Ipswich high school students can win from a $3000 prize pool for telling a news story about their local area – using pictures, text, or video.

“Switch it up” is a competition to encourage budding digital storytellers to use switch.org.au to publish their stories.

Switch is an interactive website for the Ipswich community – a local “Youtube” – where people can upload as well as download images, video, stories, and other information for free,

UQ Business School is sponsoring the prize pool for the competition, and “Switch it up” is the first of a series of competitions to be run in conjunction with the www.switch.org.au digital expo website.

UQ Business School researcher, Dr Liz Ferrier, who initiated the digital expo and competitions, is thrilled with last week’s competition launch. 

Ferrier said, “’Switch it up’ is a competition for high school students – and we want them to tell us about their local news stories in their medium.”

“They are telling their stories using digital media - words, pictures, video and sound, and the Switch will be the virtual space that hosts these stories.”

“The problem with most social networking and news sites, and the media more generally, is the lack of local content – especially in Australian regional areas - and this is where Switch fills the gap - it is a space for local Ipswich news and local content, written by our citizen journalists”, she said.

“We held the first workshop with high school students and their teachers last week, to improve their skills around digital media production and new media.”

Students and teachers from Bremer High, Ipswich Girls Grammar, Redbank Plains High, Rosewood High and St Peter Clavier, learned about amateur content creation and safe guidelines for participating in online publishing spaces.

 “Michael Dezuanni, an experienced multimedia educator from Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM), gave the students hands-on video production and editing experience in the one day intensive program”, Dr Ferrier said.

Participants also heard from Jessica Coates, of Creative Commons, about copyright and where copyright-free material may be accessed online for their digital storytelling, including music and images.

“Students can now create their digital stories for the competition and see it published on Switch”, Dr Ferrier said.

Entries for the “Switch it up” competition are open to all local secondary school students and the competition closes on Friday 27 June. 

Schools or community groups interested in attending production training workshops at UQ Ipswich can contact Daniel Lalor, 07 33811232 or Liz Ferrier on e.ferrier@uq.edu.au .