School TV news

Blog 4—Dedicated. Determined. Dependable??? Reporting Live from the Campus

By Team 5 Contributing Writer Sarita R. McGhee

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have live action school news on every school campus and students available to actually report on it 24/7 with a live feed? Just picture it—it could range from being awe-inspiring showing typically unnoticed acts of kindness to being a disaster in the making catching someone red-handed doing something sneaky. And in the most ideal cases, we would have a student live on the scene with the bud in their ear, a microphone and a camera to report straight to us about the goings-on. I think it would inspire budding career aspirations for a great deal of future television reporters and news journalists. But for now, we do have the benefit of having a school community team that tackles the massive and steadfast task of reporting the school news—just the facts and nothing but the facts, please!  

Usually this team consists of a leading teacher, paraprofessional or Media Specialist designated to supervise and oversee the production, and then the student team members who make up the squad who report the information, ranging from morning and afternoon announcements to acknowledgement of award recipients, leading the daily Pledge of Allegiance, Moment of Silence, the Word of the Day with its definition and even the lunch specials to look forward to for the day—yum! At Lovejoy High School, in Hampton Georgia, our student team reports on these specific things as well as including an inspirational quote for the day. There is a pep team for the morning announcements of about three students who are usually lead by select members of the chorus coming on the PA system in order to start the day off with a few lines from a song that they are current practicing on with an occasional solo spotlighting a good healthy voice. A good way to start the morning off.

Our SGA president, Lauren Cush, leads our announcements and she was chosen clearly because of her talent with the diction and tone of her voice, which is as smooth as butter. She can read the phone book and make it sound interesting! I always rave to her about how talented she is. That voice is a gift. She leads a team of announcers who are certainly dedicated, determined and very dependable because they are consistent in their delivery and it sets a very reliable tone. One of our male ROTC leading cadets conducts the morning pledge, then we have another SGA female student who will report on our Word of the Day, its definition, antonym and synonym, and also use it in a sentence. The Word of the Day is set as a reminder during the afternoon announcements and the definition and such are reiterated. The team in the afternoon consists of about four or five students and there are typical more announcements from teachers, coaches and other staff members in the afternoon. Any special announcements about upcoming important testing sessions or assembly events are often including to remind students of what to expect the following day in the building. Also, scores from games that happened the previous afternoon and special congratulations for certain MVPs is a huge deal in the Lovejoy High School. Students readily shush each other anticipating that part.  

Our school news, which is overseen by the English Department Head, is only delivered in the form of announcements, there is no visual presentation. Teachers and Coaches must turn in their announcement wishes into a drop box before the end of each day in order to ensure that there is enough time to have it included in the upcoming announcements. Students who wish to participate in the announcements only get one chance per school year to audition and being selected is serious business.

I have worked at schools in Alabama in the past that had the benefit of Channel One in the morning at the same exact time every day, and the televisions were programmed to turn on automatically when it started up. This was an excellent way to start the day, beneficial and kept the students well-informed as well as captured and held their attention. Channel One was an effortless way to call students to attention without having to say anything and the interesting news reports expanded beyond just our school. They were interested topics that were of relevance to the students and to teenagers everywhere. In those schools, our normal morning announcements with the pledge would follow. I miss Channel One! Very innovative and impressive!

To me, it would be ideal to have a situation where a daily morning news broadcast could be created that reported the events of the school and announcements that would offer a live video feed to each and every classroom. As a Media Specialist that is something that I would love to be able to organize and offer if technology capabilities at my future school location will allow. It would make me nervous though because as students become accustom to it and learn to look forward to it, I have to hope that our connection to technology is always reliable, daily, and we all know how sometimes technology can be very…temperamental. While audio-visual technology can allow for the creation of some wonderful and inventive things, it is fragile and sometimes can make you feel as though it requires big, neon Professional-Use Only sign. One missing cord or one button go unattended and things go awry very quickly. Yikes!

