Category: News

One of 10 institutes to receive the “Young Historians, Living Histories” grant from the Smithsonian Institution, the Institute of Texan Cultures in downtown San Antonio set in search of documentarians with a unique understanding of new media and an inherent appreciation of history to help fulfill the program’s goal of encouraging  young historians to “explore and better understand the history and culture of the Asian Pacific American community while learning to utilize new technology.”

Having recently completed several new media projects over the past months, highlighted by a dynamic presentation at TEDx San Antonio, the Convergent Media Collective at UIW was contacted by Angelica Docog, the director of the Institute of Texan Cultures. After gathering a diverse group of Asian Pacific American high school students from San Antonio and the surrounding area,  Angelica contacted the Collective to help the students learn to shoot video, record audio, and capture engaging oral histories. Over the coming months, the Convergent Media Collective helped shoot, produce, and edit video pieces of young Koreans and Korean immigrants B.J. Yang and (insert other names here) telling their unique stories about coming to America and their encounter with the American culture. Dr. Joseph Lopez, along with Collective members and recent UIW graduates Jonathan Guajardo (’13) and Joel Pena (’13), spearheaded the project and helped the young historians develop their shooting and editing techniques.

The students showcased their films at the CAAM Film Festival on Marc 15th in San Francisco and received the notoriety which comes from contributing to the prestigious Smithsonian Institute. Angelica described it best when she said, “Aside from recording historically significant material, these students will contribute to the Smithsonian Institution’s body of work.”  All in all, this was a great opportunity for our Collective to team up with the Institute and the Smithsonian to help young Korean-Americans tell their stories and experience their culture in a new and exciting way.

The Convergent Media Collective is proud to announce Corina Zavala, a member of the collective successfully defended her dissertation on April 29th at the Sanchez building at the University of Texas at Austin.  She is receiving her degree from the Cultural Studies in Education program, housed out of the Curriculum and Instruction Department in the College of Education.

Her work focused on the women’s experiences during the Chicano Movement, she performed writing sessions with four women from Crystal City who experienced the movement taking place in their city and their words are shared and analyzed  through a very unique and powerful lens that is sure to add to the canon of Chican@ studies and education alike.

Her dissertation committee consisted of some of the top scholars in the field, such as Dr. Luis Urrieta, Dr. Douglas Foley, Dr. Cinthia Salinas, Dr. Noah De Lizzovoy and Dr. Allucquere Sandy Stone.

On behalf of the Convergent Media Collect we congratulate Dr. Corina Zavala and her great accomplishment!

Here are some photos from her defense:

In the Summer of 2013, Mark Barnett of VentureLabs approached me about documenting a summer program he was running at Art Pace where VentureLab created Venture Lab Maker Lab.  Along with a grant from Make Magazine, Mark and VentureLab outfitted the lab with STEAM oriented hardware and software such as 3D printers, laser cutters, ipads, makey makey’s and legos, amongst other materials.  

VentureLabs was founded by Cristal Glangchai Ph.D. with the goal of creating entrepreneurial experiences for youth.  With Dr. Glangchai’s oversight, Mark Barnett developed the makerspace and reached out to Crystal City’s Middle School Benito Juarez’s faculty to develop a summer experience for their youth. 

Crystal City, Texas is a community rooted in education reform and a re-thinking of socio and political issues. La Raza and La Raza Libre were founded here and had a presence throughout the community. Mark visited the Crystal City school district and their respective schools when he worked for Region 20 and had built a rapport with them that allowed for this collaboration.

Working with some Crystal City teachers Mark and the teacher were able to put together a group of students ranging from the age of 9-14 to come to Makerspace and participate in a truly revolutionary maker movement.  Mark worked with local non-profits to house the space and sponsor the initiative.

What transpired from his efforts were amazing.  We were allowed to document Crystal City’s students week at the makerspace with Mark and the Crystal City community’s permission.  It was truly amazing to see how both the adults and students took to the space.  The adults and students worked with Mark and a group of volunteers throughout the week, learning about electronics, software, 3D printing and the concept of being a “Hacker”.

As you will see in the videos, programs like Mark’s are examples of the types of ways STEAM can help us transcend traditional communities and allow them to experience a space where their imagination and creativity are challenged, yet guided in a positive pedagogical way.

As a collective we came away with a sense of awe for the initiative Mark Barnett put together.  Our hope at the time of this effort was to document other such initiatives as they came to fruition.  Looking back almost a year, we have succeeded in being able to do so. We encourage others who are doing such creative initiatives to let us know about it because we are always looking for the next Maker Mark!