education | new media studies
INNOVATIVE EDUCATION IN MEDIA: Experimenting with drones to improve everyday life for journalists is part of a New Media course at the University of Bergen. PHOTO: Øystein Søbye/NTB SCANPIX
Media students become drone experts The University of Bergen uses drone experiments to help educate tomorrow’s media workers.
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rones are set to become a billion dollar industry in Norway. Through its course on drone programming for journalism, the University of Bergen (UiB) is one of the very first educational establishments in Europe to offer drone courses for media students. “Drone films often suffer from an amateurish quality. We will assist in the process of turning drones into a serious and safe journalistic tool,”
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the Uib Magazine.
says Professor Lars Nyre from the Department of Information Science and Media Studies. The course is part of the Bachelor Programme in New Media. The programme contains an experimental and creative course which already looks at everything from apps to smart watches and virtual reality, and is now taking on drones. “Filming with a drone is unbelievably physical. A lone journalist can
find themselves using a camera rig which up to now has been unthinkable without a Hollywood budget,” says Nyre.
Innovative journalism Students experiment with drones as part of the course. They develop new programmes for sound and images, which are then tested in practice; the idea being to research drones as a journalistic tool.