ACE Spectrum
ACE Spectrum
Ace Spectrum is about you — the ACE Learning Centers.
It’s a quick sharing of ideas, inspiration, opinions and best practices among our continuing education organizations.
Please join the conversation.
KALW Audio Academy Class of 2017 Announced as Class of 2016 Readies To Graduate
By Guest Blogger Ben Trefney, News Director, KALW Public Radio
This time of year brings an enormous amount of activity to the KALW newsroom. Our current Audio Academy cohort is working hard on their final projects, our team is preparing for its spring membership drive, and our administrators select the next Audio Academy class.
We had more than 130 applicants, this year, and while that’s a truly inspiring number, it’s also a daunting task to choose the final eight. We carefully looked through the applications, the cover letters, writing and audio samples. We inquired with references, and we conducted many, many interviews. Ultimately, our team sat down for a three-and-a-half hour session to hash out our invitees. Accompanied by a quote from their cover letters, they are:
Josiah Luis Aldrete – “Being a proud chicano and Bay Area native with an interest in our collective Bay Area history I feel I could make a genuine contribution and impact to the KALW familia.”
Ted Guggenheim – “I believe that actively listening to people in a non-judgmental way is key to getting them to open up to you.”
Jeremy Jue – “I have edited over 30 short films for [Not In Our Town] and worked closely with producers, graphic designers, and sound engineers to ensure that the production value of our films remains of the highest quality.
Greer McVay – “Randi Rhodes. Yes! Thom Hartmann, Yes! Rush Limbaugh. Not so much. Ultimately, I wish to join the list of esteemed radio personalities who are driving the national political conversation.”
Kanwalroop Singh – “My heritage, tied up in the folds of my turban, is what makes me a storyteller.”
Cari Spivack – “Overall, I am a rigorous researcher who can distill information for any audience.”
Claire Stremple – “My experience at KPFA is the most pertinent to this position, though my previous work as a researcher for both Ethan Watters, a nonfiction author and journalist, and at Dial House LLC, an alternative brand strategy agency, has schooled me in various research and reporting methods.”
Beatrice Thomas – “As a rather social, queer, black, cis female, married to a Jewish transgender male, I am no stranger to intersectionality.”
Really cannot wait to meet these people in person!
Our current class is, of course, active, and some members were showcased nicely in Thursday’s show. As part of our public safety project, Lisa Bartfai reported this story about young men preventing sexual assault. And Eli Wirtschafter produced this Audiograph about a charismatic BART train operator. We’re in the home stretch for this group, now, with graduation scheduled for June 9th in San Francisco.
Between now and then, many of them will be airing the whole Crosscurrents shows they’ve been working on. And all are active participants in the special hour-long shows that we prepare for every membership drive. Those programs begin on Tuesday, and in our seven drive shows, you can look forward to dynamic conversations with some of our most entertaining and eye-opening content. I’m personally working with Shereen Adel and Ian Lewis on two live shows.
One is about new podcasts that have come or are coming out of KALW. We’re featuring David Boyer (’14) whose podcast series The Intersection has been drawing attention from around the country for its very human and insightful look at life in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. He’ll be in conversation with Avery Trufleman, whose work on the KALW product 99% Invisible has made her a very prominent figure in the podcast community.
The other show is about local heroes of the Bay Area, and Ian, Shereen and I are working with Hannah Kingsley-Ma (’15) on a feature about how the Golden State Warriors bring together so many corners of the Bay Area into a unified community. I’ll also be making a story about an unsung hero named Cardell Butler who serves as a referee in the San Francisco Park and Rec Jr. Warriors‘ youth basketball program. And we’ll be hearing from listeners who will have a chance to name people who are their local heroes – people who make the Bay Area a better place to live. (You can contribute, too, by calling 415-264-7106 and saying your name, your phone number, the name of your local hero and what makes them special.)
I’m finding, increasingly, that one of the most wonderful things about our news department is our ability to bring people together. It meets our mission, borne of our station’s strategic plan:
Create joyful, informative media that engages people across the divides in our community – economic, social and cultural.
It feels so good to see that mission manifest in reality.
Learn how to Slant Rhyme Poetry at SFIHS With Poetry Workshops
By Guest Blogger Cronos, ACE Poetry Contest Mascot, San Francisco International High School
Learning how to style poetry – a real treat!
Cronos here for National Poetry Month at SF International. We’ve been celebrating the month in verse, slant rhyme and haiku. Or, that’s what I could hear with my head hanging out the window.
At the end of the month, Nurse Rachel hosted a poetry workshop for students at SF International. At first I was scared, but they reassured me she is not a vet and would only be operating on stanzas. Nurse Rachel brought strips of paper with some of her favorite lines of poetry and the students all read them aloud.
Beyza & Cesar with the poem they worked on at the poetry workshop.
Then, they worked together to create their own group poem. First, they did this out loud by speaking one line at a time.
Then, they wrote down the lines they liked best and came up with a collaborative poem. The session ended with them working on their own poems about technology. Who knew we could have so much fun without any treats?
Oakland International High School Announces ACE Poetry Contest Winners
By Guest Blogger Samosa, ACE Poetry Contest Mascot, Oakland International High School
Now these are real treats, Riley. These poems are the cat’s meow!
Once again, Oakland International High School poets amaze me with their nuanced and complicated relationships with technology! Our students work so hard each day to learn a new language in a new country and often, technology is the bridge that helps them learn and helps them stay connected to the people important to them, thousands of miles away.
Looking forward to reading all of the other winners at our ACE sister schools!
First Place
TECHNOLOGY SPENDS TIME WITH ME, by Robert “The King” S.
Technology
Thanks for allowing me
to share time with you
And also for the sad moments
we passed together
And thanks for feeling with me
and for the talks with people
who were far away
when I needed help
Second Place
THE SOUNDS OF THE HEART, by Manuel S.
Technology
To listen to the cries of your monitors
of all the things that don’t have hearts
to the sound of of your circuits–
It can be the fake smile
of false friendships
Third Place
ON TECHNOLOGY, by David & Kathie
The new technology gives me a headache
I leave it for another day, and now I’m not
interested
I don’t understand how modern apparatuses
work, my mind no longer reasons
and I dont know how to get it
Many keys and buttons leave me
mystified, and I don’t understand
the reason when I try to use it
It’s taken me a lot of work to make
it something that I can use, and then I stop
when I need someone to help me
The inventions happen really quickly, and I,
in the past, when things were simpler,
I might have felt better