Join the PTA’s Digital Media Committee and Project Seven
I want to start off thanking all of you who have supported the Digital Media Effort of Project Seven over the last two and a half years with your time, energy and contributions. Because of these efforts, Claremont Middle School has arguably the best and most advanced digital media instructional program in the OUSD.
Let me outline a few of our accomplishments.
First of all, two years ago, with the help of many volunteers, the PTA, the principal at the time, David Chambliss and with support from OTX, we built from scratch a state of the art digital media lab and a core curriculum computer lab Claremont Middle School. We have continued to improve and develop it over the last two years.
Fall of 2010 marks our third year of elective instruction of Maya 3D Modeling. Peter Heckel, who this year will hopefully be an OUSD employee, has taught every year and has continued to improve and advance the curricula. The class focus is to establish the foundations of 3D Modeling and Animation and engage students in the skills and real opportunities available to them in the digital media industry that surrounds them in the Bay Area.
We are now in our fourth year of teaching 3D Modeling and Film Making classes in the after school program at Claremont. In addition last year we started offering a 3D Modeling class after school for 4th and 5th graders at Chabot Elementary with instructor Patrick O’Hearn who was trained by Peter. He will return this year with another great class!
A year and a half ago we worked with OTX and brought in 100 new PC’s and 8 teacher laptops into the classrooms. Ran a pilot after school class at Oakland Tech last year teaching 3D Modeling and Animation. CMS PTA funded the elective program last year at Claremont.
Working with Autodesk, and with a special thanks to Carl Bass, the CEO, we have received donations of software for all three schools, Claremont Middle School, Oakland Tech and now Chabot Elementary. Without this we could not be as successful as we have been. In these last two years we have also been able to support field trips to PDI and Autodesk and had speakers come to school and show the students in class in the media lab the excitement of using 3D modeling and animation to make movies, video games and to design cool products. Some of these talks were also presented after school and were well attended by parents, teachers as well as other students in the community.
Exciting new things coming this year.
•Expanded Digital Media lab. Through the efforts of CMS Principal Kenya Crockett we will be replacing the older pc’s on the core curriculum side of the lab with new iMacs capable of running both OSX and MSWindows.
•We will help set up new PC’s in the school.•Again through the efforts of Kenya, we will have a new computer cart loaded with 30 computers that will be able to be moved from classroom to classroom. The Media committee will support setting this up when all the hardware arrives.
•An expanded digital media technology speaker series. •More field trips. •We hope to get the work done to get our curricula accredited this year. •We brought back film making, missing last year, as part of the after school program •We hope to lay all the ground work to get the program started in earnest at Oakland Tech so we can
complete the seven year vision. •If we get more IT support for the lab we will be able to automate many of the computer maintenance
and support work currently done manually.
To continue to grow the digital media program and support its current efforts, the Project Seven team of volunteers needs to grow as well. This is a great opportunity for you to contribute in a very significant way to the community to the local K-12 schools and to your children! This will be incredibly rewarding work that will have an effect on the community and our schools for years to come.
Here is a sampling of the ways you can contribute to the success and vision of the seven year digital media program known as Project Seven.
• Grant writing sub-committee
• We’re working to raise funding to continue to support the program at Claremont.
• We’re beginning the process to find corporate sponsors and funding to build a world class program at Oakland Tech.
• We need a person who can lead this effort. • We have a couple of grants in-play that need immediate support.
• Accreditation of the digital media curricula so it can be offered at Oakland Tech.
• This is a core endeavor this year for project seven. In order to successfully make the ‘seven’ in Project Seven a reality we need to get accreditation for the curricula Peter has developed for digital media around 3D Modeling. We are also hoping to expand the curriculum with the help of industry professionals. This will take someone with patience and commitment, someone who has experience working with the district and has political acumen.
• Field trip sub-committee
• Each year we have done one field trip to industry centers of digital media. in the past we have been to PDI home of Shrek and Autodesk the maker of the software we teach and which is used in nearly every . this year we hope to do one field trip per semester one to Lucas Arts/ ILM and another to either Pixar or to Electronic Arts. we need someone to organize and help Peter make it all happen - as a bonus you get to go!
• Technology speaker series
• Each year we have also had speakers come from the local digital media industry and present talks showing ‘what they do, and how you can do what I do’ last year we had speakers from Electronic Arts and Pixar. the talks are presented in the classroom and also continued in the evening for parents, teachers and the community to participate. this year we would like to organize three events in the speaker series, we have one speaker, an animator from PDI already lined up. this volunteer or volunteers will help organize and support the each event.
• Volunteers over a few work weekends to set up new equipment
• This will be a big effort and a lot of fun for all. we’ll be putting together new tables, un-boxing setting up and securing computers and eating pizza! calls will go out during the school year to help out.
• Volunteer with IT experience to work with Sid Cowles to support the network automation and computer IT in the media lab
• Sid has been our master IT guy and with all the new computers coming in he can use some help. we’re looking for someone with experience with OSX, unix, remote desk top and general networking experience
• CMS Web Site and Project Seven Website
• I started up the current CMS website three years ago and it has now grown to the extent that I need some help maintaining it, expand it and keeping it as up to date as possible. Looking for one or two volunteers with Macs. Knowledge of html not necessary. Same goes for Project Seven website.
This can only be done with the help and support of Claremont Students and PARENTS!
To volunteer and help out email michaelmages@mac.com
