The first Hungarian interactive cartoon, entitled "The Other Side" was commissioned by ASVA (Public Foundation for the Protection of the Copyrights of Audio-visual Products) and ProArt - Association for Copyrights, and developed by Eduweb. It is a story of a secondary school all-boys band called Tundrastorm. The cartoon starts with the band members', Max, Sztív, Edy and Papa G giving their first performance at the school prom and ends with the coming out of their first album. Meanwhile, we find out more about copyright and learn in what ways it facilitates the creation of works of art.

Target group

This radically novel genre of a learning material is targeted at secondary school students.

Aim of the e-learning material

It has a dual aim: on the one hand, it aims to make the students understand that there are plenty of legal forms of accessing works of art such as films, pieces of music, instead of resorting to illegal downloads. On the other hand, it makes them aware of the possibilities and rights they themselves have if they create an intellectual product. Hence the title of the material, "the other side", as the material looks also at the other side of the coin.
Besides teaching some basic concepts the learning material also emphasises the emotional and moral issues involved when demonstrating the extent of the damage that the illegal activities of audiovisual pirates do to authors or artists of various sorts.

Content of the curriculum

The story consists of four episodes, each followed by a quiz. The questions of the quizes are tightly linked to the issues brought up on the story itself and its textual environment.

From the Select chapter menu in the bottom right corner learners can reach the selected chapter directly.

The learning material does not include any laws or regulations and avoids dry and difficult to follow explanations. However, within the cartoon, imbedded in the story, is a blinking notebook appears offering the possibility of obtaining additional information. The notebook appears whenever a complex copyright issue needs to be discussed by the band members.

What is interesting about the notes is that they react in a situation-sensitive way, when opened from the cartoon, that is they show the topic that is being discussed at that point in the story. Nevertheless, learners may also have a complete overview of the notes and browse through them, too.

The story of the school band includes a number of musical and concert video media elements which can be listened to or viewed individually. The original music was composed by a real life Budapest amateur rock band called Gloaming. The authors of the learning material also modelled their characters on the band members.

The musical excerpts included in the material can be listened to in their entirety in a separate menu called "Media store". An unedited video clip as well as the video recording of two concerts can also be viewed here.

A full version of the learning material can be accessed from Sulinet's website (http://szerzoijog.sulinet.hu).