FRBV25-RESpectOl CC – ENGAGE: CITIZENSHIP – Journalism competition

In April, a journalist from an important local newspaper came to our school and presented the project. First, he showed a video showing the different aspects of the job of a field journalist in charge of a report. They studied the construction of a video (varied image and sound editing, interviews, shots, voice-overs, text overlay, credits).

This was followed by a collective reflection on the theme of the competition launched by the Dunkirk local council to mark the anniversary of Operation Dynamo (May 1940), an important episode in the early days of WWII. An initial storyboard for the report was drawn up and the plan was noted on the board: the students chose to use an outing to the Fort de Dunes organized during a recent Erasmus visit, during which they had carried out a comic strip workshop on the same theme. Their approach was to tell how young Europeans (their Greek and Italian pen pals) discovered this historic event and, thanks to it, understood the importance of the work of remembrance to become enlightened future European citizens, vigilant to promote lasting peace.

Then began the documentary research and writing phase. After dividing up their tasks, they split into working groups, with each group taking charge of one part of the video report. The following 3 sessions were devoted to voice recordings, filming and writing inlay texts, in French and English. The progress of the work was monitored by the whole group via a Padlet containing their documents. Final editing was carried out by a student with the help of the teachers, using the Capcut application on a mobile phone. The project ended with a morning of international conferences at the 6th “Villes mémoires” symposium at the Kursaal in Dunkerque on May 23rd.

The students were really involved, very active (with deadlines to meet), very supportive in sharing tasks in order to be as efficient as possible. They acquired new skills learnt how to better organize their videos: a tool they thought they already mastered (on their phones), but not in a journalistic way.