WARPED LENSES

Scratching A New Itch

2011-11-26T14:34:00.001+08:00

Receiving lessons from university professors and lecturers can no longer be considered as a new experience for the kids of MEDIASENA, although it's still very much awe-inspiring. The latest 'lecture' session was held at the Science and Technology Building of the venerable Sultan Idris Education University (UPSI). Way over in Tanjung Malim, Perak, several hundred kilometers from home. The content? Scratch. In case the name doesn't reveal much about what it actually is, let's see what the official explanation says:-

"Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.

As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.

...

Scratch is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, with financial support from the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, Intel Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Google, Iomega and MIT Media Lab research consortia."

In short, Scratch is a tool with which kids can draw animations, make them move, insert stories and create interactive games. The full story, along with samples of projects from kids all over the world are available at http://scratch.mit.edu/. Based on the capabilities of the software, the possibilities for implementations within MEDIASENA's task descriptions are boundless! Speaking about this with the lecturers facilitating the course, the images of Michael Jordan playing basketball alongside Bugs Bunny came to mind. Not only that, there is also the huge potential for applications in a classroom setting for a technology-based, student-centric teaching approach. Videos are no longer attached to cameras. Imagine that!

The kids had fun during the trip. This was probably due the fact that it was also their first time attending a symposium and a paper presentation session. The excitement was obvious on their faces, and so was the effort of maintaining consciousness, which was highly enjoyable to watch, on my part.

On a more serious note, the Scratch lecture was in fact, interesting. So interesting that the kids had to be pried from their seats at lunch time. Such is the arresting power of knowledge and technology on the highly curious. All thanks to Dr. Maizatul and the UPSI facilitators for introducing us to Scratch.

The presentation on MEDIASENA by En. Wan during the symposium was also a hit among attendees, and prompted some very interesting questions for everyone involved to ponder upon.

Ideas Are Elusive

2011-10-29T11:22:00.002+08:00

Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, or so they say. What they forgot to tell you is that the first 10% consumes 99% of your energy reserves. Physically, and more so intellectually. It sucks the life out of you. Breaking the inertia of non-motion is the real hard work. Isaac Newton wasn't joking when he said (paraphrased) objects at rest tend to stay at rest.

Hmm...maybe if I lie down, my brain will wake up?

The kids are at it again.

This time, they are producing for an Educational Digital Film Festival organized by the Educational Technology Division of Sabah, Malaysia along with several partners. There's an open category for schools from all over the country to take part in. MEDIASENA, being the covetous (of chance and success) body that it is, wouldn't even dream of letting go of this opportunity to once again prove its mettle at video production.

Several stories were thrown back and forth among the Year 6 crew members involved. It's prime time for them again as their UPSR* ended last month. The rest of the team are busy preparing for the final exams coming up in two days (or so the teachers would like to believe). Finally, the group settled upon one that they think sounded the most interesting for them. Lo and behold, it's a story about themselves. They chose to document the life of a student at SK Sena before and after becoming a crew member of MEDIASENA.

Okay, first this happens, and then that...then what?!

The general concept established, they then began to discuss the outline in greater detail. What was supposed to be a light ideation session ended up taking the entire day. That was how much time it took to break through. Inspiration, it would seem, doesn't appear as easily as switching on a light bulb. Though many people might like to believe that it is so, ideas, intelligent thoughts and the efforts of the intellect are still very much a premium to most, and must never be taken for granted.

Once the full story was complete, the rest of processes marched on almost smoothly. Perspiration jumped on the bandwagon and helped to follow through until the end. They wrote the scripts and the storyboard, which for a 4- to 8-minute movie doesn't normally take them more than five pages each, and started shooting their hearts out, using two cameras, a boom microphone, a dynamic microphone (which turned out to be unnecessary in this particular case), a lavalier microphone, a mixer, and several computers. Editing continued well into the night. It's becoming a norm for the bunch to get home from school after 10 at night during school holidays. MEDIASENA is extremely fortunate and grateful to have such understanding parents supporting their kids' activities all this while.

If this still doesn't do it, I'm going into deep meditation.

The final result came out quite nicely. Some procedures had to be redone as the first time around didn't work as well as expected. In the end, everyone seemed to be satisfied with the video. Satisfied because they all had worked hard to get it done, but more importantly, because they all had thought even harder to get it started.

*For more information on the Malaysian education system, visit http://www.moe.edu.my/, the Malaysian Ministry of Education's official portal.

News of Impravation

2011-10-15T09:16:00.001+08:00

The children of MEDIASENA got a chance to put their personal stories out there when the British Council launched its What's Your News? competition this year (see: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/competition). The competition ends at midnight today (London time, probably). The question is, how do you expect to feel when filming a bunch of eager kids vying for a minute or two of camera time. Each. How should you feel? If this is a multiple choice question, the options would be:-

a) Impressed
b) Aggravated
c) Impressed and aggravated
d) Hungry
e) Impressed, aggravated and hungry

Rest assured, the only answer there could be in MEDIASENA's situation is E. Impressed not only because most of the kids came up with their own ideas for the news scripts, but also because they managed to present them in a highly confident manner. In English for that matter. Impressed too, because they rose up to the challenge, instead of shying away from it.

