THE PENDULUM
PAGE 2 // WEDNESDAY. FEBRUARY 2, 2011
NEWS
iMedia graduate students put skills to the
Caitlin O’Donnell
News Editor
Every January, Interactive
Media graduate students
spend the month working on
a project for the public good,
typically with a nonprofit
organization, by collecting
audio and video content. This
year, students traveled to
Costa Rica or Panama in four
teams to create multimedia
products for their clients.
Club de Ciegos de Colon
For the team working with
the Club de Ciegos de Colon,
or Colon Blind Club, located
in Panama, their final website
must reach a broad audience.
Rather than creating a single
website, the group created
sites not only in Spanish and
English, but also separate
websites in each language
accessible to the visually
impaired.
“This is an organization
where people who are blind
can go," said Ashley Pearson,
project leader. “They get
kicked out of their families
because they can’t be taken
care of. They go here to be a
part of something.”
Currently, 12 residents
live in the club year round.
There, they learn how to cook,
clean and take education
courses. A computer room
includes desktops with voice
recognition software and
laptops with brail for children,
allowing the blind to access a
computer in the same way a
seeing person can.
The websites being built
by the team involve software
that literally reads the page to
users or instructs them where'
to click for an audio or video
clip.
“(This) center was a
little oasis in this rundown
town,” Pearson said. “The
city is so impoverished and
disheartening, but the club is
clean, bright and airy."
During the course of their
stay, the team met every
individual living at the club
and spent hours each day
interviewing those involved
in the club, including its
president.
Pearson said she anticipated
the trip would be emotional,
but she was touched more
than she expected.
“You feel something the
entire time you're down there,
then there’s the breaking
point,” she said.
For Pearson, this point
came as the club president’s
wife began crying, explaining
their thankfulness for the
students’ work. Soon, the
entire group was in tears.
Santa Cruz Recicla
A second team traveled to
Costa Rica, similarly focusing
on sustainable living, and
worked with an organization
called Santa Cruz Recicla,
which deals with waste
management and recycling in
the region.
According to project leader
Nicole Wyche, the group
toured the region, met with
representatives and discussed
the organization’s current
needs and future goals in
hopes of eventually creating a
website for the company.
“The content team was
the point people for getting
photo and video content and
stringing together a narrative
on the website that will explain
the company,” Wyche said.
Throughout the project,
Wyche said students learned
not only about the workflow
of creating a website, but also
the difficulties of working
with clients and making sure
they approve of the final
product.
“There was the added
htirdle that they’re in Costa
Rica and not as easy to connect
with them," she said. “It was a
good learning experience for
..giving the client what they
want, even though it didn’t
match our initial thoughts."
Faculty adviser Phillip
Motley, assistant professor
of communications, said
topics for the iMedia program
are often taught through
simulated projects, which lack
the human nature of a real
client, who can change his or
her mind or misunderstand
the process.
According to Motley, it
is the chance to work for a
nonprofit organization that
mw'i
PHOTO SUBMITTED
Despite challenging language barriers, Elon iMedia students found ways to communicate with the indigenous people in Panama.
has the largest impact on
students.
“1 think this experience
often recalibrates the future
goals that the students have,”
he said. “This experience
may well change the ways in
which they use their skills to
better the world through pro
bono work or by volunteering
their time to those who can
truly benefit from their
knowledge."
Earth University
After creating content for
Earth University in Costa
Rica, a second group of iMedia
students were invited back
to the institution to put their
skills to work a second year.
“(Earth University) brings
in international students
from Costa Rica and abroad
to try to teach them about
sustainable farming and clean
development,” said Meghan
Gargan, project leader for the
team. “They then can teach
agriculture processes in their
home countries and villages.”
The eight students, under
the guidance of faculty adviser
Sang Um Nam, assistant
professor of communications,
worked specifically with
the Permanent Education
Program, or PEP. This branch
of the university targets
American audiences including
students, professors and
industry professionals who
visit the university.
Along with a website, the
team will create a promotional
video about different areas of
the program at Elon.
When a group visits
the program, their tour is
customized to fit their plans
and then entirely coordinated
by PEP. With the help of
coordinators, the iMedia team
visited the rainforest, as well
as the beach in Costa Rica, and
collected multimedia content
to highlight the wide range of
activities available to visitors.
Fundacion Bendaked
About 50 percent of all
indigenous people in Panama
live with disabilities, and
the Fundacion Bendaked has
set out to change lives in
their own community, with
the recent help of iMedia
students.
