So... after watching quite a few wonderfully crafted Orca Live School broadcasting shows, as well as exploring Eisenhower Middle School's morning show, I was pumped up, excited and ready to find a school in my area (NYC) that did the same great work with their students so that I can pick their brains on just how much it takes to create a program of that magnitude.
But... After one long week of reaching out to over 20 schools, trying to locate one (just one) that incorporated a T.V. Broadcast or even just an announcement that included more than having two students say the Pledge of Allegiance, I came up with NOTHING. Well actually, I found that the majority of the schools I contacted did a daily announcement over the loud speaker, which almost always includes two students saying the pledge of allegiance and then the principal, vice principal or some other staff member updates the teachers of staff related events.
BORING, Is all I could think, and for some odd reason I also became both angry and frustrated. Is it a lack of resources or funding? Creativity? Time? I am really not sure what it is but with the lack of art and music programs in many public schools within the city, I can only hope that students are able to find creativity in something else. Creating a school news announcement can be one great way to get student's creative juices flowing.
Let's fast forward to today, because today was a good day filled with enlightenment and answers to many of the question I had regarding how schools who may be interested in beginning a school news production program, can get started. Today (on a whim) I reached out to Orenco Elementary School and had the pleasure of speaking with Mike Futter, the teacher behind the awesome, creative and student run school news broadcast ORCA Live. Mr. Futter was extremely nice and forthcoming with information. He was also both surprised and elated at the fact that someone from New York City, let alone an entire class of students from the University of West Georgia viewed his site. If you haven't already done so, please take a look http://schools.hsd.k12.or.us/orenco/Home/tabid/2559/Default.aspx
Here is a little of what Mr. Futter said:
1. How often do you create your broadcast? Daily, weekly, monthly?
We are in our 10 years of broadcasting and for the first seven years we created weekly broadcast, however after my friend retired we now do it Bi Weekly.
2. Who produces it? Students, teachers, media specialist?
I create the main script, however students do everything else from lighting, to wardrobe, to figuring out where students should stand, the information that should be included, working the equipment, creating props etc. Sometimes students write scripts that they would like to include. Also, grade levels report weekly and each broadcast highlights one particular grade. The students are responsible for using the laptops to create the power-point presentations and graphics, props, using the switch board and switching between scenes, figuring out where students stand as well as properly using the mics. The students basically do it all.
3. I noticed that you have a green screen, what other types of equipment is used?
Well, actually the green screen is a white board with just a green sheet draped over it. It works pretty well with our mixing board. We also use a old overhead projector for the lighting. We used to have really old cameras however one of the parents of our students work for Nike, which is located here and when they switched over to digital they donated all of their old cameras. We also had a really old mixing board and they donated that as well. We use TriCaster Studio by Newtek, (http://www.newtek.com/products/tricaster-40.html) which can handle a lot. Students can put videos on it, it's like a little production studio. We received the funding for it after writing and winning a $5000 school grant.
4. I see that you have some really great student actors, how is the talent selected? Does the same people work on it all year or is there a rotation schedule?
We have something called crew jobs which are outside jobs where students take pictures of assembly talent shows etc. to add to our broadcast. Because it is not a class we rely heavily on teachers to nominate students they know to be super responsible, good behavior and great work habits. If students are interested and they are not nominated they can write me a letter and I keep it for future reference. There are about 30-40 students throughout the year who work on the productions.
5. What problems have you encountered and how has it been solved?
So far we have had a pretty smooth run. We are lucky enough to write for grants and receive them as well as have the support of surrounding companies in the area. One problem that I have and foresee continuing into the future is the lack of time to train students as teacher jobs become more difficult.
6. Have any of your students gone on to work in broadcasting?
Well since this is an elementary school our oldest students are just turning 21 and attending college. I don't have any stories of any of them working in the field, however we have had students attend the highschool, which also uses a news broadcast.
I thank Mike for his time, and he asked me to thank everyone who watched for watching and to also thank professor Cooper for highlighting his school.
In the newscast, began by welcoming and thanking all of the substitute teachers for helping out today, which I thought was awesome. They also did birthday shout outs, the day's lunch menu, a weekend weather check, testing updates which included tips such as going to sleep early and eating breakfast on the day of the test, program updates, group updates, such as band and choir news, and grade level highlights. During one particular broadcast, students encourages their peers to submit pictures of their activities during a recent snow day and created a montage of pictures to Disney's Frozen sound track. *** Side-note ***If you haven't seen the movie Frozen (which my 7 and 3 year old sons love) or heard the sound track you are truly missing out.
Overall I think that school t.v. news is awesome and a great way for students to be creative.
Sadeqwa,
ReplyDeleteI love that you reached out to the Orenco Elementary School teacher. It’s almost shocking that more schools aren’t doing newscasts considering how readily available and easy-to-use technology has made it to create such broadcasts. I would imagine the students and teachers would find a short broadcast more interesting than people talking over the intercom. It’s also probably more engaging. I totally agree with you that it’s pretty boring to just have daily announcements done over the loudspeaker. I think if schools could even manage a weekly or biweekly broadcast, it could be really beneficial to students and would be a good way to boost their creativity, give them experience in broadcasting, and to break up the monotony a bit. I think the Orenco school seems to have a really good program in place. I like that they include different things in their broadcast outside the normal upcoming events and lunch menu news. The birthday shout-outs are a great way to engage the viewers and the test tips are a good way to provide students with information that may be useful to them, which is the whole point of a newscast. The call for student-submitted pictures is also another good way to engage the audience and make them feel included in the broadcast. I think it’s great that the students get to experience writing some of the broadcast, as well being responsible for creating the presentations and graphics and figuring out the lighting. It’s giving the students a great chance to be creative and giving them some valuable real-world experience and skills. I think it’s probably a good idea to have mostly the same students working on the broadcast throughout the year. It gives the newscast some uniformity and consistency. It’s probably a good idea to have teachers recommend the students too because it means that the teacher believes they would be well-suited and reliable enough to participate in such a program.
After viewing the links Dr. Cooper suggested and watching our WRAM crew at school each morning as a classroom teacher, I have been intrigued as to finding way to improve and vary our daily broadcast. During the book fair, we had faculty members do book talks on some of the books for sale. They were anonymous, and the kids enjoyed trying to figure out who it was. Last week we had one of the reading bowl members do a book talk on one of the reading bowl chapter books to stimulate circulation. She did a great job! I am making plans to find ways to change it up more next year!
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