Student Reflection

by April Nwatah

This semester I am working on the Facebook Video Project. The Facebook Video project is something that I got involved with last semester in my SOCW 412 class. For my project, my friend and I film videos for the Latino community in Champaign-Urbana that talk about their local resources and post them into a particular Facebook group for them to see. Last semester I interviewed a few members of the Urbana School District (including a bilingual social worker, the superintendent, and the principal at Leal School – a bilingual school in Urbana). I did these interviews to introduce the Latino community to people that are involved in their children’s lives and to begin to build a bridge between Latino parents and the school system.

This semester my focus is broader. So far, I’ve done videos on Salt and Light (where I volunteered last year when I took SPAN 232), the Urbana Free Library, and the Champaign Public Library. My partner and I try to inform by showing and telling, so instead of just presenting a bunch of information we actually go to the places that we are talking about and film our journey there.

Although the videos are only a few minutes long, a lot of work goes into making them and I have learned a lot in the process. For example, prior to working in this project I was not very familiar with using iMovie (although its always been in my computer!) While planning the video, my partner and I envision a certain way that we want the video to look and then I research how to make the video look like that. Also, for some reason I’ve assumed that since Champaign-Urbana has a large Spanish speaking population, there would be a lot of resources for them…. False! Before making each video my partner and I brainstorm a list of questions that we have for the place that we want to film in order to include these answers into our videos. In many cases, there aren’t Spanish speaking workers where we want to film, so although we’re making these informational videos theres only so much that members in the Latino community can do with the information.

I’m graduating in a couple months and plan on living in Champaign-Urbana for a while. Although there is a lack of Spanish speaking workers in a lot of places, I look forward to using my Spanish skills to change that.