“One Good Thing” (OGT) is a campaign of Safer Internet Day US that encourages Internet users of all ages, especially young people, to share one good thing they or people they know have done to make the Internet a better place or the world a better place with the help of the Internet and social media. An OGT party is a fun, one-hour event where people gather to create and submit their short, mobile-phone-based OGT videos and texts at the Safer Internet Day website: SaferInternetDay.us/one-good-thing. Here are some suggested guidelines for OGT partying:
TIMING: The sooner the better. Maybe now?!
STUFF YOU NEED: An Internet connection or mobile service and a bunch of smartphones or digital cams that shoot video
HOW TO DO THE PARTY:
1. Invite all your friends, peers, club members, etc. IMPORTANT: Tell everybody who has one to bring their phone or videocam. [Refreshments optional or “potluck,” but they tend to make things more party-ful.]
2. Once everybody’s said hello and is ready to chill and listen, coordinator explains “why we’re all here” – simple: to think of, create and post One Good Thing – and how we’re going to do this. You can read this: “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to share one good thing that you or someone or a group of people you know has done to make the Internet a better place OR the world a better place using the Internet” (e.g., maybe the thing was organized or promoted or expanded with the help of social media). Refer to SaferInternetDay.us/one-good-thing for examples.
3. Take 1-2 min. of quiet for everybody to think of their OGT, then 5 min. for everybody to talk about it with their neighbor(s) – because sometimes we help each other remember things. Feel free to take more time if people want to plan their sharing/videotaping a little bit (see below for instructions on that).
4. Ask everybody to divide up into groups of 2-5 to take videos of 1 to 3 people (or however many can fit into a frame) talking about that OGT.
5. Read these INSTRUCTIONS for videotaping (before people start):
- Full-frame faces (we love faces!) – zoom right in on the 1-3 ppl as they share.
- Try not to interrupt or speak over each other on camera – 1 speaker at a time.
- OGTs can be anywhere from 20 sec. to 30 sec. Short is great. Even a couple of sentences is fine. Longer’s ok if someone wants to tell a story. If it’s a group on camera, 1 person can tell the thing, with the other 1 or 2 reacting/explaining, etc.
- Though it can be fun to videotape each other talking, selfie videos are fine too if anyone prefers to go it alone.
- If people aren’t comfortable with being on camera, text is also just fine – especially for writers. They can submit their text OGTs in the same form on our OGT Web page. If anybody wants to go home and think and write later, that’s fine too.
6. After everybody’s finished capturing the OGTs, just submit, right there on our page. Or – if you only have one computer handy and it’d take to long – they can go home and submit there, but tell them not to forget to!
That’s it. The whole idea is for it to be FUN and EASY. These are just guidelines. Feel free to riff off them!