TOW Prezo: Matter, SF 2014-03-31

[Draft of TOW Presentation to Knight Fdn; Matter, SF 2014-03-31]

Thanks to Knight. Thanks to Matter for having us here. I’m Barrett Golding of the public media website, Transom.org.

Knight invests in the future of journalism. Our project is an investment in future journalists.

Everyone with a smartphone has a journalist’s field-kit in their pocket — camera, recorder, notepad. Every computer can be a multimedia production suite. People have the journalist’s tools, but not the skills. So how do we reach across the globe to turn media consumers into media producers?

The Transom Online Workshop — we call it the TOW. It’s an online environment for learning the art and craft of multimedia storytelling. The TOW lives at Transom, with all our public media resources, used by thousands every day — we’re the first website to win a Peabody Award.

[~1min]

Our prototype is tested and validated by users. We’re ready to take what we know, and make the product: a new type of online courseware, designed to train people in complex, creative, communication-based skills.

[Start video. Numbers below refer to slide in video.]

Here’s what we did and what we learned. We ran three workshops, about six weeks each. We had 60 learners from six continents in 20 timezones. What they made impressed us, and others: Some stories already aired nationally in Australia. One woman used hers to get an internship at KPCC in L.A..

[1] They did fundamental exercises: Go out, interview strangers with this question: “What are you afraid of?”

Then make a story: with a beginning, middle, and end.

[2] First week, they take a photo and three sentences from their best interview. A French learner living in Mexico made this one. [pause]

[3] A news anchor for the Voice of Nigeria made this. English was a second language for some learners, so we got to test that too. [pause]

[4] The next week, more interviews, same question, but for a radio piece. This was by a university professor in Russia. [pause]

[~2min]

[5] Then, a video. This is about a guy who got shot, and ended up in a wheelchair. The producer had never made a video story before.

[Video (w/ audio) plays for 13sec.]

I’ll post the URL so you can see the rest.

[6] There’s people from four continents is this one conversation.

A Lebanese learner said her fear was “interviewing strangers.” But soon she’d talked to “Philipinos, Indians, Europeans, and Arabs.”

[Video over.]

Conversation is King. We knew from the start we’d need an immersive discussion tool. And we knew learners preferred to have everything in one place.

But the Learning Management Systems we tested had forums that couldn’t embed media, and the discussions that silo-ed, separate from the rest of the course.

[~3min]

That’s not like a real conversation, and it’s not like a real class.

So, Plan B, just for the prototype, we used a free, billion-dollar tool: Facebook.

This saved us weeks of dev time and thousands of dollars. In a month we had fully functional prototype. We hired a UX firm to do user interviews, and collected real-time data: not just surveys after the class, but during, weekly, while the experience was fresh.

We found out what worked, what didn’t work, and what needed work.

One thing that worked was Project-Based Learning. These stories the learners made were the core of the class, and became the learner’s portfolio.

And we used their best stories as assignment examples, made by their peers — we know that’s effective. How? From the surveys.

[~4min]

The surveys told us we had holes in our learning materials. Like beginners didn’t get video “b-roll”, and there was no good tutorial, so we commissioned one. Boom: learner videos got better. Our tutorial got picked up by filmmaker blogs; in a week, it had 10,000 views.

One class helps the next, and helps people outside the class. It’s education evolution. Right now, TOW alums are in a new discussion group. Anyone can join; they all help each become better journalists.

We have a successful prototype. It’s time for the product: an online courseware built to train people in complex, creative skills; built from the discussion up — so it all happens in one place, like in a face-to-face class; courseware that produces better stories, and better storytellers, all over the world.

[~5min]

Thalia

Honestly, this assignment shows and reflects one of the fears we have. We could have interviewed ourselves and answered: “I am afraid of reaching out to people and interviewing them.”

November 1, 2013

Ben Thalia, I know it’s scary, but what’s the worst that could happen.

Brock You can do it, Thalia! Maybe think about where you are going, and try to catch people who are in places that they are more likely to pause (e.g. parks). Yesterday as I was at the university where just about everyone I approached was happy to talk. Try to increase you chances before you start.

Kate Hang in there, Thalia! I spent yesterday evening in a shopping centre and it was brutal: the amount of people who wouldn’t talk to me. But then some people did and it was ok! This assignment feels like an exercise in bravery as much as it is about finding a story.

Thalia Thanks for your support. I finally did it. I happened to be outside my country, Lebanon, on a vacation in Dubai, so that was also another challenge. But the good thing is Dubai is a cosmopolitan city, so I’ve interviewed Philipinos, Indians, Europeans, and Arabs.

—Excerpt from a TOW 0.2 Group discussion