Abstract:

MEDEA Awards (http://www.medea-awards.com) is an annual competition that aims to encourage innovation and good practice in the use of media (audio, video, graphics and animation) in education. The awards also recognise and promote excellence in the production and pedagogical design of media-rich learning resources.
In recent years there has been remarkable interest in the creation and use of digital video and audio in education, boosted by the increasing impact of multimedia websites and video-sharing communities such as YouTube and Vimeo, and mobile apps. Our pedagogical vision states that ‘it is only when video and audio are routine components of education and online learning, that we will have an educational environment that reflects the media-rich world in which our learners now live’.
Since its launch at the end of 2007 the MEDEA Awards have established themselves as a unique forum whereby excellent examples of media use in education and training are recognised and celebrated. Through 2 European funded projects (MEDEA:EU, 2008-2011 and MEDEA2002, 2010-2012) the MEDEA Awards have continued to expand: we now operate in English, French, German, Italian, Polish and Spanish, and we have a European-wide network of support organisations.
The MEDEA Awards are attracting more and more high-quality examples of inspirational media from those at all levels of education and training, including compulsory level education, higher education, lifelong learning and the training sector and we want to share this expertise to a wider audience. Through MEDEA2020, a dissemination and exploitation project (Key Activity 4, 2010-2012) we provide workshops about media-based learning on specific topics (webdocumentary, animation, …) in France, Ireland, Italy, Poland and Spain. We are fostering the exchange of good practice by showcasing MEDEA Awards’ best entries online as well as by involving them in the workshops. MEDEA2020 also established an online community of practice with a presence on several popular social media networks where we share related news, tips and best-practices from the MEDEA Awards as well as external related initiatives.

This presentation will give a glimpse behind the scenes of the MEDEA Awards and the judging criteria we created. We will promote the use of video in learning through discussing several best-practice samples from finalists and winners of the past MEDEA Awards, and will shortly discuss the results of a workshop we have conducted in Spain in the Spring of 2012. Production and pedagogical values will be discussed on the basis of the shown samples and conclusions will be drawn to support educational multimedia producers in their own work.

Keywords:

Medea Awards, video, training, innovation, European project, EACEA, Cop, workshop.