The event was hosted by the The Resource Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology (Result) at UiT, The Arctic University of Norway, and at Verdensteatret (Tromsø’s historical cinema built in 1916).

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The goal of the festival is to promote the use of film as an educational tool and to drive enhancement of the quality of educational films. About 120 participants gathered to watch 26 films from 10 different countries. The event was organized in a conference format with a strong emphasis on pedagogy; with keynote speakers Kine Maridatter Maxwell Dørum (UiT – Result) and Jouko Aaltonen (film producer and lecturer at Aalto University) addressing designing for learning, and the power of film, what you can do with it, and how you can teach with it.

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Each of the 26 films were accompanied by a presentation by the film makers focusing on how the film can be used in teaching. The film topics were broad, addressing education in health care, politics, history, sociology, anthropology, natural sciences, engineering, the arts, and teacher education, and included films developed as part of university courses, Youtube educational videos, and films intended to educate the public or spark public discussion. Four installations were also demonstrated to the participants, illustrating how virtual reality, augmented reality, and computer games can be used in law, health care, and history education.

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Some of the film highlights of the festival were:

1) “You Arrive”, a film used in psychology teaching and the winner of the Best Educational Film award, which used a dramatized illustration of how trauma experienced in childhood affects our behaviour as adults,

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2) a humorous short video called “What are plastics?” developed at NTNU as part of an online course for workers in the fish farming industry, and

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3) “AKMA 2: Ocean senses research expedition”, a documentary on a research expedition in 2022 that combined scientific data-gathering with high-school teacher education and our experience of the ocean through our primary senses, presented by Prof. Giuliana Panieri from UiT Geosciences. Participants were also given the opportunity to experience an educational film about the northern lights, “Extreme Auroras”, screened at Norway’s largest planetarium (Nordlysplanetariet).

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The first ever TREFF was a great meeting place for innovators in education and sparked exciting ideas for those who attended. It truly emphasized the power of collaboration in education, and we look forward to seeing how this new film festival develops in the future.

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For more information about TREFF

https://result.uit.no/treff/

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