13. Digital Stories

The optional module ”Digital stories” is about live images processed on the computer and published on the net.
You will have a choice between working traditionally with a video camera or experimenting with alternative techniques like webcam and portable computers, animations or small film stories composed of pictures, sound and music. Web casting is also a possibility.

Today live pictures have become extremely portable. With a standard mobile phone of the kind used by children and youngsters of today, videos can both be shown and recorded anywhere and at any time. It is also possible to record videos with most recent digital cameras, which – apart from still pictures – often produce videos of surprisingly high quality.
And even webcams can be used to record live images.

The many small videos reflect the accessibility of the media world. Live pictures are close to the user’s daily life, and with the accessibility of low-cost recording equipment children and young people can easily become producers themselves.
The media world that surround us in our leisure time is dominated by high-cost and very advanced equipment such as large flat-screen TVs or projectors with surround sound and HDTV-format display. Instead of becoming scared and exhausted with the prospect of competing with the quality of live images projected on the TV, teachers should take advantage of the motivating possibilities – both for students and teachers – and not worry about discrepancies in quality from professional productions to individual amateurs’ productions.
On TV and on the Internet we experience many kinds of live pictures:

• Video
• (Simple) animations
• Slide shows
• Cartoons

Variations on old, familiar techniques have been developed further in the music video genre as can be seen around the clock on the satellite and Internet channels. Music videos telling short digital stories have exploded as a genre in recent years, and with the computer and camera technology available in most schools, video stories can be created by anyone. The distance from Bille August’s and Lars von Trier’s music videos to 5th grade’s digital narratives have become much shorter.

It is no longer difficult to publish one’s own videos on the net.
Many homes and most schools have lots of bandwidth and can see film online without pauses and the film lagging.
Most web hotels offer plenty of capacity so that the video productions of the whole family can be hosted. On the other hand, it might be a problem to find an audience to the small master pieces from little Viggo’s fifth birthday party.
In addition to existing supply of “home videos”, large TV channels have begun moving into the network TV field, and we expect a growing supply in this market, which will supplement and potentially maybe overtake TV from the ordinary terrestrial channels and satellite channels.