Mason County Video Makers Small and Tall

Friday, April 27th, 2012 by Jeff Gray, KET

 

For over twelve years Library Media Specialist Karen Wood has been running the Straub Morning Show each morning from a small room off of the school library. Each week features a different class. Straub's Morning Show is a live broadcast that begins around 8:15 each day and is played to the school through a vcr/dvd player. The show is also recorded each day as it's performed, and at the end of the week a DVD is made for the current class's teacher so that the students can watch themselves performing the show.

Ms. Wood makes a class participation schedule at the beginning of the school year. She begins with the 2nd grade classrooms and ends the year with kindergarten class. Ms. Wood provides the cue sheets that the teachers use for each show: one each for the introduction of the class and the date, Pledge of Allegiance, lunch menu, weather forecast, and the Straub song. A different student is in charge of each element. The week's teacher fills out the scripts for the students before they report to the library in the morning for the show.

During my visit, Ms. Wood reminisced, "Sometimes funny things happen on the live show. One day we had a teacher promoting the spring frog derby. She brought in a live frog and was showing him off in front of the camera. The frog leaped out of her hand and hopped around the room. Of course the tape was still rolling and here we were acting crazy because there was a frog hopping around the studio." She added, "During Read Across America week in March, we have mystery readers come on the show and read passages of Dr. Seuss books behind the camera. The students try to guess who the mystery reader is based only on their voices.  That is a lot of fun."

Here's a sample Straub Morning News Show program made by students from the 2nd grade classroom of Marybeth Tumey.

Close by, at Mason County High School, students in Ms. Stephanie Grayson's video production classes also do excellent work. Basic video production knowledge and skills explored in projects like Straub Elementary school's Morning Show are further developed into sophisticated productions that integrate curriculum with technology and demonstrate student mastery of communication tools and methods.

Students in the Video Production/Broadcast Journalism program at MCHS learn television production techniques involved in both studio and field production. They gain hands-on experience enabling them to learn various skills such as editing, camera composition, lighting, and scripting. Students in the MCHS video program consist of 10th-12th graders. Here are some of the projects the students are involved in throughout the school year:

  • A weekly, 20-30 minute MCTV news show for students and staff. All students are involved in writing the news stories for each new show and are assigned a specific category such as sports, local news, school news, etc. Each student is then assigned a specific job when the actual production begins, such as camera operator, news anchor, editor teleprompter operator, etc. Students also create commercials, PSAs, special reports, etc. that are included in the final news show production. Advanced students use Final Cut Pro editing software and beginning students utilize Apple iMovie editing software.
  • Recording of various sporting events and creation of highlight videos at the end of the season
  • Recording of various activities for teachers in their classrooms
  • Recording of guest speakers at school assemblies
  • Creation of commercials for local businesses that are aired on local cable television
Here's a dramatic public service announcement (PSA) video on texting and driving made by Ms. Grayson's video production students.

Down the hall from Ms. Grayson's video/multimedia classes, Ms. Roberts' Family and Consumer Science classes use Apple iPads to produce classroom multimedia projects that they present to the class via Ms. Roberts' pc and video projector.
On the way to Ms. Roberts' room, I saw some music students using various multimedia tools while waiting to perform: iPads, a digital camera, a smart phone —  each student was rapt in attention to a device.

I enjoyed visiting Mason County Schools, where I saw multimedia technology effectively integrated with curriculum in a fun and effective way for early learners to high schoolers.

Share | By Jeff Gray, KET at 3:39 pm | Permalink | No Comments | Add a New Comment   Posted in featured schools, news programs, projects, school video, video production

Sisters Produce Video and Art Projects at Monticello Ind. High

Thursday, March 1st, 2012 by Jeff Gray, KET

Monticello Independent High School's Monica and Erica Withers, shown here with Superintendent Gary Abbott, are charming and talented twin sisters who have worked well together to produce many art and video projects about themselves and their community. They've submitted many of their video productions to the KET School Video Project website for sharing Kentucky student videos, and were award winners at the 2012 Somerset Community College Winter Shorts Film Festival: Erica won first place in the Teen category for Scorpion and the Fox; Monica and Erica won a trophy for outstanding work in documentaries; and they both also received an award for special effects for their video, Lucky Number 2, a video about a wizard's magic wand – a pencil.

