I’ve been meaning to post these for a while: six ‘one page guides’ (ok, so actually one of them has two pages..) that I created for the Video Change project with Oxfam.
These are slightly different from the usual ‘one page guides‘ – but hopefully they may prove useful to others running in person or online training around the basics of making video for the web, or about using online video in activism and campaigning.
1) Six Steps to Online Video
An overview guide created to step participants in the course through capture, transfering, editing and uploading their video content.
Step 5 of the guide is specific to Video Change – so would need changing for any other use.
Whilst we had some problems with getting the VodPod widgets to work properly we did use it in Week 2 of the Video Change course to invite participants to collect and share their favorite videos. There is definitely potential for VodPod as a tool for use by Youth Services and websites to clip and display some of the best positive video clips on the web direct to their websites and blogs.
This guide should be generic and ready to do without adaptation and includes five sites to search for creative commons and public domain footage.
So if you regularly try and explain to people how they can use stock footage in their video making you might find it handy and it is ready for download as a PDF here. Of course, you may want to download the MS Word file original and change the list of stock video sources to point to your own favourites.
4) Sharing Videos on YouTube
This one page guide includes tips for upload a video to YouTube and for getting it seen by careful naming of the video and using the playlist, favourite and sharing features.
As part of the Video Change course we explored different ways in which campaigners could add online video their the campaigning toolbox. This guide outlines six different ways in which video can be used in activism – from video petitions through to video reporting and using video conversation tools like Seesmic.
The final module of Video Change invited participants to create their own Sisters on the Planet video clips. If you’re running a video making course you could do worse than to set creating a Sisters on the Planet video making challenge to your students – and I’m sure Oxfam would be happy to feature and use some of the resulting clips. This guide is also available to adapt for other video making challenges.
As with all the one page guides these are all licensed under a Creative Commons license to allow them to be adapted and re-used. However, please do note the request for these guides in particular that if you do find them useful that you credit Oxfam.org.uk and consider making a donation or taking a campaign action from here in return for getting the resources for free.
Given it's Open Space flavour the Digital Media Literacy Summit on Thursday (8th Nov) at the Channel 4 building in London didn't exactly come up with a set of clear action points for building digital media literacy, but it did offer some key insights that can help us on the way.
That said, if the event was a Summit, then participants had climbed to it from many different directions, and I suspect in fact all we have done so far is to move towards a basecamp where we need to consolidate, take stock, and then climp the real peak.
Building the basecamp
I was tasked with capturing interviews with the key speakers at the event, and young reporters from MediaSnackers were roaming the event capturing vox pop interviews with delegates. All the videos are available on the Policy Unplugged website, but below I've tried to weave together a summary of the voices I heard and the threads of conversation that ran throughout the day.
Links in Bold point to the short ( < 3 mins) video interviews with speakers from the Summit that I was tasked to capture on the day.
Paragraphs/sentences in italics show where I'm adding my own commentary or analysis to this summary rather than reflecting on the words of others.
The Digital Media Literacy Summit 2007
Peter Packer, a strategy adviser to the UK Film Council and Media Literacy Task Force, and involved in the convening of the event offered an overview of the media literacy taskforce and it's role in the the debate over digital media literacy in the UK – explaining the importance of building a media literacy that allows individuals to:
Analyse media, understanding its context and the reasons for which it was created.
and
Create media, and understand the creation process.
The charter for media literacy goes some way to expanding upon that. The theme of allowing individual to develop media literacy through creating media was one picked up by Dick Penny from the Watershed in Bristol, who emphasised that digital media literacy is no different from other forms of literacy, and that there have been cultural organisations engaging citizens 'from the edges' in media creation for a long time.
In this mediasnackers Vox Pop Joven and Tom captured a range of definitions of media literacy from around the floor of the conference. Katie and Shadeeka also captured a range of defintions from delegates. For some, digital media literacy isn't about technology – but for others, understanding the devices and the tools is crucial. To an extent, individuals definitions of digital media literacy may appear to map onto whether they are concerned with the analysis of media by the consumer, or the creation of media by the citizen.
The importance of access was a key concern. This arose both in terms of accessing the equipment to connect to the digital media world (as this interview with delegates by MediaSnackers Yaz and Clare shows), and in terms of being able to access social media and digital media spaces in schools and learning environments without being subject to locked-down internet access with blocks on anything interactive.
Controlling content access continued to crop up as a theme – without, it seemed, a clear argument during the day to analyse the role 'intelligent blocking' software has to play in building media literacy. (Without that argument, it might seem blocking just puts off the need for certain 'tough' forms of digital media literacy). It may be that a connected, but arguably separate, debate about internet safety was finding itself tangled up in the day's proceedings.
Whereas Ewan identifies schools as the key location for building digital media literacy, I spoke to Raemmel and Furqan in this vox-pop interview to highlight the role of Youth Work in supporting young people to develop the skills to safely navigate the social aspects of digital media in a world of social networks.
As the event moved from presentations to an open space format, it was clear that there were a lot of questions still to answer. Including:
Is digital media literacy really a new cannon? How much does the technology change things?
The accessiblity of the digital realm to those with learning disabilities was the subject of one open space group, and others tackled the question of digital media literacy for older people. The need for an inclusive digital media literacy agenda was certainly felt.
An ongoing conversation
As I said in opening, this wasn't a summit that lead to a shared conclusion. It launched conversations threads that now need to be tracked forward and woven together.
The inputs were not only in the open space discussions and in speeches from the platform, but were being shared through the blogosphere as live blogs and have been shared in blog posts since (this one amongst them). A quick blog search today turns up a great live-blogged sumamry from Ewan, addressing questions of age and access, and a reflective summary of the day from social media strategist Katie Lips. I'm sure there is more to come…
Update
The Policy Unplugged site where these videos are hosted has been a little intermittent. You can find all of the videos on this youtube channel or using the player below