So far, we are in the middle of the second pilot of the WELCOME Programme in Germany which started on the 31st of October and will last until the 15th of February. Our participants went through two modules until now: digital Storytelling and digital journalism.

The goal of the module digital storytelling is that each participant creates a video about their persopna story made from pictures and their own voice. To do so, the participants had to think of a personal story that they wanted to tell. These stories were shared in a story circle with the whole group and the participants provided feedback to each other.

Afterwards they structured their stories with the help of a storyboard to get an idea about how the pictures they want to use for the video. In order to look for usable pictures online, the participants learned about copyrights, CC licences, and where to find free pictures. With the software iMovie, the participants created the videos – and the results are stunning and emotional. All ten participants put a lot of effort into the creation process: telling the stories in German instead in their mother tongue, taking suggestions into account and improving their stories as much as possible. The final stories will be published on YouTube at the end of the course.

In order to increase group work, we decided to include stop-motion as one part of the digital storytelling module. Participants invented a story together, created the charakters and the set with dough and paper, and recorded the story picture by picture with the stop-motion app Pic Pac.

The second module was digital journalism in which in the participants were shortly introduced to journalism as a profession (in contrast to Internet 2.0 where everybody can publish content). They learned how to create questions for interviews, how to build a set and how to use angle and light to record an interview with their cellphones. In ordert o practice, they interviewed each other and asked questions as of their were in a job interview.

Then we invited a project manager from our organisation and the participants interviewed her in a very professional way – three cameras were used, the light was adjusted, and the interviewer asked all questions very skilfully. All participants were enganged in the process and were very motivated to create a good product. The interview is currently being edited and will also be published on the project’s YouTube Channel.

Participants will start with the next module – Coding with Scratch – soon. We are already exited to see the animations and games they will develop.