Session C1:
Project Rebirth: Activating Living Histories for Educational and Therapeutic Initiatives

Frank Moretti, Michael Preston
2:00 PM - 3:15 PM

Video has long played an important role in training teachers, counselors, and other professionals responsible for the well-being and development of others. REBIRTH, a 2011 documentary film chronicling the recovery of five individuals after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, has generated a substantial film archive, including more than 150 hours of interviews with nine participants. This footage is now available to faculty at Columbia and Georgetown for courses in a wide range of disciplines to help students better understand narratives of trauma, grief, and the process of recovery. This session used the Project Rebirth film archive as a context, with examples from courses at Columbia University, to address issues of documentary film, narrative, close viewing and analysis, students' intellectual development and pre-professional training, and coordinating university efforts with outside organizations.

About the presenters: Frank Moretti is co-founder and executive director of the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, for which he provides pedagogical, strategic and managerial leadership. In addition to defining the goals and disseminating the CCNMTL message on campus, Frank serves as Professor of Communications, Computing and Technology at Teachers College. FULL BIO -- Michael Preston is an educational technologist at CCNMTL. His work focuses on multimedia analysis, including the development of tools to facilitate the close viewing of video, and research on students' acquisition of interpretive and critical thinking skills by using video as evidence to build an argument. Michael recently received a Ph.D. in educational psychology from Teachers College.

Use the NME 2010 Forum to ask questions or to add a comment: http://bit.ly/forum_nme2010

See also:

Project Rebirth Educational Initiative