Showing something that is prerecorded is always a fool-proof way to reduce those kind of fears, and some schools do offer this method, however, news that is live is always better because it is happening “in the now” and the most up-to-date and that’s what adds the intrigue. I can imagine that the students who are reporting would be very excited about reporting to their school community live as well, and the live feature is a part of the fascination of watching! Anything can happen—from an interesting on-camera blooper, a foot-fumbling trip that nears a goofy fall, or even a good tongue-twisting blurb.

There is almost nothing more interesting and relatable on the news than kids reporting the news to other kids who are watching. While it may seem like a very small and brief part of the day, it is imperative, humorous, quite memorable and highly-anticipated, if delivered the right way. I think students find it to be very captivating and there is a competitive group of future Mass Communications majors, future Journalists, future radio/TV hosts and future Action News reporters who all want that swift chance to shine in the spotlight.  

Blog 2: MC Web Pages - Started by Amanda Hollomon

When designing any web page, it feels like it should be common sense to have parameters and guidelines to follow in order to make your web page be successful, effective, and informative.  However, the problem is that, as most, of us know, people are lacking common sense.  When reading the AASL article “Building Websites That Work For Your Media Center”, it lists some basic things that we should all keep in mind.  Choose your target audience wisely.  Patrons utilizing the media center website should be able to flow through the site easily without having to have a college degree as toddlers.  Create different sections of your media center that reflect the target audience, for example, a children’s section in colorful backgrounds and images relevant to their age.  Also, displaying your information in an outline format, indenting information under headings, and keeping paragraphs short in length.  Fonts are a huge pet peeve of mine.  Granted I have had glasses since I was three years old, but I cannot stand to look at a website and struggling to make out what the words are saying.  I am not so old and blind that I need basic block fonts but I do want to see a font on the screen that I can easily read at a glance and not have to spend time looking at.  Chances are, if I have to spend time trying to read the words, I am changing websites immediately.

                Web 2.0 tools are a huge benefit to schools today whether in the classroom, home, or in the media center.  I wish my school incorporated more and allowed teachers to actually use them, but until then all I can do is dream about them.  Are plain old webpages outdated?  Of course they are, and it is does not take a lot of effort to spruce them up to this decade to make them more appealing.  The more appealing the page, the more people will visit the page.  This is crucial for the media center.  Some people have a negative opinion of media centers thinking that they are for nerds only.  With the proper appeal that stigma can be changed to create an atmosphere of modern form and functionality.  I do not believe that we should do away with the media center web page and turn it into a wiki or a blog.  I think that these features could be included but not replace the old system.  For one reason, all library patrons are not in their teens and twenties.  This goes back to determining your target audience.  Keep things modern and current while also keeping a link to a previous simpler form for everyone to be able to use.

Technology Terror

Technology Terror

Does the thought of unknown technology make you nervous?  It does me.  As embarrassing as it is for me to admit, technology isn’t one of my strong points.  I realize the importance of technology and I’m willing to learn, but there is SO much I don’t know.  The mere word “technology” can make me reach for paper bag before the hyperventilation begins!  My tech savvy friend, has assured me countless times that I “can’t tear it up,” but my mind plays over a scene of complete demolition much like that of a roadrunner trap “skillfully” set by a coyote. 

Beginning the SLM certification, has pushed me beyond my comfort zone and further into the technology realm.  I must admit, I’m loving learning more technology and I’m finding ways to incorporate it into the classroom.  Wikis have become, without a doubt, one of my favorites. 

Educause Learning Initiative (www.educause.edu/eli) outlines seven things a user needs to know about wikis.  To begin, “a wiki is a Web page that can be viewed and modified by anybody with a Web browser and access to the Internet.”  Through the creation of a wiki, visitors can make changes to the content of the site.  While this has the potential for problem in that users can accidently (or purposefully) delete content entered by other users or insert incorrect content to the site.  Despite the potential for problem, wikis still promote a sense of collaboration and teamwork.  Through wikis, users can add sounds, movies, pictures, and links as well as text.  Users can also use wikis to create presentations and digital stories.