Hayley Miller, project
leader for the group, said
the team created a bilingual
website highlighting the
organization’s mission and
documenting the stories
of disabled members of
indigenous communities.
“(The organization has)
only been in existence for
a year and they had no
presence on the Web,” Miller
said. “The overall design (of
our site) is based on a fun,
vivid feel since it’s tropical
and indigenous.”
Traveling to remote
villages of indigenous people,
the team gathered content
and interviewed more than
15 families, after gaining
approval from the village
tribal leaders.
“The Kuna foundation
people are trying to identify
the needs within different
indigenous groups and will
work with all communities
eventually,” Randy Piland,
faculty adviser, said.
Miller said the language
barrier was often challenging,
as the group needed to
translate from the native
language of Kuna to Spanish
and then to English.
“It was intense to work
with, especially in post
production and we don’t know
what communication got lost
in between,” she said.
After returning to Elon, the
team packaged the stories of
the disabled into videos and
posted them on the website.
One video tells the story of
Inuiler Lopez, a 30-year-old
man living with cerebral palsy
and confined, for most of his
life, to a wheelchair. Although
it is unlikely his condition will
improve, his family is striving
to ensure he has the resources
to live the remainder of his
life comfortably.
Despite the sad
environment. Miller said it was
also inspiring to see families
striving to help themselves.
Conservation made simple in fifth POWERless competition
Use scrap paper for ToOo ksts
Natalie Allison
Senior Reporter
Elon University will launch its fifth
POWERless event Feb. 15, giving on-
campus residents the opportunity
to reduce their energy consumption
through a friendly competition. Each
semester, POWERless encourages
students to help the university make
strides toward one of its long-term
goals: becoming carbon neutral by the
year 2037.
The goal of each year’s POWERless
event is to increase awareness of energy
conservation among students by having
residence halls compete against one
another in total energy reduction.
This year’s spring POWERless
competition will take place from Feb. 15
to March 15.
Measured against baseline
consumption for each building, the
winning residence hall is determined
by the building with the greatest
percentage of energy reduction during
the month-long competition.
Brittany Siciliano, a senior intern
in the Office of Sustainability, said
this year’s campus-wide goal is for 10
percent overall energy reduction.
“We make it really easy for students,”
Siciliano said. “POWERless is as easy as
turning off your lights."
Last spring, the Honors Pavilion led
the competition, finishing with a total
power reduction of about 37 percent.
Holly Geibel, the current resident
assistant in the Honors Pavilion, also
lived in the building last year and
said she and the other residents didn’t
realize how easy it was to save energy.
Geibel said the residents were
surprised when they were announced the
winners of the POWERless competition.
“I felt like we were doing so little,"
she said. “It was surprising to find out
we did so much."
Geibel said the Honors Pavilion used
natural sunlight, only turned on one
light at a time and minimized hot water
use in laundry and showers.
After finding that these methods
were easy ways to save power, the
residents continued practicing them for
the remainder of the semester.
LUKE LOVETT | Graphics Editor
“Why use electricity when it’s
unnecessary?” Geibel said.
Siciliano said the Office of
Sustainability hoped students
would become more aware of energy
conservation by learning “different
things they can do to bring into their
everyday lives, and at home, too."
During the fall 2010 POWERless
competition, Elon participated in
Campus Conservation Nationals, a three-
week competition among universities
to conserve the most electricity and
water. Elon’s spring competition will
only be taking place on campus among
residence halls.
Elaine Durr, the sustainability
coordinator, said students living in the
winning residence halls would each
receive a sustainable T-shirt. In addition,
Durr said these areas will have their
names added to the POWERless trophy,
which is located in Moseley Center.
In addition to the POWERless
competition, the university also
takes part in an on-campus recycling
challenge, RecycleMania.
Rather than energy reduction, the
goal of this competition is to raise
awareness among students about waste
reduction.
The eight-week event also allows
residence halls to compete against one
another, each seeking to have the largest
amount of recyclables per capita.
RecycleMania is a competition
among colleges and universities
around the country, but Elon does not
compete against other schools. Molly
Strayer, a senior intern in the Office
of Sustainability, said Elon is in the
Benchmark category, as its results are
recorded but not included in official
rankings.
Strayer said Elon reports its weekly
progress in pounds and compares
results from year to year. The overall
goal is “to do better than the results
from last year," Strayer said.
The Loy Center placed first in the
school’s RecycleMania competition last
year, collecting a total of 2,088 pounds,
of recyclables during the eight-week
period.
This year’s RecycleMania competition
will be held Feb. 6 to April 2.