Digital Life Moisling: Video Blogging as Web-TV for

Digital Life Moisling: Video Blogging as Web-TV for Underprivileged Kids Joachim HASEBROOK, Nils SCHOMANN and Rangga WINANTYO ISNM International School of New Media at the University of Luebeck Germany [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract. A Weblog including streaming video and photo galleries (video blog or vlog, for short) is described which helps young people in the socially underprivileged suburb of Moisling, a part of the hanseatic city of Luebeck (Germany), to express their own views, to develop their creative skills and to support their self esteem. Therefore, video entries to the vlog are created by the young people themselves under supervision of film professionals and supported by social initiatives. The vlog is using the digital story telling approach of “Digital Lives” in order to combine creative use of social Web-TV with social integration and crime prevention. Keywords. Video Blogging, Digital Story Telling, Political Education, Social Development

1 Video + Blogging = Vlogging In July 2005, Internet magazine WIRED introduced this formula while introducing video blogs, in short: “vlogs” to the blogger community (Dean, 2005). Also in July 2005, the Vlogmap portal site (www.vlogmap.org) was launched in order map all vlogs both concerning the geographic position using Google Earth’s mapping service and the content published in the respective video blogs. Vlogmap’s statistics indicated the sharpest rise in vlogs appearing on the map in early 2006 resulting in approximately 750 vlogs in the U.S.A., 1,250 vlogs in the top ten countries and 1,350 vlogs worldwide. Still, there is an exponential growth of video posted to vlogs and to vlogs newly created in the Web. Vlogging entered “big business” when Google acquired the video portal YouTube for 1.65 billion USD. But vlogging is not only big business it was and still is predominately a domain for amateur publishing and grassroot journalism: For instance, the Democracy Player (www.getdemocracy.org) features WebTV channels which report on political, social, and cultural fairness. The player is an open source project which is launched and backed by the non-profit organization on Participatory Culture (www.participatoryculture.org) which enables subscription to different RSS feeds (including BitTorrent feeds, www.bittorrent.com). Of course, Democracy is not the only vlog aggregator; there are also non-profit solutions such as Mefeedia and Vlogdir as well as commercial solutions such as iTunes from Apple Inc. and Google Video from Google Inc. Pioneering “Digital Lives” projects, such BBC’s “Telling Lives” (see below), successfully linked grassroot journalism to public story telling and media education – which is also the main idea of our “Digital Life Moisling” project.

2 Digital Lives A pioneer in aggregating digital stories and digital video from amateurs and making them publicly available is state-owned British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) and its project “Telling Lives” (www.bbc.co.uk/tellinglives) which has been awarded the Webby Award 2006 for its “Digital Lives” section on home made TV and digital stories from community journalist from the region of Cumbria. The Centre for Digital Storytelling (www.storycenter.org) supports an array of projects and initiatives which engages young people in digital story telling. Famous US-based media schools have now joined the bandwagon and offer educational programs which can potentially pave the path to a more participatory (digital) media education in educational

institutions (cf. Jenkins, 2006). In our project entitled “Digital Life Moisling” we tried to use video blogging as a tool for grassroot community journalism and as a medium for participatory media education provided to socially underprivileged kids living in Moisling, a suburb of Luebeck, a major North German city close to Hamburg.

2.1 Video in Education The use of video in education is not new and has been extensively reported and researched upon since its use to train soldiers during the Second World War (cf. Dale, 1946). Video has been considered to foster learning processes, (1) because dual encoding of pictures and texts are supported (Paivio, 1986; Mayer, 1989), and (2) because video provides vividness which illustrated text is often lacking (Livingstone, 1990; Brosius & Mundorf, 1990; Rollandelli, 1989). But Salomon (1984) showed that audio-visual media does not lead to better retention automatically: Children considered television to be ´easy´ and printed matter to be ´tough´; therefore, they learned from television, only if they were instructed to prove how much they could learn watching television. Further research came up with additional conditions to make audio-visual media more effective: Motion pictures enhance comprehension, if they match the explanatory texts; there is no positive effect, if the pictures elicit strong emotions – e.g. showing violence and illness; using video presentations mostly does not facilitate learning, but switching presentation modes and media does (Brosius & Kayer, 1991; Brosius & Mundorf, 1990). Hasebrook and Gremm (1999) showed that video marginally improves acceptance ratings but did not improve knowledge and motivation to learn, systematically. Dynamic media like video and animation are often used to explain and visualize technical equipment or to support science instruction (e.g. Mayer & Anderson, 1992; Rieber, 1991). Research literature does not indicate whether video works best as an advance organizer or a review; both approaches have been used successfully and no significant differences have been found (Calvert, Huston & Wright, 1987; Rice, Huston & Wright, 1986). In conclusion, passive video consumption is not very effective, but it can potentially enhance learning while visualizing technical and abstract systems, and while supporting vividness and elaboration of information (Escalada, Grabhorn & Zollman, 1996).

