austraLasia 784
BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE RECOGNITION FOR
SDB WEBMASTER
ROME: 29th December '03 --
Rome-based and Mumbai Province member Peter Gonsalves SDB has won accolades
from the British Film Institute Masters Certificate Programme. In awarding
Fr. Gonsalves his Certificate the citation reads: 'This is a really ambitious
and innovative project, thoughtfully designed and conducted'. And the
project? 20 young Salesians across the English-speaking world, including a
number from the Asia-Pacific arena, were invited into a cyber-classroom
conducted by Fr. Gonslaves, where the subject under discussion was the new
sdb.org website. The participants were all between the ages of 24-45, and
were asked to exchange views not only with their 'cybermaster' but amongst
themselves. Together, teachers and students analysed websites and arrived
gradually at 5 criteria which would direct the development of
sdb.org.
Action research is a demanding area both for the
researcher and the assessors. In this case the examiners were attracted
by Fr. Gonsalves' approach to media education and entirely convinced
of the discerning nature of his work, which they saw as 'appropriately
critical of methodological lacunae and scrupulous in evaluation', thus
overcoming a number of the obstacles that bedevil research of this
nature.
Fr. Gonsalves is already well-known for his work in
Media Education in his own province of Mumbai and indeed India-wide, through his
publications in Media Education with an emphasis on its role in educating to
peace. He was selected to develop the new SDB website in close
collaboration with the Rome-based Hypermedia Company. The result has been
not only due to this collaboration but also to those 20 or so Salesian
'cyberstudents' who participated in the initial research phase, creating a
new-style 'cortile' or, in Fr. Gonsalves' own words a 'piazza where an
international community meets to speak to itself and the world'.
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