Community Classroom Offers Free Teaching Resources

This Long Island hip-hop group helped set a high bar for sampling artistry with their debut album 3 Feet High and Rising, released in 1989.

George Clinton helped invent the genre of funk with his groups Parliament and Funkadelic (collectively known as P-Funk); his music has been sampled in several important hip-hop songs.

Can you own a sound?

That is the provocative question raised in a new resource from ITVS Community Classroom: four lesson plans and film modules for Copyright Criminals, an innovative and dynamic documentary that explores the origins of sampling culture in hip-hop music, copyright, creativity, and technological change. This curriculum is an invaluable tool for teachers or media organizations seeking to promote media literacy and ethical media production practices among youth.

The film explores how hip-hop rose from the streets of New York to become a multibillion-dollar industry, and what happened when record company lawyers got involved and everything changed. Students will develop not only a deeper historical understanding of “remix” culture, but also contemplate where it is headed. Featured artists include Public Enemy, De La Soul, and George Clinton, as well as several prominent entertainment lawyers and media scholars.

These exciting resources examine copyright law in the history of “borrowing” sounds in music, and raise thought-provoking questions about what is creative and what is criminal. The lessons are directed toward grades 9 through 12, and college students for use in the following subject areas: media studies, media literacy, social studies, history, sociology, media production, music and language arts, business, and legal studies.

Best news of all, all of these resources are FREE to educators and youth-serving organizations.

Check out our FREE resources >>

Watch a video preview of the film below:

Tags: copyright, education, free teaching materials, law, pbs, public media, teachers

Celebration of Teaching and Learning Conference: ITVS Community Classroom Offers Free Materials

Last week, Annelise Wunderlich, ITVS’s national community engagement and education manager, attended the Celebration of Teaching and Learning Conference –– the biggest professional development conferences for educators in the country. Get her take on the event below.

Chi Do, ITVS’s associate director of communications, discusses ITVS Community Classroom materials -- availalbe to educators for free.

More than 8,000 attendees participated in the Celebration of Teaching and Learning Conference, sponsored by WNET in New York.

Recently, my colleague Chi Do, ITVS’s associate director of communications, and I attended the Celebration of Teaching and Learning Conference, sponsored by WNET in New York. It was a huge event – drawing more than 8,000 attendees this year!

Keynote speakers included Queen Latifah, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and Queen Noor. It was refreshing to see the energy and passion of so many educators gathered under one roof, especially at a time when the nation’s education system is facing a dire financial crisis.

ITVS Community Classroom shared an exhibition booth with our sister PBS series, P.O.V., and hundreds of teachers dropped by to check out the film and curriculum resources drawn from the series. Teachers were always surprised to learn that our DVD collections — which feature modules from acclaimed films from Independent Lens paired with standards based lesson plans –– are FREE to educators and youth-serving organizations. This came as welcome news at a time when cities are slashing school budgets across the country and teachers are more strapped than ever to connect their students with the tools they need to learn.

We unveiled our newest Community Classroom collection, based on the film Copyright Criminals, which explores the ethics around copyright law and sampling in hip-hop music. We also announced an exciting new interactive game to teach about recycling and globalization, based on the award-winning film Garbage Dreams, which will launch on April 20.

Check out our FREE resources >>

Watch the video below to hear from the teachers we met at the conference.

Tags: classroom, free teaching materials, pbs, public media, teachers

Live Webinar Tonight: Copyright and Fair Use in the Art World and Classroom

Are you looking for ways to incorporate digital media into your teaching? Don’t understand the rules of online copyright and fair use?

On Wednesday, March 10 at 8:00 PM ET, join PBS Teachers and Classroom 2.0 for a special live webinar that will explore the implications of copyright and fair use laws in the classroom. The seminar will also explore how to share best practices in student media production.

During this event, you will have the chance to hear from and interact with filmmaker Kembrew McLeod, whose film Copyright Criminals recently aired on PBS’s Independent Lens, renowned law professor Peter Jaszi, and media producers and educators Chris Runde and Joe Fatheree.

Also, Annelise Wunderlich, national community engagement and education manager for ITVS, will present film modules and lesson plans based on the film and developed by ITVS Community Classroom.

At the close of the live webinar, you’ll have an opportunity to ask questions and have a better understanding of what kind of tools and resources are available for your classroom or organization.

Bookmark this site and join the live discussion TONIGHT at 8:00 PM >>

Tags: educators, hip hop, music, pbs, sampling, teachers, webinar

Community Classroom In Idaho

Women's Empowerment Community Classroom Modules

As a celebration of four years of Community Cinema at the holiday season, we asked our event producers and producing partners to share reflections on past events. Lynn Allen is our ITVS Regional Outreach Coordinator for Idaho. She shares a story about presenting Community Classroom at a statewide conference.

I was excited by the opportunity to present Community Classroom resources to high school social studies teachers at a statewide in-service conference. The teachers enthusiastic response to the Classroom resources was gratifying. They appreciated the attention to detail in each video package and the ability to use a DVD or download the video clips online.

I used a video clip from TAKING ROOT, the documentary about Wangari Maathai and the Greenbelt Movement in Kenya. Watch the clips from TAKING ROOT used in the Community Classroom video modules.

Wangari Maathai Accepting the Nobel Prize

We followed it up with the “tree” activity (PDF document 2.7 MB) using a local issue — a superfund clean up site in north Idaho. Being able to use a local issue in the activity really brought the activity to life for the teachers.

The teachers were very excited to get these wonderful free resources. There were three student helpers at the presentation and they really got into all the clips and activities, which made quite an impression on the teachers!  I was pleased to have been able to bring these teachers and students and activities together.  Community Classroom is a way to engage students through thought-provoking film clips and turn their reaction into action.

Tags: Community Classroom, Idaho, taking root, teachers

Community Classroom Engaging Seattle Teachers Through Film

Community Classroom currently offers a diverse selection of FREE DVDs and online modules designed with teachers, students, classroms, and community learning in mind.

The Seattle International Film Festival presents myriad year-round events, workshops, and films

On Tuesday, Dustin Kaspar, Educational Programs Coordinator for the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) presented Community Classroom to a group of teachers from various Social Studies departments throughout the Seattle Public Schools system. Local ITVS National Community Coordinator, Patrick Baroch, provided each teacher with a free DVD and information about upcoming events.  Free Community Classroom materials feature curricula paired with specially edited video modules taken from the best of Independent Lens and other cutting-edge documentaries, Web original projects, and online activities. All activities incorporate national standards, teaching strategies, worksheets and extension ideas. These FREE resources are a powerful tool for teaching and learning around issues crucial to educating young people in classroom and community settings. Kaspar said, “The training was a rousing success, and teachers were very excited about the availability of the free DVDs.” Teachers learned about the diverse calendar of films at SIFF Cinema, the film festival’s year-round cinematheque who also partners with Community Cinema. Kaspar shared a clip from Community Cinema selection MARCH POINT (which was shot by teens north of and in Seattle and Washington, D.C.) as an example of youth using film to tell their story. The teachers took their materials back to their schools to share with colleagues and students.  Turn your classroom into a Community Classroom.

Tags: Community Classroom, education, seattle, seattle international film festival, teachers