Aggravated is the way anyone would feel after countless retakes of the same bit of news scripts that shouldn't take more than two minutes to shoot. After all, that is the maximum time allowed for each participating video. Most of them got their stories straight in one or two takes. A few of them actually managed to come up with stories so complicated it took close to 10 shots per person to finally wrap it up. And after entertaining a bunch of kids for an entire day without a chance to run out for a quick lunch, hungry is the only definition you could give to yourself.

In the end 'though, the only feeling that lasted was, by all means, impressed. What was truly amazing was the way those children carried themselves during and after the recording sessions. Given a task, a responsibility, and the right guidance on how to follow them through to the end, they are capable of coming up with results and working attitudes beyond anyone's expectations. The next question is, with such capabilities and such exposures to the ever shrinking world, how do we go about preparing an environment that would keep them engaged, active and creative, so that their stories of rich, youthful experience, as well as success and achievements never end?

Producing Prodigies

2011-10-07T12:38:00.004+08:00

MEDIASENA is SK Sena's premier production house, with tasks ranging from television broadcast to service offerings in open source technologies. It is also the only one in existence at the said institution. The house began as a small video production company consisting of no more than 10 production crew members with little to no specialization to speak of whatsoever. Official training sessions were sparse, and job delegations went about in much the same way that shares bounce in exchange markets.


OSSys at work: facilitating other students

2009
That ragtag group of media troopers eventually grew into an organized squadron, provided with more technical knowledge than they knew what to do with, and given official training to the point of collapse. Only their inexhaustible spirits and children metabolisms kept them from falling down in the middle of rigorous sessions that consumed most of their after-school hours and weekends. That squadron was known as SK Sena's CyKidzCRAZE. The sole focus of this band of brothers (and sisters) at the time was videography and photography. These include scripting and storyboarding exercises, as well as odd jobs covering school activities aside from their main raison d'etre: participating in video competitions.

2010
In time, the list of responsibilities and the number of crew members swelled up, due to the recognition given by the administrative board to CyKidzCRAZE as the official provider of media services for the school. Gone are the days when documentation for school activities was an adult-only job. Teachers looked toward their students for producing high quality official records. Events requiring massive sound setup were being managed and handled - live - by 10- to 12-year-olds who understood which cable went where, and how to avoid screeching and distortions better than anybody else within the school compound.

CyKidzCRAZE during an interview session

Early 2011
The sudden increase in membership meant that there were now more employees in CyKidzCRAZE than there were equipments to work with. A lot more. Even after the purchase and contributions of new cameras and recording gadgets, and several upgrades to the studio, the personnel to equipment ratio was still more than 10 to 1. The children in CyKidzCRAZE found themselves fighting (albeit in a friendly manner) over jobs in order to gain more experience and recognition for themselves. High profile jobs sometimes caused crew members to privately petition for amendments to the duty roster after it was handed out and agreed upon in official meetings. If this were a company of adults, the management could have easily become victims to angry phone calls from disgruntled employees.

The Present, and Beyond
Such an active group of students must always be nurtured and engaged. To leave them idle would not only mean to let them lose interest in what they were doing, worse still, it could also hinder them from expressing their energy and creativity in a tremendously beneficial way. It is toward this end, and to accommodate the ever growing complexity of the expectations put upon them by the school that CyKidzCRAZE has been relegated to the position of a subsidiary of a larger organization. Focusing on its original function of video production, its other business ventures were handed over to other entities operating under a new banner that is MEDIASENA. Those entities and their functions are as follows:-

CyKidzCRAZE - Audiovisual broadcasting
Sena.FM - Radio broadcasting
Aspirasi Sena - Print publication
FlashWorks - Event management
OSSys - Intelligent systems and services

As with any other media conglomerate, MEDIASENA is presided over by a board of directors consisted of teachers, and managed by an annually reviewed structure of Chief Operations Officers, General Managers and a Group Editor, all posts held by students who previously occupied the highest ranks in CyKidzCRAZE.

News coverage during 2011 Teacher's Day celebration

The formation of MEDIASENA is an effort to provide more opportunities for CyKidzCRAZE members to immerse themselves in production experience at SK Sena. With each crew member having a clearly defined working portfolio, MEDIASENA will be able to achieve what has rarely, if ever, been achieved before at the primary school level. The development of a media powerhouse run entirely by school children with minimal supervision. An experiment that lets young startups run free with imaginations and ideas. An undertaking to create a new generation of Malaysians with extreme confidence, imbued with knowledge and skills, overflowing with creativity, and projecting excellence in leadership capabilities.

This blog is intended, as the description states, to present the lighter and more personal side of MEDIASENA. Official records pertaining to its activities are made accessible at SK Sena's official website, http://www.sksena.edu.my. This entry will probably be the one and only on this blog to be written in such a (slightly) serious tone.