Comolli Center students to visit Nicaragua for film project
Four students in the Comolli Center for Technology & Arts will travel with teacher Jim Shields to San Ramon, Nicaragua for a 10-day documentary filmmaking trip. Following up on their first experience in combining travel and video production last year in a spring vacation trip to New Orleans, this year the group will embark on an international expedition that will test their world language skills in addition to their technology prowess.
In a partnership with Planting Hope, a non-profit group that engages in service work in the Matagalpa region of Nicaragua, the SBHS group will engage in a variety of video-related projects that will help promote international cooperation, the value of international student exchange and teach our students valuable design and leadership skills. The work has already begun as ten Nicaraguan students and two teachers visited Vermont from January 9th until February 9th. While they were here, they participated in digital design workshops at the Comolli Center for Technology & Arts with the goal of creating a book for publication in the In Our Global Village series. A grant from Next Generation Press will pay for the printing costs of the book.
Jim Shields, Technology Department colleague Philip Galiga, and parent volunteer Randall Kay, along with a number of SBHS students, including Hannah Kay, Sara Weinberg, Andrew Thompson, Scott Britt, Maria Dustira, and Ryan Teixeira, helped the Nicaraguan students layout text and photographs withAdobe InDesign for later publication. Shields will travel to Nicaragua in April with seniors Andrew Thompson and Scott Britt and juniors Hannah Kay and Sara Weinberg to produce a video DVD to accompany the book. In addition, the SBHS filmmakers will create a commemorative DVD for exchange participants and a video to promote the mission of Planting Hope.
“This program merges video production and cultural exchange in a powerful way that will create lasting learning for these students,” explained Mr. Shields. He continued, “I hope to create more opportunities to combine filmmaking and travel experiences, because I think it gives students a way to actively engage in the exchange and when they return, they reflect deeply on their experience through the video editing process.”
