DIGITAL MEDIA CLUBS

The projects overall objective is to raise student’s awareness and active participation on tackling issues of inclusion, bullying, discrimination and active citizenship by improving critical and analytical thinking, stir creativity and empower them to efficiently communicate in the diverse media landscape. 

Photo Caption: Students during the inspirational visit to Gjirafa Video Project specifically focused in teaching students about digital media in an enjoyable environment where students have the creativity to imagine, create & produce digital media stories, newsreels, school magazines with limitless possibilities. Through series of physical and virtual workshops students learned how to operate digital media tools for audiovisual production, desktop publishing and learn to work together in a group. 

Photo Caption: Training of Teachers on the benefits of Digital Learning Establishment of Digital Media Clubs aims to: • increase the quality of education through formal, nonformal, and extracurricular activities • introduce interactive learning methods through visual arts • support students’ participation in school decision making and creation of school friendly environments • promote equality and diversity • encourage student’s creativity, logical, analytical, and critical thinking • develop students technical and social skills 

Photo caption: Interview technique training Although the program started with hands-on trainings for students in their schools combined with the trainings for the Media Club Coordinators, due to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide lockdown in March 2020, the Project Team had to quickly adopt and transfer the entire program into a virtual sphere. At beginning, this was seen as almost impossible mission to achieve, but following several meetings with teachers and students we managed to develop a training program for establishment of the Virtual Classroom for use in online teaching. The project was extended to school year 2020/2021 and has allowed DokuFest team to maintain the trainings in virtual sphere, and prepare the students for the end-of-the-project competition. For this purpose DokuFest secured over 100 educational books, including world encyclopaedias and various guides to digital knowledge. The winners of photography and video competitions received professional prime lenses for their cameras, to be able to engage in more demanding digital production in the future. 

Photo Caption: Digital Media Club in Action The establishment of Digital Media Clubs in 20 Champion Schools by DokuFest through the support of the German GIZ has managed to create space in these schools where students have the opportunity to express their creativity through visual communication. In the first semester of the 2021/2022 school year DokuFest organized two-day camps for Digital Media Clubs, offering students an opportunity to address complex topics through the stop-motion technique which was facilitated by Studio Amam and engaged experts. Quality Education, Reduced Inequalities, Sustainable Cities and Communities dhe Climate Action were the topics selected for creative treatment. 

The whole training was offered to 104 students and 19 teachers of 17 champion schools within 5 weeks in the premises of DokuKino Cinema. These works of the students were consolidated in an animation which was exhibited in 7 municipalities of the sample schools. During these trainings students were introduced to the topics of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), and after selecting the topic were trained to develop the concept through audiovisual narrative using the stop-motion technique. Once the concept was set, each group was asked to transmit the final concept to the storyboard, where they also had to plan for the materials and how to carry out their project with stop-motion. All these learned innovations are then transferred to the final work that is being exhibited in 7 municipalities, that of Gjilan, Gjakova, Prishtina, Prizren, Obiliq, Shtime and Podujeva.