It is really simple to create a Wiki.  As a UWG student, we have access to a wiki account, but users can also go to www.wikispaces.com to create an account.  It’s simple to create an account by following the steps on the website.

In an article by the Center for Teaching by Vanderbilt University, wikis are explained as “a collaborative tool that allows students to contribute to and modify one or more pages of course related materials.”  That is exactly how I first encountered Wikis.  When taking the Information Resources class we had a group assignment to create a Wiki.  After I overcame my apprehension, I found myself hooked.  For the purposes of the class, groups created wikis to be used as a resource for teaching the standards.  It was an amazing experience.  After our team settled on the standard and divided the workload, I found myself totally engrossed.  One group member volunteered to create the wiki and invited the remaining members of our group to join.  Once we joined we were able to go in and add pages to let the creativity begin.  We each had our own page to create, in addition to a title page and a bibliography/resource page in which we collaborated.  In creating the wiki, we were able to go in a make modifications and additions to the various pages making collaboration easy.  The further into the project I got -- collecting and compiling printed, online, and video sources -- made my head spin with the possibilities for future wikis. 

The experience with wiki in Information Resources led me to create another Wiki in my Instructional Design class.  For this class I had the assignment of creating a professional development training for teachers.  I turned to wiki for its simplicity and user friendliness to create a training module on how to use Kidblog.  This time, I was much more comfortable and created the module in its entirety independently.  Because of my familiarity from the previous assignment I was much more proficient – and because I was then the facilitator of the page I had more freedom to make changes to the pages design and layout which made me even more excited.  Without a doubt, these assignments let me catch a glimpse of the potential wikis have in the field of education. 

Now my teaching partner and I are collaborating on creating wikis for our second graders.  We want to teach our students how to gather research, but are apprehensive about what they may encounter if allowed to search independently.  We have filtering to keep out the inappropriate content, but we all know that occasionally things do find their way through.  Plus, our students are so young it’s hard for them to determine if they are looking at a reliable source.  That’s where we are putting wikis to use.  We are in the process of creating wikis for our science and social studies standards that will allow our students to explore appropriate resources that will be beneficial in helping them in learning about the standard and the research process.  Our current wiki is for the solar system and features a page for the sun and each of the planets.  The students will be able to go in and explore the sites we have chosen for them and they will feel like accomplished researchers.  Students could continue their research at home by accessing the wikis at home – giving parents insight to what is being studied at school.

This is a thought I want to keep in mind for when I become a media specialist.  I feel teachers would greatly appreciate being able to have wikis on different standards to use as a resource.  It would be great to have the teachers collaborate with the media specialist and add materials that are appropriate for the standards for everyone to use.

I’ve played with the idea of having my students create and collaborate on a wiki.  I believe it can be done, but with training and practice, and would be enjoyed by the students. The biggest obstacle for us to face – once the process has been taught – is the possibility of students accidently erasing the work of another student.  I don’t think my students would purposely delete another’s work, but accidents do happen – especially at this age.

In addition to having students and teachers involved with wikis for student instruction, wikis also have great potential for teacher training.  Just as I created the wiki for instructional design on how to use Kidblog, training sessions could be created for teachers on different topics of interest.  The potential for wikis in education seem to be limitless.

In my research on Wikis, I found lots of ideas and suggestions for using wikis in the classroom.  For those looking for ways to incorporate wikis in the classroom, www.TeachersFirst.com has lots of great ideas.  It’s a great resource I’d recommend for educators.

·         An annotated virtual library: listings and commentary on independent reading students have done throughout the year

·         Collaborative book reviews or author studies

·         An elementary class “encyclopedia” on a special topic, such as explorers or state history – to be continued and added to each year!