2.2 Education in Video The use of digital video which leave the learner as a passive consumer or observer of video presentations, has been changed with the advent of easy content creation and publication in the Internet (cf. Rollet et al., in press). Many i-schools and school projects have been created which seek to motivate students to create digital stories to tell about and reflect upon their lives (overview by Perkel et al., 2005). Digital media have been used to generate collaborative presence in schools (e.g. Ito, 2005) and for wide spread educational programs which are now backed by major foundations, such as the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Initiative (www.digitallearning.macfound.org) or Berkeley’s Digital Youth project (digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/). Some relevant projects are listed in the reference section below. Dannah Boyd (2005) has pointed out that “Social Software” (including video blogging) is still “autistic” because it does not actively connect human beings rather than technically connecting digital content stored on machines. It has also been pointed out that “computer literacy” (Kenny, 2002; Quesada, Miller & Armstrong, 2000) or “media competences” (Thomann, 1999; Hasebrook & Gremm, 1995) is needed to cope with the latest developments of the massive read-and-write Web which is now known as “Web 2.0” (Maurer & Kolbitsch, 2006).

3 Digital Live Moisling (DLM) 3.1 The Digital Live Project Moisling is a part of the city of Luebeck, a former hanseatic medieval city, which was declared UNESCO World Heritage site, in 19871. In the middle ages, Moisling was a small village in front of the city gates which was inhabited by Jews. The little village, now a part of the greater city of Luebeck, was rebuilt after the Second World War collecting a lot of immigrants and refugees in newly built city blocks and condominiums. Nowadays, the unemployment rate among young people is more 25%; right wing parties gained some influence and fuelled 1

See http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/272/ for a full describtion.

conflicts between inhabitants with different cultural backgrounds. Due to violent conflicts and Neo Nazi activity Moisling was discussed in the national and international press as a potential “no go area” for immigrants and foreigners. An initiative was formed by 24 non governmental and non profit associations and institutions (NGO) and governmental organizations (GO), such as schools, police headquarters and community services, some twelve years ago in order to fight violence, political extremism, and social exclusion (cf. RfK SH, 2003). This initiative financed a permanent coordination office - partly supported by the city of Luebeck and some local foundations, such as the Possehl foundation. One of ISNM’s guest lecturers, Nils Schomann, an experienced director and producer of documentary films, started a video documentation of several social and creative activities headed and supported by the Moisling initiative – including theatre play and musical performances developed by an amateur rock’n roll band and a group of about 20 children from Moisling. The children enjoyed starring on a local movie and established contacts to their friends and parents which made possible an intimate insight into the social network and creative potentials of the families living in a socially underprivileged suburb. Consequently, we developed the idea of a local Web-TV which should not only show video clips from the enormous amount of documentary film material we collected during a period of about one year. It should also enable the children and young adults to express themselves, report on their views of their environment and living conditions. They enthusiastically embraced the idea not only “to be on Web TV” – but also to create it. The Moisling initiative strongly backed our idea and discussed our ideas with student video teams established and located at local schools. Finally, we were able to convince a local service club, LIONS Club Luebeck, to financially support the project. The generous gift allowed us to buy video cameras, PCs and video cutting software in order to build up small scale video production lab which is now located in and administered by the community centre of Moisling. The first videos, which have been produced, include a 2.5 minutes film clip about Turkish boy named Samet, who talks about his favourite leisure activities, that is, riding his mountain bike on the school yard and in the forest. Another film clip is about a boat trip on the Baltic Sea (Luebeck borders the Baltic Sea in Travemuende), which has been organized by a children’s care team called “Learning Caterpillar”. Yet another film clip entitled “Beat Box” is about a young man who replaces a complete drums and rhythm section with his voice. This particular video blog entry received a lot positive feedback especially from girls. Even this little selection of sample film clips (cf. figure 1) demonstrates that not only creativity is fostered but also self esteem and social recognition. The video blog “Digital Live Moisling” is also a starting and collection point of different – and mostly positive – views of Moisling forming an alternative public forum which counterbalances the mostly negative news reported in the professional press. 3.2 The Digital Live Video Blog One of our students, Rangga Winantyo from Indonesia, supported the Digital Live Moisling project during his internship while developing an easy-to-use video blog framework which enabled the community centre to easily upload digital video, photographs, and text documents. He tested an array of video players, photo albums and other supporting software. The blog is based on a stripped and slightly adapted version of the Wordpress framework (www.wordpress.com). As a media player the Flash video player turned out to be the most reliable and adaptable piece of software. The photo album which was favoured by Moisling’s bloggers is “lazy-k” (see below for more information on plugins). The coordination committee of the Moisling initiative also uses some protected blog folders in order to exchange protocols. Some of these text documents are also made public in order to inform the members of the initiative and to elicit discussions. Some users also asked for more local information including weather information which is now retrieved from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the US government2 and displayed next to the blog entries. In her essay “Online Uprising” Catharine Seipp (2002) wrote: "In general, 'blog' used to mean a personal online diary, typically concerned with boyfriend problems or techie news. But after September 11, a slew of new or refocused media junkie/political sites reshaped the entire Internet media landscape. Blog now refers to a Web journal that comments on the news -- often by criticizing the media and usually in rudely clever tones -- with links to stories that back up the commentary with evidence." Hoem (2004) points out, that blogging asks for diverse skills which are needed in order to understand and manage different aspects of modern communication: A rapid increase in audio-visual services on the web changes the conditions for blogging while photoblogs and videoblogs facilitate practices which promote media literacy and collaborative learning through the making of “collective

