Big Stories Small Towns is a unique multi-platform documentary project created by a team of filmmakers living in residence in small towns, working with local people to bring their personal stories to the screen. The result is a series of inspiring short films, digital stories and photo essays - full of love, humour and hope - which are released to the world via a specially created website: www.bigstories.com.au

The Big Stories project is a unique model of community engagement and participation through media. It’s an opportunity to develop local authorial capacity, to inspire communities to create connection through sharing their stories, and to disseminate a rich repository of local stories with global impact. We work with communities in transition - from post trauma settings to boom towns. Within each community we work extensively with residents often not engaged in creative projects - older participants, new arrivals and Indigenous people. Our stories are catalysts to talk about issues and for communities to connect. We’re also trying to support small to bridge a multi-level digital divide through local skills development, technical support and intra and inter-community support networks. We seek to inspire other practitioners, institutions and local communities to use stories to foster connections, share experience, develop local skills, reflect the complexity of communities and reinforce the importance of town in an increasingly urban world.

Every year 1 in 5 of us experiences mental illness. The most vulnerable risk falling into a vicious cycle of instability, poverty and addiction. This is life for a small group of long-term homeless people trapped at the margins of society. Standard practice is to get people clean, sober and medicated before housing them. The stats say this doesn’t work. What if that script were flipped? What if we gave people homes first? Here At Home is a web documentary about At Home, a radical Canadian experiment that aims to prove there is a way to end chronic homelessness. Small, local crews are shooting a series of short docs in each of the 5 trial cities. Dispatches from the project in action, the films are posted, one by one, throughout the final year of the study. Each is an intimate glimpse inside the world of the participants, service providers and community members, a snapshot of the intense personal dramas unfolding across the nation.
Is it really possible to end chronic homelessness? Is “Housing First” the answer? Can we afford it? Is it fair? With 50 films, data from the study and a dynamic blog, Here At Home is a window on a cutting-edge social experiment that could change your heart, your mind and your bottom line.
A National Film Board of Canada production in association with the Mental Health Commission of Canada, Here at Home is a collaboration between the NFB’s French and English Programs.

It has been 68 years since atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and all the remaining A-bomb survivors will have died out in the coming decades. This means that those people who from their own experience have the strongest desire for peace and a nuclear-free world will be lost. Extending the mission of the “Nagasaki Archive”, which was published on the web in 2010, the “Hiroshima Archive” has been produced by melding a large amount of materials accumulated over 66 years with the latest Internet technologies, with a view to passing on the experiences and messages of A-bomb survivors to future generations.

“Hiroshima Archive” is a pluralistic digital archive using the digital virtual globe "Google Earth” to display on it in a multilayered way all the materials gained from such sources as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the Hiroshima Jogakuin Gaines Association, and the Hachioji Hibakusha (A-bomb Survivors) Association. Beyond time and space, the user can get a panoramic view over Hiroshima to browse survivors’ accounts, photos, maps, and other materials as of 1945, together with aerial photos, 3D topographical data, and building models as of 2010. The archive aims to promote multifaceted and comprehensive understanding of the reality of atomic bombing.

NHK Creative Library is a revolutionary online service that invites everyone to use NHK’s high-quality videos. Its purpose is to develop the creativity and expressive abilities of its users. As long as the simple terms and conditions prohibiting commercial use and copyright infringement are followed, users are free to download and use over 4500 video and audio materials.

Creative Library goes beyond just providing materials. Although many people are used to watching videos, they may feel that using videos as an expressive medium is something beyond them. The site features its very own online editing tool so that even beginners can try video editing. The fastest way for one to acquire video literacy is to actually make a video.

Furthermore, the site allows users to share the videos they’ve made. To build on one’s expressive abilities, it is imperative that he has the chance to have his works viewed by others, as well as the chance for him to view other people’s works.

In an age wherein video is such a big part of our lives, we think it is important to make video-expression more accessible. By providing NHK’s massive video archive for free use, we hope to nurture and stimulate the creativity of future artists.

Unlike BBC’s video archive site, Creative Library can be accessed from anywhere in the world. There’s never been a site like this which features a huge library of downloadable materials, an easy-to-use online editing tool, and a place to present original video works.

“Drugs & dilemmas” is a cross-media-production aimed at high school students to learn about risk and impact assessment on alcohol and drug use. The alcohol consumption among Swedish 15-year-olds has gone down, but at the same time cannabis use has increased, and new unexplored drugs appear on the market, easy to access legally on the internet. According to the curriculum, schools are required to teach about drugs, but it’s often up to the individual teacher how teaching is carried out. Our pre-studies have shown that one of the teachers' greatest challenges is to combine facts with social issues, such as peer pressure or being worried about a friend.

The result of this project is an interactive city where the student meets realistic dilemma scenarios, relating to the social aspects of alcohol and drug use. For each film, there is a question at issue that the student will have to consider. After answering the question, the student learns how others have thought about the same situation. Together, the users contribute to a common result, which can be the basis for further discussions in the classroom.

Linked to each dilemma there are facts and exercises on the same theme. The student can learn more about laws, how health is affected and other issues that may affect why we choose as we do - topics demanded in the curriculums for civics, biology and gymnastics.

“Drugs & dilemmas” is part of a cross-media-production with 250 minutes of television and a website supporting teachers’ education.

TED-Ed’s mission is to amplify the voice of great teachers. That mission, which is an extension of TED’s greater goal to provide ideas worth spreading free to the world, is served in two primary ways:

1. …Through the creation of a unique brand of animated video content called “Lessons worth sharing.” These videos are also called “TED-Ed Originals.” 2. …Through the development of a highly-trafficked website that is solely dedicated to optimizing TED content (TED-Ed originals, TEDTalks, TEDxTalks, etc.) for use in the classroom.

TED-Ed first launched in April of 2012. After 14 months, the TED-Ed team has worked with 225 teachers (each nominated via the TED-Ed website) to produce 250 animated, video-based lessons. The lessons have been viewed over 25 million times by learners all around the world.

The TED-Ed website, which recently won three Webby Awards (critical and popular pick for “Best Education Website,” & critical pick for “Best Practices”), allows teachers to enhance all TED content as well as any video from YouTube with interactive lesson materials. Over three million teachers and learners in classrooms across the globe are using the site regularly.

In year two of the TED-Ed initiative, the team is excited to extend its mission even more directly to students. TED-Ed has recently announced a new program called TED-Ed Clubs, which aims to support students in gaining presentation skills and sharing their ideas in the form of short TED-like Talks. The program is currently running 50 pilots in over ten countries.

Coursera is a social entrepreneurship company whose mission it is to help top universities place real courses (not just videos) up online, freely available to anyone around the world. Coursera provides universities with a platform that enables a single professor to provide a meaningful, engaging learning experience to tens of thousands of students, at a close-to-zero marginal cost per student. These courses exploit technology to provide a real course experience to students, including video content, interactive exercises with meaningful feedback, using both auto-grading and peer-grading, and rich peer-to-peer interaction around the course materials.
Coursera currently has 83 partners: top universities from the US, Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, and more. We offer close to 400 courses across the range of disciplines, including science, technology, humanities, arts, business, medicine, and many more. We have 4 million students from every country around the world. Our courses have helped many of these students to transform their lives, by enabling educational opportunities, by providing access to a better job, or by simply opening new intellectual horizons. We plan to provide access to a top education to everyone around the world with an internet connection, and turn education from a privilege of the few to a basic human right.