·         A virtual tour of your school as you study “our community” in elementary grades

·         A travelogue from a field trip or NON- field trip that the class would have liked to take as a culmination of a unit of study: Our (non) trip to the Capital and what we (wish) we saw.

·         Detailed and illustrated descriptions of scientific or governmental processes: how a bill becomes a law, how mountains form, etc.
A wiki “fan club” for you favorite author(s).

·         Family Twaditionwiki- elementary students share their family’s ways of preparing Thanksgiving dinner or celebrating birthdays (anonymously, of course) and compare them to practices in other cultures they read and learn about.

·         A Where is Wanda wiki: a wiki version of the ever-favorite Flat Stanley project. Have each Wanda host post on the wiki, including the picture they take with Wanda during her visit. Even better: keep an ongoing Google Earth placemarker file to add geographic visuals to Wanda’s wonderful wanderings as a link in the wiki. WOW! Where in the world IS Wiki Wanda?

·         A mock-debate between candidates, in wiki form (composed entirely based on research students have done on the candidate positions).

·         A collaborative project with students in another location or all over the world: A day in the life of an American/Japanese/French/Brazilian/Mexican family. (This one would require finding contacts in other locations, of course).

·         A collection of propaganda examples during a propaganda unit.

·         Detailed and illustrated descriptions of governmental processes: how a bill becomes a law, etc.

·         A “fan club” for your favorite president(s) or famous female(s).

·         A virtual tour of your school as you study “our community” in elementary grades.

·         A local history wiki, documenting historical buildings, events, and people within your community. Include interviews with those who can tell about events from the World War II era or the day the mill burned down, etc. Allow adult community members to add their input by signing up for “membership” in the wiki. This project could continue on for years and actually be a service to the community. Perhaps the area historical society would provide some assistance, if you can get them to think beyond the closed stacks of their protected collections!

·         A document-the-veterans wiki for those in your community who served in the military. Interview them and photograph them, including both their accounts and your students’ documentation and personal reflections on the interviews.

·         A travel brochure wiki: use wikis to “advertise” for different literary, historical, or cultural locations and time periods: Dickens’ London, fourteenth century in Italy in Verona and Mantua (Romeo and Juliet), The Oklahoma Territory, The Yukon during the Gold Rush, Ex-patriot Paris in the Twenties, etc.

·         A continuing story in which your class adds sentence using new vocabulary words and writes and adventure story in collaboration with the entire class. They will NEVER forget the meaning of the words as they read and re-read their story each time they visit to add. The story can be a single version or branch off into multiple versions and endings.

·         A collection of mythological allusions found in “real life” while studying Greek/Roman mythology: Ex. Mercury cars- why are they so named?

·         An online writer’s workshop or poetry workshop with suggested revisions from classmates. Start with drafts and collaborate. Make sure students use the notes tab to explain why they make changes.

·         Summary and discussion of a scene of a play, a poem, or even chapter by chapter of a novel, with groups taking responsibility for different portions

·         Literary analysis of actual text on the wiki- with links to explanations of literary devices, a glossary to explain vocabulary, etc. Try it with a scene from Shakespeare or a sonnet! Each student or group could be responsible for a portion, then ALL can edit and revise to improve the collaborative project. You will be amazed how much they will find and argue.

·         Collaborative book reviews or author studies

·         Creative projects, such as a script for a Shakespeare scene reset in the 21st century

·         A travel brochure wiki- use wikis to “advertise” for different literary, historical, or cultural locations and time periods: Dickens’ London, fourteenth century in Italy in Verona and Mantua (Romeo and Juliet), The Oklahoma Territory, The Yukon during the Gold Rush, Expatriate Paris in the Twenties, etc.

·         Character resume wiki: have literature classes create a resume wikis for characters in a novel or play you are reading. Both creativity and documented evidence from the literature are required (use notes to indicate the evidence from the text).

Resources

Seven things you should know about wikis. (2005). Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7004.pdf.

Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers. (2015). Retrieved from www.teachersfirst.com by The Source for Learning, Inc.