From excellent documentaries and feature stories about the nearby Mill Springs Civil War Battlefield, the Monticello Hope Center, the historic Mill Springs Water Wheel, and the Wayne County Historical Society, to works on making art in various media (pencil, paint, clay, wire, paper), the sisters are a two-person production team, planning, acting-in, recording, and editing their works, which include video animations and art video projects on subjects such as drawing and sculpting, along with personal observations of things like the effects of  shadows on water, and the joys of plein-air (outdoor) painting. They occasionally use the fact that they are identical twins to playful effect in their videos, suggesting that one person is actually in two places at once. See more examples of their works at the KET School Video Project, where all Kentucky public and private schools are welcome to share their student-produced videos.

I met the Withers students while visiting their father, Tim Withers, an art and video teacher at Wayne County High School. Tim is a creative and engaged teacher – recently made Wayne County "Teacher of the Year" –  who also mentors his daughters in art and video production. Tim will be presenting on making props and costumes for video production at our next KET Multimedia PD Days event for educators, July 10 and 11 at KET, Lexington.

We look forward to seeing more from Monica and Erica, who seem to be well on their way to a lifetime of expressive multimedia creation.

Share | By Jeff Gray, KET at 6:00 pm | Permalink | 1 Comment   Posted in featured schools, projects, school video, video production

Wayne County Schools: A Lot Going On in a Lovely Place

Friday, February 17th, 2012 by Jeff Gray, KET

Wayne County Schools, near Lake Cumberland in Monticello, Kentucky, has a lot going on in a beautiful and historical setting. Nearby is the Mill Springs Civil War Battlefield Visitor Center & Museum, and the Mill Springs Park that boasts an 1817 grist mill with the world's largest overshot waterwheel!

Art and Video teacher, Tim Withers, one of the most avid users of the KET School Video Project's student video sharing website, invited me to visit and see for myself. After meeting the caring and efficient Superintendent, John Dalton, Tim and Linda Jones, district public relations officer, showed me around the closely-knit campus of schools: I met Wayne County High's innovative Principal, Brian Dishman, then observed Tim's art and technology classes making video projects which included animation and greenscreen effects, as well as student-made costumes and props. I also met Library Media Specialist Carol Ford in her well-appointed library-pc area, and the folks who run the very impressive Wayne County IT service — all as seen in this Animoto slide-video...

For those who cannot view Flash elements in this web page, here's a link to the video slideshow about Wayne County High at Animoto.com.

Tim Withers' art and video production students have made many costumes and props for video projects. Here's an example, "Arthur and the Red Wizard," that Tim uploaded to the KET School Video Project. A video based on elements of the Arthurian legend studied in English classes, Tim's students did a great job of presenting a story in a convincing way. Check-out the actors' impressive accents and delivery! Kentucky schools, please upload examples of your videos and share what projects your students are making!

pic of swordfight Tim will be presenting a session on making costumes and props for video productions at the next KET Multimedia PD Days event for Kentucky educators, July 10 and 11, 2012. Join us and see how to make your own costumes and props for student video productions using cut-and-painted foam sheeting, and free online paper model patterns for printing and assembling using the Pepakura program.

Another excellent example Wayne County High's student video production is
"The Calendar," made as a Spanish language learning class project. In the video, a mysterious stone calendar on the teachers desk draws students to it. When one of the students touches the object it glows and suddenly all of the students in the room have been transported to another dimension. To make matters even stranger, they all now speak Spanish. The students must work together to overcome an invisible wall that is closing in on them from all sides. Their video shows excellent integration of technology with the foreign language curriculum!

Through good planning and use of grants by Superintendent Dalton and his staff, Wayne County Schools has a very impressive campus-wide IT network and V-Brick video distribution system, run by the friendly and talented Jeremy Massengale, Doug Smith, and Valerie Hutchinson, which includes campus-wide wireless connectivity. I was told parents and caregivers use it for checking portable devices from the bleachers during school events!

Thanks to Superintendent John Dalton, Tim Withers, Linda Jones, and their helpful students for the enjoyable tour of the very impressive Wayne County High and its district campus.

Share | By Jeff Gray, KET at 6:52 pm | Permalink | 3 Comments   Posted in featured schools, projects, school video

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