Adina's Deck

The logo for "Adina's Deck" adorns the homepage on the School of Education's LDT website. It has been there since I started looking at the program more than a year ago but I had never looked at it. I asked myself why that might have been. The logo aesthetics didn't interest me, it appeared to be a card game, for math education I expected, again I wasn't interested, nothing caused me to look any further. Until Dr. Kim had our class examine the site as an exercise in EDUC 391X. I'm grateful that he pointed it out. To my surprise, Debbie Heimowitz, the program's founder, and I have more in common than I expected.

At the bottom of the "Adina's Deck" homepage, several laurel-wreathed film festival awards are listed, and some of them, like the International Family Film Festival in Burbank lead by Patti Dee and Kids First in Toronto, lead by Joanne Blouin are festivals on my radar. I was happy to find some kinship in the diverse LDT lineage.

Heimowitz's focus is on the middle schooler's unique set of issues from cyber-bullying and first crushes to plagiarism. Though her website is primarily a promotional tool for the company and the educational media package, she has created an online "theater" showing clips of the stories she creates with co-director/writer/producer Jason Azicri. She has developed a repertory cast of young Northern California actors in what must be a very smart feat of production from the two directors and associate producer Lindsey Hanson. The clips screen quite smoothly, the production values are keen as seen to by an uber-competent sound engineer and web master. She's got a streamlined crew who likely have to keep other clients while they continue to develop "Adina's Deck." I see no sponsors attached so it seems the company is a for-profit venture reliant on package sales and cast and crew bookings. According to the site, a team of them have toured to numerous places in California and beyond. These elements help me envision my intentions to screen international films through a website. Congratulations, Debbie Heimowitz.

I will certainly use "Adina's Deck" as a resource and will contact Debbie Heimowitz in the very near future. I am very curious to learn about her longer term projections and the challenges she is meeting.

Meanwhile, at d school Pepsico is looking for redemption....and that's a good thing. They want to help enhance nutrition and affect employment in areas known as "food deserts" where no other grocery provider will endeavor to travel...areas where liquor stores are sometimes the sole provider of groceries, places that Pepsico and subsidiary FritoLay have high, consistent access to with their fleet of 35,000 trucks. Can we begin to say good-bye to Mountain Dew Mouth by retiring Mountain Dew? Bronze it, encase it and exhibit it in the Junk Food Hall of Fame-only.
They say all the right things, as you can see. It will be enlightening to look underneath the p.r.

kk 11.1.09