to call an automated messaging service, record an audio story or drop leads for the site’s reporters to cover. the stories can then be published as audio files on the website. if i’m not mistaken, the project’s directors’ worked with an online publication called Oh My News http://english.ohmynews.com/ which i have yet to check out.

the creator of the Twin City Daily Planet was a former mainstream reporter who saw that his paper’s virtual and physical product did not do the area justice. inspired by ohmynews.com, the site is a collaboration between professional journalists (i guess the folks who went to school and are getting paid) and citizen journalists who contribute. it was funded (as was the other project above) by a J-Lab grant at the University of Maryland.

interestingly the TC site both produces original content and aggregates news from a variety of sources. the online paper also collaborates with several ethnic news publications in english, spanish, somali and hmong – which blew me away. i really like the idea of collaborating across linguistic and cultural boundaries. furthermore, like the Media Mobilizing Project, the TC Planet partnered w/ their city’s wireless provider to generate “hyper-local” news/content. they’re also partnering with the public library, Minnesota public radio and local nonprofits. the director (fill in name here) recommended the site new american media.org which does news aggregation and training apparently.

as i took notes during the discussion, i imagined that it would be fantastic for mmp to work with seniors, disabled rights groups and look at how we can integrate call-in audio and cellphone aka mobile technology into the future site. i later heard that a program called WAP is what provides mobile technology integration w/ the web, so i’ll have to look into it.

the hotel is quite nice, a fancy sheraton smack downtown.  after checking-in and dropping off my bag, i took a long walk, went to the waterfront and visited two gallery exhibitions.  one of which was a large display within the lobby of a corporate center.  it was the World Press Photo ‘07 exhibition – it went from intense photos of war, destruction, and cruel irony in one section to impressive nature stills on the other.

one photo was of an outdoor movie screening in West Africa by Cinema Numerique Ambulant.  they show popular films with health-related psa’s at the beginning in rural areas – i’m not sure if they’re limited to West Africa or not.  i really need to look into them as it’s the same idea as Street Movies! – which i ran at Scribe for 4+ years.  It would be great to have a narrative study of various outdoor film screening programs across the globe, including what their intentions are, how they succeed, fail, what challenges they face and their outcomes.

also, the imagineNative film fest is going on right now.  i’d like to see if i could make a screening or two there, but we’ll see.  i’m pretty sure i submitted ollin yoliztli calmecac’s film to them but didn’t here back. oh well.

Last night, Monday, October 15th, i attended the Leo Awards – a ceremony run by the Flaherty Seminar.  I was also there to shot photos for them.  Jon Alpert, longtime documentary filmmaker and director of Downtown Community Television (DCTV) won an award, as did Mable Haddock, formerly the director of the National Black Programming Consortium.  unfortunately she was not able to make it, but her college Jackie Jones, the current director of NBPC, spoke on her behalf. photos will be posted in a few days and linked to this  entry.