I love Medway! Student's online celebration
Published: 10:42, 15 June 2012
Stop moaning about Medway - it's a brilliant place with lots of hidden treasures.
So says journalism student Dan May who has launched a new community project as part of his undergraduate degree to allows people to discover unknown gems across the Towns.
After moving to Medway from Essex three years ago for his studies at Kent University, Dan grew to love the area and decided to create an interactive map to help others discover its hidden wonders.
He said: "Medway has had an unfair reputation at times, but after three years of accommodating me while studying at university, Hidden Treasures of Medway is my gift back to the community.
"By its very nature, Hidden Treasures is a community project."
Created as part of an advanced multimedia storytelling module on his course, the project encourages users to get out and about and sample the best Medway has to offer through a unique combination of an interactive online map and QR codes.
Dan added: "The module gave us a chance to move away from paper and pen and encourages us to do something different with multimedia tools.
"I took inspiration from applications such as Foursquare and a similar project by The Boston Globe. As far as I'm aware this is the first piece of interactive journalism like this in Britain."
To start your own adventure, you'll need to log on to the website, where an introduction video will explain how it works and a map will tell you where each of the locations and QR codes are.
The 21-year-old explained: "Scanning the QR codes will be the only way to access the interesting facts and information about each of the places. These have been placed as near to the locations as I could legally put them. This means to get the full experience, you're going need to get your shoes on!"
As well as the basic treasure hunt-like feature, there is also an element to the project called tasks. The tasks will allow users to suggest new places for the project or take interesting and unique photos of the existing locations.
Visit www.centreforjournalismprojects.co.uk/danielmay/wordpress for more information.
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