Media Mamas Blog

The Media Mamas explore current thoughts and trends.

Getting the word out!

Submitted by tasha on Tue, 11/11/2008 - 13:48

What a week. On the tail of our first workshop we celebrated Tasha’s daughter Juno’s first birthday as we cheered on our new President-Elect. The following day, Media Mamas was featured on Red-Tricycle. Today, our digital story, The Arsenic on the Crab, is featured on the Safer States Coalition’s website. Safer States is working to reshape policies around toxics in the U.S. We’re excited to see our media being used to advocate for family friendly policies.

And we're off!

Submitted by tasha on Tue, 11/04/2008 - 10:43

Last night was our first workshop, Video 101, where we had a dynamic group of mamas trudge through the rain with their video boxes still in the case. We took a look at some fun sample clips, discussed strategies for getting good footage of our kiddos, and even practiced on baby dolls and cows. We’ll upload some clips so you can check it out.

What a diversion from pre-election jitters!

The second part of this series can be taken independently, Editing 101. Learn more here.

Digital media and the special needs child

Submitted by christine on Thu, 10/16/2008 - 14:52

In my work in special education, I have noticed that many children who can be overwhelmed (or underwhelmed!) by standard teaching methods can learn concepts, language, and social skills via a variety of digital media. A child who can’t sit still and listen to a book will beg for a chance to see the exact same book presented on the computer. Children who rarely imitate my words will echo them and begin to use them spontaneously if they hear them in a power point presentation.

Many special needs children enjoy watching videos and doing computer games. While there are commercially made materials which are educational and even some which are specifically geared to special needs children, a child responds best to individualized instruction that takes into account his or her learning style, interests and needs. This is why we create individual education plans for special needs children – why should the educational media be any different?
One service Media Mamas will offer is personalized consulting and for parents of special needs children to produce strong visual and audio presentations which feature the child and her peers and target individual learning needs.

By Christine

The Arsenic and the Crab

Submitted by tasha on Mon, 09/29/2008 - 13:29

Click to Play

In this digital story I talk about my anger at all the toxins in baby products. It's being used as a tool for outreach and education to implement family friendly safety policies.

A couple of options for uploading video

Submitted by tasha on Fri, 09/05/2008 - 10:46

In looking for alternatives to YouTube, we’ve found a few places that allow you to password protect your video and make it easy to share with friends and family. Probably the most popular is Vimeo, with MotionBox and Smilebox as alternatives. Flickr and Picasa also allow you to edit and upload short videos,so hopefully in a few weeks we’ll be able to upload a guide with the pros and cons of each!

A media mama summer

Submitted by tasha on Wed, 08/06/2008 - 16:34

In between explorations to local wading pools, mountains, and beaches, we’ve been checking out some options documenting these adventures. After hunting around online for a good place to make custom board books, we found My Custom Story, which allows you to directly upload your photos and text. We’ll be testing it this month and let you know what we find out.

For the online stories, we recently met with the folks over at Sampa. Their site allows you to make your own family or baby website. So far it’s very user friendly and makes it extremely easy to keep it private without requiring friends or family to remember passwords. It’s also great for photos, but they haven’t implemented direct video uploads yet although they say that’s the next step. Definitely easier than wordpress or blogger for a baby site, and we’ll figure out the pros and cons of sampa vs. totspot in the next few months and post samples of each.