C-Span Student Documentary Competition

At NECC last week I was excited to learn about C-Span's 2009 StudentCam video documentary competition. Entitled A Message to the New President, the contest asks students to create a 5-8 minute documentary "on the issue of national significance you think most urgent for the new president."

Details will be at studentcam.org. Right now you'll find results of last year's contest, along with the winning documentaries.

I'm teaching a research/documentary class this summer, so I'll definitely have the students do this as their final project. Very motivating, I would think!

If you're interested, and wonder where to get started, I blogged about creating student documentaries here, and you can find great video resources and all my handouts here. BTW, the link to my documentary handouts doesn't work as the hosting site is down for a while, apparently.





Anyway, while you're on the C-Span site, check out C-Span Classroom, a wonderful collection of primary source videos, resourcesn and lesson ideas relating for teaching Civics and U.S. Government.