Learning objectives:

• Students learn how to create with intention relevant media pieces

• Students learn to use technology to foster collaboration among students and to make possible to express their perspectives on problems impacting them and their community

• Students to understand the connection between their learned skills at school and their life experiences for their future life.

The project gave opportunity to youth from underserved communities to explore and express their viewpoint on problems impacting them and their families, friends and local community. By using technology students between ages from 13 to 15 from 5 different villages, created powerful videos, animations, posters, photo stories and other media pieces that gave the crucial viewpoint of youth about critical topics and produced new solutions to long-standing problems.

During the time of creating powerful works shared with local audience, students built essential skills and creativity which opened the doors for future opportunities and success in today’s global economy.

The project involved teachers and students from 2 rural primary schools form 5 different villages. The two schools worked on two different topics and one collaborative media piece. Both schools produced 16 focused media products which include 3 animations, 3 videos, 4 photo stories, 6 posters. In each of the schools were organized exhibitions with the students’ works and one final exhibition where students gave their voice to effect change of their lives and lives of others.

The first school worked on the topic “Premature marriage”. The idea of this concept is that youth are using the marriage concept to get away of family problems. Regardless of it there is a financial problem or abusive family.

The second school worked on the topic “Cultural Heritage”. The idea is to empower local community awareness of importance of historical, cultural monuments for their future economic development of their local community.

Both schools also worked on collaborative media piece on the topic “Bullying” in which we have included students from other school too.

The project had to give answer to two main questions:

1. Which are the problems that impact students, their families, friends and local community?

2. How can students give their voice for solving these issues by using powerful technology impact?

To give answers to these questions we have organized our project into five steps. 1. Teacher’s training. 2. Student’s brainstorming 3.Production 4. Postproduction 5.Exhibition

1. Teacher’s workshops. On this session we gave to our colleagues (teachers) workshop training where they learned about planning tools, examples and tips for creating effective student’s media pieces. Teachers learned how to engage and empower students to involve into the project activities and gave them opportunity to give their voice about critical problems.

2. Student’s brainstorming. Students were divided into groups of 6-8 students. Each teacher was a mentor of two groups of students. On the brainstorming session teacher and students together identify the issues that they had worked on during the project activities.

3. Production.  In this process students shared their responsibilities like: looking for local community support, screenwriting, storyboard drawing, creating, finding proper locations, photographing, recording, acting, etc.

4. Postproduction. Students gave critical response of produced materials. They selected appropriate media files for their final product. Media files were edited in a Movie Maker into a final movie, animation, photo story products.  

5. Exhibition. Both schools organized two separate exhibitions in which organization and setting involved all students. Those exhibitions were organized as preparation for the final exhibition and as a critical review of the works done by students. At the end of the project cycle both schools organized final joint exhibition for the local community members, students from other schools, principals, representatives from municipality, ministry of education, NGO’s representatives  and others.