The nationwide Digital Commonwealth project run by UWS, focuses on lowering the threshold for involvement for individuals and groups so that they can be empowered to exploit creative tools and technologies to tell their stories, digitally. The project aim is to involve every Local Authority in Scotland in the digital reporting of the Commonwealth themes in the run up to the Queen’s Baton Relay. The schools programme promotes digital media literacy skills through a series of in-school training workshops, using readily available technology to help pupils tell their own stories through blogs, video, audio and social media. OHS took part with a two day workshop targeted at S1 and P7 pupils who used digital media to represent the ‘melting pot’ of OHS, Oban and Argyll, ‘The Commonwealth of OHS.’
Looking at the demography and geography of the school’s feeder schools (17 in total from mainland urban to outlying islands) and celebrating the diversity of the feeders schools communities, the project paid attention to the broad project themes:
People and migration from islands to Oban, from and to Oban to other areas of Scotland and beyond.
Place and the diversity of communities which feed into Oban and OHS.
Exchange of information about the values held and cultural experiences participated in by pupils in Oban and its feeder communities.
OHS has an active IT department with innovative staff who welcomed the opportunity to work with a visiting digital media tutor Kevin Cameron, and use their recently purchased digital media equipment. A focus on broadcasting was especially helpful to kickstart a culture of interactive and creative digital media interest in school feeding into the planned introduction in 2014/15 of a new nat. 4/5 media course.
S1 pupils were selected from OHS and P7 pupils from the feeder schools. The pupils led the project and decide how they would transmit the information they gathered given a range of techniques i.e. animation, live filming, blogging.
Their blog about the two days can be viewed HERE
Kevin Cameron wrote an insightful summary of his experience working with OHS which can be viewed HERE
OHS Digital Commonwealth Film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9QD5ZwU5Pk
