A new Web-based tool, TEL•A•VISION, inspires young people to dream the possible dream.
By Mary Johnson Patt June 2009
District Administration Magazine, the magazine of School district Management, completed a three page article on TEL.A.VISION in its June/ July NECC issue. Here is an excerpt: In early March, as he addressed the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., President Obama spoke at great length of the reforms he believes will give Americans “a complete and competitive education, from the cradle up through a career.” The proposals he laid out for improving early childhood education, K12 standards and assessments, graduation rates, teacher quality and college funding will be debated for months to come by thousands of school administrators, teachers, parents and politicians. It was the voice of a single teenager, however, that helped drive the president’s messages home that day.
At the end of his speech, Obama quoted Yvonne Boroquez, a California student whose high school class recently made a video exploring the impact of the economic crisis on their dreams of higher education and professional employment.
“It was heartbreaking that a girl so full of promise was so full of worry that she and her class titled their video ‘Is Anybody Listening?’” Obama said. “I am listening. We are listening. America is listening,” the president assured Boroquez and her classmates.
“We have a huge vision deficit in this country,” Johnson explains. “There is so much fear and negativity, especially in the media. I decided to start a movement about bringing more hope and possibility into the world, and to do it by helping kids create little three-minute visions of what they want their life to become.”
Enter TEL•A•VISION. Johnson’s free Web tool gives today’s tech-savvy youth everything they need to create and share “vision videos.” A TEL•A•VISION is essentially a highly personal montage combining a student’s written hopes and dreams with still photographs, music and computer animation—created with tools available online at www.telavision.tv.