Monday 2 June 2008

Coffeeblips

No, not a new brand of cookies, but a quick way to capture views from workshop participants as they arrive for coffee at the beginning of a workshop.

On May 29th, we met with some of the ICCO Alliance Learning Facilitators and other ComPart 'activists' to take a look at our garden and see where we stand after one year of ComPart flowers.

As participants arrived at 'de Ster', together with the coffee we handed each group of two participants a card with two questions, together with a simple digital camera. We showed them how to film a short video and suggested they find a quiet spot to record each other reflecting on the two questions in a one-minute 'blip'.

Then, while Pete Cranston and Peter Ballantyne continued the main session, Chris Addison listened to the blips and prepared a quick powerpoint summary of the messages in the blips.

Henk Gilhuis shares his experience working with ComPart - please note, there's a reason the video is "a little upside down"!



The videos were later played back to all the participants [learning point: need loudspeakers next time] and, with the powerpoint summary, gave a chance for different perspectives to be heard and discussed. The immediacy of the data captured and the possibility to hear from 6 of the videos in a short time provided a quick basis for discussion. More details were then be brought out in the subsequent SWOT analysis of the project.

Lisette van der Wel shares her reflections on working with ComPart


Feedback on the video blips was positive. The process also raised awareness of the potential use of short videos in other workshops and projects. It was also an unexpected and fun way to start the workshop!

The term 'blips' comes from our use of 'Blip.tv' as a platform to publish video online. See, for examples:

http://iccoalliance.blip.tv/

http://euforic.blip.tv/


by Chris Addison and Pier Andrea Pirani

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