2

Located at www.noaa.gov by using location code from http://weather.gov/tg/siteloc.shtml

documentaries”. In the same way, inhabitants of Moisling want to create collective archives of their daily lives and to publish them on the Web.

Figure 1. “Digital Life Moisling”, an video weblog (vlog) used as a web-TV channel to support and to sustain social care for underprivileged young people living in Moisling, a part of the hanseatic city of Luebeck (Germany; screenshot taken from http://dlm.isnm.de in June, 2007).

First discussions revealed that computer skills, penetration of Internet access and available bandwidth is low: Many people were not used to read or write in blog software – and those, who are connected to the Web, use 521kbps dial up connections. Therefore, we tried to adapt very simple blog software and to get a maximum of picture and video quality from the lowest possible resolution: All popular video formats such as WMV (Windows Meta File), MOV (RealTime), Flash movies (FLV) and MP4 (Motion Picture Expert Group, MPEG-4) are supported as well as popular picture formats, such as JPG (Joint Picture Expert Group, JPEG) and GIF (General Image File) in the two resolutions 640x480 and 480x240, respectively. The only audio format supported by our video blog is streaming stereo MP3 with 64kbps, which can also be downloaded to MP3 players. The first version of the blog was implemented using the open source “BBlog PHP” engine3 which turned out to be very simple and user friendly but also hard to adapt and to update e.g. with plug-ins. Therefore, we finally used a stripped down version of the WordPress blog software with the theme (or layout pattern) called “DarkPad”4. While giant video Web sites, such YouTube or GoogleVideo, provide their own HMTL scripts in order to embed video into HTML pages, we chose a generic script which allows directly accessing video files and integrating them on the web page5. We finally created a blog which directly links to photo and video sources consisting of the following elements (cf. fig. 1): (1) Blog and site title, (2) subtitle and “about” statement, (3) posting area including author, publication date and links to categories and more contributions from the same author as well as links to comments, (4) different sections featuring a) a preview video, b) recent posts, c) links to categories about news and events from Moisling, d) links to external web sites and e) meta tools, such as registration, RSS feeds and downloads. Additionally, events can also be 3

Downloadable at: http://www.bblog.com/ Downloadable at: http://www.wordpress.com/; themes etc. are available at: http://wordpress.org/support/ and http://gfxedit.com/ 5 Simple instructions and code is online available at: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-to-embed-flv-flash-videos-in-your.html 4

retrieved by clicking on a calendar tool6. Different photo album gallery plugins have been tested and “lazy-k” has been chosen for its compatibility with many WordPress version and for its ease of use7. Five different roles (or access rights) are supported by the DLM blog: (1) Administrator (access to all features), (2) Editor (publishing and manage all posts), (3) Author (publishing and managing one’s own posts), (4) Contributor (writing and managing posts but not publishing them) and (5) Subscriber (reading posts and commenting on them as well as subscribing to the newsletter). In order to simply read posts, no registration is needed. However, some posts, such as protocols from meetings, are protected by a password which needs to be entered before accessing the respective blog entry. All comments have for a permission from an administrator or editor in order to prevent offensive or unsuitable comments as well as spam entered by robots.

