About The International Student Media Festival

What is the International Student Media Festival?

The International Student Media Festival celebrates outstanding classroom media projects. Students and teachers from kindergarten through college are honored in a three-day event that includes workshops, screenings of winning entries, and an awards ceremony. It has now grown to be one of the oldest and largest events of its kind. The Festival has been sponsored by the Association for Educational Communications & Technology since 1974. AECT is an education professional association that has been a leader in promoting the use of technology to improve teaching and learning.

Why Celebrate Student Produced Media?

Student media projects such as live action video, website design, animation and photography foster learning across the curriculum. At the elementary and junior high school levels, reading comprehension, writing skills and math facilities are developed. In addition to those areas, high school and college students increase their abilities to plan, analyze, and interpret results. Cooperation and leadership flourish where student media is encouraged.

Student created media, through its involvement in the world of computers, video, sound, and photography, is a proven avenue to increasing student participation in the classroom learning environment. State and national educational standards are met and surpassed in the exciting atmosphere of creativity cultivated through the use of student media projects. Future academic and employment opportunities increase in relationship to the rise in technological proficiency.

Who attends the Festival?

Every year thousands of students in all grades from across the country produce media for their classroom assignments. These are then submitted for judging in local and state competitions, such as those held by the Florida Association of Media Educators, the Georgia Student Media Festival, the Oklahoma Student Media Festival, the Association of Indiana Media Educators, and the California Student Media Festival. All of these other festivals then submit their winners to the International Student Media Festival for another level of competition.

Where some of these competitions use categories that are subject driven, such as calling for submissions in science or social studies, the ISMF’s categories are divided by production type, which include Live Action Video, Sequential Stills (Powerpoint, etc.), Interactive Stills (Flash, Adobe Acrobat, etc.), Photography, Website Design, and Animation (stop action, claymation, etc.).

These are then judged for their excellence in production, writing, creativity, lighting, and impact. The ISMF competition does not pit one entry against another. Rather, it seeks to recognize a high quality of workmanship and thoughtfulness, and doesn’t simply award first, second, and third place.

What Happens at the Festival?

Every year thousands of students, from across the country as well as overseas, produce media for educational purposes, dramatic use and web publication. These are then submitted for judging in categories including Live Action Video, Sequential Stills, Interactive Stills, Photography, Website Design, and Animation.

The festival features an evening of viewings of the winning entries in a film festival format. It’s always ‘standing room only’ at these events as teachers, students, and their families eat popcorn, applaud the winners, and gain inspiration for next year’s competition.

Winners attend an awards ceremony where students are recognized for their achievements. After all the festivities, exciting field trips are taken to area museums, local landmarks and other outstanding educational venues.

This year, eager learners can acquire new media production skills in a variety of workshops including Chromakey Broadcasting with Adobe Visual Communicator, Digital Storytelling with Adobe Photoshop Elements and Adobe Premiere Elements, a Photo Safari with Digital Cameras, Apple Computer’s iMovie, PowerPoint, and Making Your Own Music with Garage Band...and more!

How do I Enter a Media Project Into ISMF?

The International Student Media Festival accepts entries from March 1 to May 15 of each year. A teacher or parent agrees to be the sponsor of the student’s entries. The sponsor submits the entry information to ISMF through an online entry process that will be available March 1 on this website. Upon completion of the online entry process, the sponsor prints and signs a copyright release form and mails the media, signed form, and a $20 entry fee to the International Student Media Festival by May 15.