Update: Winter, 2013 : 155 Educational videos now on-line! Free!
Villagers Media Productions Inc.(VMPI) and their partners “have produced a major body of work with original camera production shot entirely by the company’s director in Canada and some 36 overseas countries. All the videos are lively, well-produced and educational, displaying the company’s formidable interest and respect for the cultures of the world, along with a deep sympathy for the social justice issues involved.”
Kern Goretzky, Programmer, Canadian Learning Television
Since 1988, more than three dozen Canadian civil society organizations (non-governmental organizations and faith-based groups) have worked with Villagers Media Productions Inc. (VMPI) on educational video and TV projects, co-producing in subject areas such as global justice, youth leadership, Aboriginal history, diversity awareness, spiritual development and interfaith understanding. The co-producers have offered the resulting video productions to educators and learners, school-based and lifelong.
Now Villagers brings some of the results of these efforts, along with many new productions, to two educational internet TV hubs: Roman Catholic TV (www.romancatholictv.com), focussing on Catholic religious education, and Global VillagersTV (www.globalvillagerstv.com), focussing on Canadian and World Studies content.
- RomanCatholicTV
RCTV (www.romancatholictv.com) offers the works of four pioneer partners and will eventually present twelve individual Catholic internet education TV sites authored by Roman Catholic institutional partners and co-produced with Villager Media Productions. The contributing partners will feature Church teachings on moral theology, social justice, interfaith understanding, global and environmental justice. Now online: 107 videos and lesson plans.
- GlobalVillagersTV
Global Villagers TV (www.globalvillagerstv.com) builds on 20-plus years of VMPI work with dozens of civil society organizations and educators in subject areas of values education, leadership training, global justice, environmental issues. Now online: 48 videos and lesson plans.
An underlying focus of GVTV are Canadian and World Studies curriculum goals as outlined by various provincial ministries of education. Five inaugural subject areas focus on Canadian Aboriginal History, Global Justice and Development, Canadian Newcomer History and Present Situation, Diversity Conflicts and Resolution (gender, race, disabilities—workplace, home, community) and world religions.
In the inaugural phase of GVTV, significant content providers include the Catholic Women’s League of Canada (CWL), Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA) and the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (CCODP)
With both RCTV and GVTV, the goal is that the on-line educational service ties in with current pedagogy: an experiential start via a well-produced video, some research questions and study guides to initiate further exploration and the follow-up suggestion to relate the outcomes to deeper involvements in everyday life.
The videos and lesson plans are all “open-source” IE freely available to the public. While covering specific subject areas tied into curriculum themes and goals, the videos and lesson plans are often story-driven, relating the experiences of an individual or group of individuals who set out to state and solve a problem, what motivated them, how they were changed by the experience, what legacy of insight and direction they leave behind.
Over time, as participating groups and individuals become a part of producing RCTV and GVTV, they will, together, convey a common cause, on the side of positive progress in the great human journey. Key to the overall story will be the variety and multitude of individual journeys: the gifted trend-setters and social entrepreneurs, faith-based and secular, who overcame challenges and obstacles to arrive at the forefront of this country's creative and compassionate leadership