4 Future Work We want to develop the accidental use of the video blog into a more structured Web-TV format without losing the amateur style of the video production in order to avoid another mechanism of social or technical exclusion. A “best of” collection of film scenes based on the number and content of blog comments (cf. Mishne & Glance, 2006) will be compiled into a 1.5 minutes video podcast. Some – if not most – of the video clips will be mirrored in video portals, such as YouTue and Google Video, respectively, in order to create more attention and feedback for “Digital Live Moisling”. We also plan to apply “social tagging” in a broader sense than it used today: Social tagging refers to user tagging, that is, entry of keywords, without referring to expert taxonomies (cf. Trant & Wymann, 2006; Mejias, 2006). We think that “social tagging” should refer to a more comprehensive assembly of meta-data on the social context a blog entry is linked to: Geographical information as well user profiles and other local information. Google Earth is certainly among the most popular Internet applications ever. It also greatly supported (if not unleashed) the euphoria about the geo-spatial Web which is now discussed in many publications and conferences (McCurley, 2001). Text-based or video blogs turn into media rich blogs including photo, audio, and video download or streaming. Many media items have now been geo-tagged, such as the geo-tagged photos in Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/map/), by using small versions of mark-up languages, such as the Keyhole Mark-up Language (KLM) used by Google Earth. Up to now, only little efforts have been made to combine rich media and rich context in order to improve blogging. The purpose of our future research is to explore and prototypically implement space, time and user related contexts to blog entries using extended version of KLM. A first but insufficient approach based on interest ratings has been taken by Flickr at www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/. We want to tag blog entries not only according to media type, geographical position and interest ratings – but also by user profiles linked to that blog entry and other blog entries which deal with related content, such as information about the same school or video clips from friends of the person starring in a video. We are confident that this extended version of “social tagging” will help us to develop not only a “rich media” but also “rich experience” blog.

References Boyd, D. (2005). Autistic social software. In J. Spolsky (Ed.), Best software writing I (35-45), Berkely: Computer Bookshops (online avaibale at http://www.danah.org/papers/AutisticSocialSoftware.pdf). Brosius, H.B., & Kayer, S. (1991). Der Einfluß von emotionalen Darstellungen im Fernsehen auf Informationsaufnahme und Urteilsbildung. Medienpsychologie, 3, 236-253. Brosius, H.B., & Mundorf, N. (1990). Eins und eins ist ungleich zwei: Differentielle Aufmerksamkeit, Lebhaftigkeit von Information und Medienwirkung. Publizistik, 35, 398-407. Calvert, S.L., Huston, A.C., & Wright, J.C. (1987). Effects of television preplay formats on children´s attention and story comprehension. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 8, 329-342. Escalada, L.T., Grabhorn, R., & Zollman, D.A. (1996). Applications of interactive digital video in a physics classroom. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 5(1), 73-97. Dale, E. (1946). Audio-visual methods in teaching. New York: The Dryden Press. Dean, K. (2005). Video + Blogging = Vlogging. Wired News, July 2005. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2005/07/68171 at 03/15/2007. Hasebrook, J., & Gremm, M. (1999). Multimedia for vocational guidance: Effects of testing, videos, and photography on acceptance and recall. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 8(2), 217-240. Hoem, J. (2004). Videoblogs as collective documentaries. Presented at BlogTalk 2004; online available at: http://infodesign.no/artikler/videoblogs_as_collective_documentary.pdf. Ito, M. (2005). Intimate virtual copresence. Workshop on Pervasive Image Capture and Sharing (PICS) at Ubicomp Conference 2005, Tokyo, September 11, 2005 (online available at www.itofisher.com/mito/archives/ito.ubicomp05.pdf). 6 7

Overview of plugins for WordPress blogs are available at: http://wpcal.firetree.net/ Lazy-k photo gallery is online available at: http://plugins.atterberry.net/lazy-k-gallery/

