Lincoln City

Check out a sneak peak of how Lincoln City answered our national question: How would you rebuild the world with technology?

Jace Schwartz and Susan Smith talk about the generation lap they experience as mother and son. In this special sneak peak of their conversation they are talking about text messaging.

Our week in Syracuse is almost over, and if you’ve been following our twitter feeds, you’ll already know that it has been very successful. Of the 5 videos and 1 multimedia gallery we have planned to produce from our trip to Lincoln City, we have brought 4 to the 99% complete mark. Now we wait just for our final branding and graphical design so that our projects will fit the final theme of the site when we publish.

On Monday morning we leave for Hopkinsville, KY. We will be doing many of the same things we did in Lincoln City while we are there, but with a new twist. Hopkinsville is a military community and we intend to find stories about youth and technology in that setting.

Much more to come. Keep checking our blogs and our homepage.

Here are the results from our survey of Lincoln City High School students. We had 43 responses. Click here to take the survey yourself.

Some interesting results include:

• When asked what media they use first each day, not a single student said newspapers.
• The first thing they said they used each day was their cell phones.
• Most internet access came through a shared, family computer
• Desktops were more common than laptops
• Students said they were were most willing to give up video games.

It is hard to measure how hard we’ve been working based on the amount we’ve produced so far, and yet with Andrew fully passed out from exhaustion across the room from me it is clear that we have been working hard. Can you tell based on the content yet? I know you will be able to tell when we finally publish at the end of the summer, but just in case you can’t tell now here is an informal statistical analysis of team Tenser-Burton’s trip to Lincoln City:

16 appointments completed
10 more appointments scheduled
44 hours worked, in 4 days
3.5 hours of video recorded
3 hours of audio recorded
1000 pictures taken
60 phone calls
300 business cards handed out
80 posters handed out or hung
17 AA batteries
30 minutes on the radio
$50 for lighting equipment
$200 for food
9 posts on this blog
10 dirty shirts
20 dirty socks
6 apples for breakfast
15 cups of coffee (or Oregonian favorite Mochas)

Well, looking at all that, I think it has been a good start, and the beauty of a few hours at the coast today was well deserved.
5 of those phone calls came from this morning and we’re excited that 3 of those upcoming appointments are for tomorrow. For now, it is back to work adding to those statistics.

Oregon Coast near Devil's Punchbowl

We’d like to announce that our partner Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital and a major source of inspiration for our project, has agreed to work with us by sponsoring a contest. Here are the simplified rules: (Check our main page for official information)

1. You are going to be creating a 90-120-second video or multimedia story in the spirit of a soap opera. We’re looking for stories about relationships.
2. Your story must include technology in a prominent way. (That is theme, afterall) but that technology can be anything you can think of that has to do with modern relationships. We’re suggesting Facebook, Twitter, and cell phones, but those examples just scrape the surface.
3. Your video must be in “.mov” format (we also encourage HD) and can be submitted to the News21 crew that visits your area, or can be sent to us via our website. (Upload feature coming soon)
4. If you don’t have equipment, contact the News21 team visiting your area.
5. The videos will be screened, and the posted to our website.
6. The best video nationally will win $1000 and the potential to be mentioned in Tapscott’s next book along with the News21 program.

We’ve passed security, and thankfully it only took about 20 minutes to scan and rescan our equipment. Luckily there were short lines at the Syracuse airport.

Already our brains have switched from leisure mode to reporter mode. Andrew started snapping pictures of the runway the moment he had cleared the security checkpoint. “I can’t help it when I see good composition,” he said. Phil has made followup calls and emails trying to confirm appointments for the next week.

So far our plans include: a meeting with the managing editor of the News Guard, a visit to Career Tech School, dinner with the Mayor, and an interview with Roger Robertson on AM 1400 KBCH.

So long for now, we’ll see you tonight Lincoln City

Lincoln City Wordle - Made from our email correspondance

If you’re looking for more information about the News21 project, or the Syracuse University arm, tune in to the All Ways Traveling Radio show on the 21st of May. Andew and I will be on the radio getting interviewed by Roger Robertson on KBCH AM1700 during our second day in town.

Our first day in town, the 20th, will include a meeting scheduled with Mayor Hollingsworth, and some time exploring and getting aquainted.

My name is Phil Tenser and I will be traveling to Lincoln City this summer with my Fellowship partner Andrew Burton. We are Multimedia Fellows with a program called News for the 21st Century, or News21 . The 8-university program is sponsored by the Knight and Carnegie Foundations and tasks us with the goal of traveling the country and creating exciting new multimedia journalism.

Our school, Syracuse University, is taking part in News21 for the first time and has chosen the topic, Teens and Technology. To do this we’ve partnered with Dante Chinni and the Patchwork Nation program which features Lincoln City as one representative of many others in the nation.

We are planning to visit sometime in late May and early June and will likely be spending more than a week in your area to take in the sights, get to know your residents, and find some interesting stories about youth and technology. Some of the story ideas we have been researching include:

1. The dangers that the Internet can pose to young people and the ways that the government or public can protect them.
2. Youths who use technology to connect, and form groups.
3. Technology used in libraries or classrooms as a learning tool.
4. Your recent library renovations and any new technology you’ve added to them.