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Or, “what exactly is that movie?”  – which was the title to an earlier mediateacher.net post, so we’ll be returning to that phrase again today to explore the ever-evolving 21st century media creation landscape.  (At least that’s what Google translate gave me, so it’s probably a ludicrous translation.  If appropriate, Russian readers can send along a good translation and I’ll add it to this post.  See: that will be 21st century collaborative media in action.) (O.K., here’s the P.S.: О чём этот фильм is a better translation, I am told.  I’ll take your word for it, Marta — Thanks!)

Today, we will be visiting the groundbreaking media event known as Kreosan.  Two young men from war-torn Luhansk, Ukraine, Pavel Pavlov and Aleksandr Kryukov, began conducting home science experiments and posting them to their YouTube channel.  They started to attract a following, and the political and historical contexts of their work provide powerful examples of the ways in which the creation and dissemination of media messages produce new outlets for communication and expression as well as the sharing of information, discoveries, and perspectives across cultures.  A part of that process is also the written expression of ideas through comments by followers and responses by the creators themselves, who have acknowledged the effect of feedback on their output.

For an introduction to their work, please check out this Saturday Profile piece by Andrew Roth for the New York Times.  There is a video to watch as well as a print article.  Like many media literacy stories today, this is a richly cross-curricular tale, from the geopolitical situation between Ukraine and Russia for social studies classes to their experiments (such as with the magnetron or with lightning) for science and tech ed coursework.  Watch out for that ray gun!