Wikis. (2015). Retrieved from http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/wikis/ by the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University.

Wikispaces (2015) retrieved from www.wikispaces.com by Tangient LLC.

There's Something Cheeky About Those Wikis

There’s Something Cheeky About Those Wikis

It probably would be one of the quickest and most beneficial ways to convey interactive information that a Media Specialist can offer as well as a helpful resource that will be perhaps even more highly-anticipated for regular use by teachers and students, and simply put—it’s a Wiki.

So, what is the “word” with Wiki? That’s the first question that instantly comes to mind when you think about the word itself, what it means and what it can possibly do. Well, it’s something quite easy to use, incorporate, contribute to and understand, so I’m glad you asked! At its best, a Wiki is an “open-ended” website page that allows its invited contributors to create, collaborate and edit exchanged and shared ideas to post for others to view, share and enjoy. You can expressive yourself, your knowledge and opinion, explore others’ perspectives and even pool resources and join forces about ideas. It can include graphics and pictures as well. It’s almost like a Facebook page for your ideas, specific concepts and teamwork efforts and partnership presentations, and much like Facebook, it gives us a place to let what’s on our minds come to life! Think of it as a safe and designated place where knowledge can go to grow and be spread to others.

In the education setting of today—where information is most valued when it’s instant, where new ideas are in such high demand, and where technology moves faster than two shakes of a lamb’s tail—putting the spotlight on Wiki’s literally has virtual perfect timing. Furthermore, in the world of collaborative planning, collaborative learning and collaborative teaching, something that everybody can contribute to is certainly ideal for the exchange of cooperative ideas.

Having a school community Wiki to share is fast, accessible, convenient, exciting and also smart!

Wikis started making their first appearances around the mid-1990’s, and have been used for effective collaboration with easy effort ever since. There’s a wide range of ways it can be effective too. You can have a meeting with a Wiki page and allow a chance for group members to comment and edit on the same notes as well as add ideas instantly and right in the moment, which encourages more creative ideas and increases communication and understanding since the ability to explain and elaborate is so immediate. Conference calls can take place while sharing a Wiki and exchanging vital data, pictures and charts, and the Wiki is also an effective presentation tool. It is great for corporate work, but also for students and teachers alike and it is a modern way to update and share valuable information.

With a Wiki, you must be proactive to remain in the loop and up-to-date, and although Wiki is open to being edited and commented on by users, it is monitored to make sure that the content and materials posted are not inappropriate. Misuse is only an extremely small threat, because fortunately Wiki is designed as to only be edited by “authorized members” of a particular page. This is great, but an added bonus is that misuse is easy to track to the guilty individual. This keeps things professional and appropriate for teaching and learning, which is why it is such a good resource.

From an instructional technology perspective, wikis allow faculty and students to engage in collaborative activities that might not be possible in a classroom (Educause, 2005). Their flexibility will encourage broader adoption—by both students and faculty. The possibilities are only limited by one’s imagination and time (Educause, 2005). But more than that, Wikis encourage critical thinking from our students because everybody knows that more reflection goes into thoughts and ideas that will be published, accessible and shared publicly. In turn, they will edit better and think deeper, the cooperative exchange with others will have more direction and intent. 

The wonders of promises in the world of the Wikis are grand and widespread. It is a resource that can change the game in education because it is something that can be valuable to everyone on so many different levels. From teacher to student (for class blogs, class notes), student to student in a group setting, or other school community staff like Media Specialist to teacher, or Media Specialist communicating to students, the links are endless and beneficial. It is evident that technology accents like this can help us produce innovations that make learning better, faster and easier! With the shortcomings being so few, Wiki will be around to advance and enhance the educational experience for countless years to come.

7 Things You Should Know About Wikis, Educause Learning Initiative Advancing Learning Through IT Innovation, www.educause.edu January 2005.

Team 5 Contributing Author Sarita McGhee