I am not a practicing media
specialist, but I do work in a high school where I teach a technology
class. Our school has an excellent video
broadcasting class, but we do not have any video distribution across our
school of any kind. In the
business/vocational department, we show CNN Student News daily. It is a ten-minute news broadcast highlighting
current world events. Every room in our
school has an ActivBoard, so it can be streamed that way through the Internet
by going to Cnnstudentnews.com. My
students enjoy it, but as for local or “in-house” news, we have none. Our VB class creates a slideshow of
announcements that stream across the TVs in the cafeteria at lunch. I think school news would be an awesome
alternative to announcements over the intercom, but we aren’t there yet. We certainly have the technology resources,
but I imagine it takes a lot of time behind the scenes, so it hasn’t quite come
together yet. I am interested to hear if
other schools have school news. Is this
something the media specialist works directly with, or do you also have a
broadcasting class? How much time and
effort is put into this?
I had never used the Georgia PublicBroadcasting resources (www.gpb.org/education),
but given the amount of technology used in our school and especially my
classroom, it would be very easy to implement, so I checked it out and found
some of it interesting and useful. There
are several educational
series/shows that are aligned to specific curriculums and specific age
groups. Students love any time they get
to watch something. I highly recommend checking out the site if you have the
capabilities of Internet streaming in your classroom. The “webisodes” are short, sweet, and
educational, and would make for a great warm up, conversation starter,
etc.
I think that it is really good that your school has a full VB class. I am an elementary school Media Specialist and I have old outdated equipment that we patch together to deliver a daily broadcast. The script is pretty basic and the students lay it flat on the anchor table when they are reading it. A few of them have actually memorized it! I have seen Disney shows where the high school does a broadcast but I think it would be too much to be daily. Maybe weekly on a Monday to discuss the upcoming news and events for the week and give highlights from the previous weeks news. In my school system the media specialist are the "Communication Ambassadors" for the school which means we handle all technology based concerns. With that being said I think you should maybe link up with the VB teacher and assist each other in creating a broadcast team that would be awesome!
ReplyDeleteI am a first year Media Specialist, and I do run our school's news broadcast. It is a big undertaking at first trying to learn how to use the video system. Now that I have been doing the news for six months, it seems much easier. Here's how we have set up our system. Our district uses Media Cast for its video distribution system. Each school has it's own channel to upload school wide video announcements. Some schools do a live broadcast and others pre-tape. My school pre-tapes the news the afternoon before. I have three 4th/5th grade students who come to my mini studio in the back of the media center each afternoon. It only takes about ten minutes to tape if everything is working correctly and set up. One student is the on-camera anchor, one the computer teleprompter scroller and one runs the Media Cast cart (computer/video camera station) with me supervising. We have a script that is updated each day for basic announcements. Any staff or PTA members can submit video announcements to be included in the broadcast. The system will switch back and forth between live video feed and stored video clips. We do have a BNN (Boston News Network) club that meets twice a month to help organize birthday announcements and to make videos for upcoming events. This is open to 4th and 5th graders as well.
ReplyDeleteThe students love being a part of the news and have to fill out applications and do on camera auditions for selection on the team. We have a first semester and second semester crew in order to involve as many students as possible. Three students are assigned to each day of the week, so they know what day to report to the studio. I even print reminder stickers for their agendas. Usually, they are really good about remembering.
Creating the news broadcast really is fun, but it takes some effort to produce. I hope my information is helpful. Feel free to contact me if you have further questions.
I love the fact that you show CNN student news to your classes. I am in the CTAE department at my school and have students do 'current events' each week - mainly so they are aware of what goes on in the news/world. I am going to "admire and acquire" your CNN idea!! My school is similar in yours in the fact that we don't have video announcements. We send out a quarterly news letter but that is about it. At one point I think the MS did a slideshow of announcements to play on the TVs in the cafeteria and main lobby but that didn't last long. It is hard to have a set medium on how to present school news. There are several options to look at - youtube channels, webcast, webpages, newsletter - it just takes some initiative and work to get it done!!
ReplyDeleteAs I shared in a previous posting, we do utilize a video distribution system at our school and it’s produced by our video broadcasting media program. The show is done quarterly and is played during advisement. The show focuses on what’s going on with the student body. I know that producing shows are a time consuming task, but I certainly think the outcome is worth it. Our high school video broadcasting teacher has teamed up with the middle school teacher and the kids are actually doing the daily announcements via video distribution.
ReplyDeleteI was not aware of CNN Student News and found it pretty interesting, this is something that I may incorporate in my classroom now and surely when I am a media specialist.
School news in usually incorporated and managed by either the media specialist or the technology instructor (from my experience). Many schools do not have technology focused instruction therefore media specialist are usually the ones to take on such a task. As we know flexibility is schedules allows the media specialist to coordinate accordingly. Teachers on the other hand have regular fixed schedules that limit extra time. School news broadcasting can be a bit consuming because content is just as important as production, however it totally worth it. Since you are already using the Promethean board to steam news, that’s also an option for school news in the future. Simply obtain a decent HD camera, sound equipment, etc., watch some YouTube tutorials and you’re all set! ☺
ReplyDeleteI will definitely have to check out CNN Student News. Currently at my school we have our school news once a week on Fridays, (produced by students) following the school news I play Channel One News. We do this during ELT time and I think news from another source would be great to incorporate. I think it is important for students to know what is going on in the world. And I don't know how easy it would be to find in student news but watching news from multiple sources can lead to discussions on point of view and bias etc.
ReplyDelete