Festival2012/Submit/Meet the Mozfest Young Reporters

• Title of session: Meet the MozFest Young Reporters
• Your name and affiliation: Alison Booth, DigitalME
• Session format: Fireside Chat/Learning Lab

What will your session or activity allow people to make, learn or do?

The session will allow the Mozfest Young Reporters to introduce themselves, before passing some of their skills in filming and interviewing on to participants. Having spent the day reporting around the festival, interviewers will become interviewees, giving participants the chance to quiz the reporter team.

The team are experienced reporters aged between 15-18, with aspirations in digital media and journalism, who’ve been part of Digital Me’s reporting teams for Supporter To Reporter (our national sports reporting project which we’re developing Open Badges for), LS Live (a Leeds based event reporting project) and Young Presenters (who reported live at the Olympic and Paralympic Games at London 2012).

The team (of 2-3 each day) will introduce themselves and describe their journey as a young reporter so far (which may span several years or a few months), explain a bit about the projects they have been involved in, the skills they’ve learnt, and give their take on the Festival - what has inspired them the most etc. Then, they’ll pass on some of the basic skills of reporting to participants and share their top tips for interviewing. To put these skills into practice participants will then get the chance to interview the young reporters, on any topic they desire! Working with the young people, they’ll develop a set of questions then perform a short interview for their group, which could quiz them on their experiences as a reporter, career aspirations, thoughts on the festival or opinions on anything and everything to do with open source web.

The session will shine the spotlight on the young people, give them a new challenge to present their journey and pass on their skills, and allow participants to quiz the young people in whatever way is relevant to them!

How do you see that working?

The young reporters will speak about their experiences as a reporter, which may be supported by visuals or a video clip. Then, depending on numbers the group will be split, each group working with a young reporter with support from the DigitalMe team. Each young person will have some kit (a Digital SLR and mic, and some ipod touches) to demonstrate and pass on key interviewing skills, before facilitating the participants (who may work in pairs or small groups) to write a set of questions which they’ll then put to the young person, on camera. If time allows, the team will also share some basic editing skills using the iMovie app, and/or demo how to upload the interview using the Makewaves app, giving participants the chance to see the full process from preparing and filming to editing and uploading, all on one device.

How will you deal with 5, 15, 50 participants?

With 5 participants the session will take on a relaxed format which will allow for a more informal presentation from the young people, with lots of time for questions and conversation. The young reporters could pass on their skills to the whole group and each participant would the get the chance to have a go at interviewing themselves. There’d then be enough time for a short demo on iMovie and/or the Makewaves app.

With 15, the presentation section would be slightly more formal but still invite questions and open discussion. The participants would then be split into smaller groups to be trained by, then interview the young people, and to upload their reports.

We would suggest limiting the numbers of people attending to no more than 20 participants to allow those involved to have the chance to speak to the young people and take part in the activities. As the session could take place on both the Saturday and Sunday this would offer two opportunities to attend.

How long within your session before someone else can teach this?

The basic interview and filming skills shared by the young people could be passed on immediately after the session, as they’ll involve top tips and simple recording techniques that can be put into practice in a variety of contexts.

What do you see as outcomes after the festival?

Participants will have been introduced to the reporting team and hopefully inspired to invite the team along to their events, or replicate the model in their own organisations. The skills the young people will pass on will be relevant in many scenarios, in professional and educational environments, and can easily be taught to others. The session will also share information about DigitalMe’s projects, which may inspire others to get involved, particularly in the S2R Medals Open Badging pilot.

An outcome for the reporting team will be a totally new experience, with the opportunity to improve their presenting skills, confidence and the ability to pass their skills on to others. Being interviewed will also allow them to experience the other side of the process and enable them to improve their understanding and develop their techniques in the future.