I turned down the opportunity today to be interviewed by a 9 year old girl for the 4-H Network News. This was at the Jefferson County Fair. I said no because I have had a small part in their program from its inception and definitely don’t offer a “man on the street” point of view.
This is a program that is run by 4-H youth and has the rough edges that you’d expect from kid produced audio and video. Today one young man showed me a video introduction that he made for a piece on training dogs. He was so proud of the fact that he only spend 10 minutes on a 25 second video segment. That is amazing. What’s amazing is that a 15 year old is so comfortable with high end video production software. It wouldn’t fly in a TV studio but that’s not the point. The video was shot today and will be on the web this weekend. It’s immediate and it’s real.
I’ve seen the program take off and soar so it’s sometimes difficult to realize how ground breaking this is. We have kids producing news and documentaries with passion and increasing skill. We have kids, who might otherwise be bored by small town life and turn to drugs, who are creating a community resource, learning marketable skills and having a lot of fun in the process. And they’re doing it at the speed of youth.
Here’s an example.
powered by ODEO
About a year ago, Pamela Roberts, the County 4-H Coordinator took a web design class from me. In week 4 of and 8 week program she was sharing her knowledge with the kids in her program. I said, why don’t you try Blogger. Two week later there were 5 4-H youth actively posting. Six months later they were actively podcasting and video podcasting on what has become a network of over 20 interconnected blogs. What Pam started has been helped buy the intensive efforts of the Internet Club leader, Jack Olmstead. Every time I stop by the 4-H office there’s something new to see.
While the program is part of Washington State University and the kids have free access to new Macs running Final Cut Pro and all of Apple’s production software, their web presence is all basic. They run their community news from Blogger. They use YouTube and Google Video. They use Odeo and Audio Blogger for getting their media out. These are all simple and free services and they work better than I would have ever thought.
As a “Web Professional”, I, of course, need to research and find the “best” tool for the job. They just grab what’s handy and run with it and spend their time creating content without getting hung up on what’s trendy or “best.” This is a great lesson in “just do it.” Nike marketing hype aside, that’s great advice, that these young people don’t even know their offering. They just do it, with incredible support from their program leaders, true, but they are offering the best kind of advice, that of example.
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