Jenkins, H. (2006). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. White Paper. Chicago, Ill.: MacArthur Foundation (online at: http://www.digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/{7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9CE807E1B0AE4E}/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF). Kenny, R. (2002). Teaching TV production in a digital world: Integrating media literacy. Englewood, Co: Libraries Unlimited. Livingstone, S. (1990). Making sense of television. The psychology of audience interpretation. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Maurer, H., & Kolbitsch, J. (2006). The transformation of the Web: How emerging communities shape the information we consume. Journal of Universal Computing Science, 12(2), 187-213. Verfügbar unter: http://www.jucs.org/jucs_12_2/the_transformation_of_the/jucs_12_02_0187_0214_kolbitsch.pdf [30.03.2007] Mayer, R.E., & Anderson, R.B. (1992). The instructive animation: Helping students build connections between words and pictures in multimedia learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84(4), 444-452. McCurley, K.S. (2001). Geospatial mapping and navigation of the web. Proceedings of the 10th international conference on World Wide Web, 221-229, Hong Kong. Mejias, U. (2006). Learning and social software. Blog entry posted at April 18, 2006; retrieved from http://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7533 at 08/15/2006. Mishne, G. & Glance, N . (2006). Leave a Reply: An Analysis of Weblog Com m ents. Proceed ings WWW2006 , May 22–26, 2006, Ed inburgh, UK. Paivio, A. (1986). Mental representations: A dual-coding approach. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Perkel, D., Yardi, S., Burgener, C., Reid, N., & Strickland. R. (2005). Explorations into collaborative story creation through design research with kids. Master’s project paper University of California at Berkeley (online available at http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/files/dperkel_MastersProject.pdf). Quesada, A., Miller, E., & Armstrong, S. (2000). The media literacy imperative. Technology & Learning, 21(3), 49-54. RfK SH (Council for Crime Prevention of the State of Schleswig-Holstein) (Ed.)(2003). Kriminalpräention in Stadtteilen. Insitutionalisieurng, Konzeote, Beispiele, Empfehlungen. Rat für Kriminalprävention in Schleswig-Holstein: Kiel (online available at: https://www.polizei.schleswig-holstein.de/internet/vorbeugung-und-beratung/aktionen-und-projekte/staedtebau/download/stadtteile.pdf). Rieber, L.P. (1991). Animation, incidental learning, and continuing motivation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83(3), 318-328. Rollandelli, D. (1989). Children and television: the visual superiority effect reconsidered. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 33, 6981. Rollett, H., Lux, M., Strohmaier, M., Dösinger, G. & Tochtermann, K. (in press). The Web 2.0 way of learning with technologies. International Journal of Learning Technologies. Rice, M.L., Huston, A.C., & Wirgt, J.C. (1986). Replay as repetitions: Young children´s interpretation of television forms. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 7, 61-76. Salomon, G. (1984). Television is ´easy´ and print is ´tough´: The differential investment of mental effort in learning as a function of perceptions and attribution. Journal of Educational Psychology, 76, 647-658. Seipp, C. (2002). Online uprising. American Journalism Review, June 2002 (retrieved from http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=2555 at March, 15, 2007) Thoman, E. (1999). Skills and strategies for media education. Educational Leadership, 56(5), 50-54. Trant, J. & Wyman, B. (2006). Investigating social tagging and folksonomy in art museums with steve.museum. Paper for the Tagging Workshop, World Wide Web 2006. Edinburgh, Scotland, May 22, 2006.

Relevant Web Sites for Digital Story Telling Center for Digital Story Telling (www.storycenter.org) The Center for Digital Storytelling is a California-based non-profit arts organization, which assists young people and adults in using the tools of digital media to craft, record, share, and value the stories of individuals and communities.

Project Storymapping (www.storymapping.org) A project framework of the Center for Digital Story Telling which explores contextual information for digital stories, such as geo-tagging (e.g. with Google Earth) and other projects.

Project YOUTH (www.youthtrainingproject.org) The YOUTH training project is a multi-year collaboration between current and former foster youth, social work professionals, academics and foundations committed to the empowerment of California foster youth. The training project is entirely staffed by former foster youth, has trained more than 40 youth to educate more than 2000 child welfare staff in California and Hawaii.

Project DAVA (www.davarts.org/art_storiesB.html) Dava is a non-profit art organization for kids which includes after school studios, job and art internship trainings, computer lab and digital story production as well as Portable Art School in Denver, Colorado.

BBC Telling Lives (www.bbc.co.uk/tellinglives/) & Digital Lives (www.bbc.co.uk/cumbria/digital_lives/) Digital Lives is a portal for all the community based projects that BBC Cumbria has been involved with including digital video and the work of the community journalists. Digital Lives has been awarded the “Webby Award” in 2006 and is part of the “Telling Lives” projects of the state-owned British Broadcating Corp (BBC).