Radio Futura

Radijojo - XO radio play

The objective:
During the summer of 2010, Radijojo [1,2] assembled a team to prepare and produce the pilot for a series of radio plays to be produced on the OLPC XO laptop. A story was developed, songs were prepared, and candidates for the possible software to be used have been evaluated. Finally the pilot was rehearsed, performed, and recorded with 24 nine-year-old children during a five day workshop at Berlin’s Anna-Lindh-School in November 2010. One of the project’s objectives was to use exclusively XOs and software that is currently available for the XO. Based on our experiences, a manual of best practices how to produce sequels for this radio play has been published here [5].

The radio play:
The story is about two siblings, brother and sister, living in the year 2068. All intentions and resolutions, such as the millennium goals have failed. The whole world degenerated to a place where people live under the worst conditions and children’s rights are neglected. The siblings try to fathom one of the children’s rights in each episode. The pilot’s topic is child labor. The siblings’ only friend is a radio host who sends out his reporters to investigate the current topic around the world. Following are the episodes’ outlines:

1. The script of an episode should be about 5 - 10 pages long. Each episode consists of five scenes.
2. Each episode features the main characters: The siblings, the radio host, the computer voice
3. According to the producing country, the names of the characters may change but the characters remain the same.
4. Additional characters may be chosen from the pool of additional characters or they may be invented (and added to the pool of additional characters)
5. Each episode is about one of the topics of the UN Convention on the Rights of Children or the Millennium Goals
6. Each episode starts with a summary of the previous episode.
7. The episode ends with the problem being solved by uniting the children’s voices.
8. The episodes feature the title song which may be orchestrated according to the producers’ possibilities, also the lyrics may differ from episode to episode.
9. Each episode features contributions of children from other countries that comment on the topic from different points of view.

The workshop:
In conclusion the workshop was successful. All the recordings have been captured, one of the kid’s teams produced a little animation to visualize the show, another team tried to establish contact to schools in Brazil, Rwanda, Argentina, Alabama, and Peru. We hope to receive the contributions of these schools soon, so that they can be integrated to the project. During the production we encountered a couple of technological obstacles, which are described here [3] in detail. Due to the restricted time we had, we were not able to accomplish our goal of using no other technology than the XO. A couple of times we had to fall back on our backup technology. To produce radio plays with no other technologies than the XO is possible though, if time is not an issue.

The pilot and further information about the project can be found here [4].

The future:
We need your collaboration. Send us recordings, animations, or images to be added to the pilot. Report about the situation in your country. Is child labor a problem? Has it been a problem? Since when? When has it been abolished? Did somebody fight against it? What were his/her achievements. Can you tell us a story concerning the topics “Right to Education” and/or “Protection from Exploitation”. Shout out loud your claim for education. Send us your recordings in your language. We would also appreciate pictures that visualize certain aspects of the radio play. Create them on your XO. Do you have questions for the children in Germany? Of course you can also produce your own episode of the series. Produce it in your language, if possible add an English transcription of the dialogues. If you only manage to do the recordings but have difficulties with the mix, you can also send the raw materials. Add a storyboard then and give the files proper names. Radijojo will do the mix for you if possible.

[1] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Global_projects
[2] http://www.radijojo.de
[3] http://www.flatlandfarm.de/blog
[4] http://www.radijojo.de/WCN_neu/english/page/unten.php?pl=Weltprojekte&kontinent=Weltprojekte&punkt=weltprojekte&audio=radijojoonelaptopperchild&audioname=Radijojo%20+%20One%20Laptop%20per%20Child
[5] http://www.scribd.com/doc/58998858/Creating-Radio-Plays-on-the-XO-Laptop-A-Teacher-s-Manual
[6] http://www.scribd.com/doc/58966297/Producing-Radio-Plays-on-the-XO-Laptop