WHS morning broadcast goes viral
Woodbury High School recently began offering live video feeds of its morning announcements in its classrooms. And in case you missed it, you can watch them on the World Wide Web.By: Amber Kispert-Smith, Woodbury Bulletin
- Good morning Woodbury High
Woodbury High School recently began offering live video feeds of its morning announcements in its classrooms. And in case you missed it, you can watch them on the World Wide Web.
Previously, the school’s morning announcements were delivered over loud speaker. Now they are being broadcast to the classroom via video and on YouTube a short while later.
The first video school announcements aired live and later on YouTube last month.
“What I’ve heard from staff members is that for the first time they are actually paying attention to announcements,” WHS media specialist Brian Peters said. “Before they would just tune everything out.”
The idea behind bringing the morning announcements into the video age developed after the morning announcements on the intercom had to be canceled for a few weeks because of academic testing.
“We didn’t want to interrupt the flow of testing and disrupt the students,” Peters said. “So we started to think about presenting them in a different way.”
The morning announcements are broadcast daily at 10 a.m. on Channel 61 — which is only available in the school.
“The kids were pretty excited and ran with it,” Peters said.
While discussing the idea of going to the video announcements, Peters suggested that they put the morning announcements on YouTube so that teachers could show them whenever they want without disrupting their classes.
Peters said putting the announcements on YouTube will also give parents a chance to see the announcements, instead of just reading the written ones.
“It gives an opportunity for parents to see what’s going on and see the students’ personalities come out,” he said.
A light-hearted news program each day
The Channel 61 News, as it is called, has students taking on the roles of camera person, controlling the teleprompter and five anchor people who alternate turns in front of the camera. The news program is five minutes in length.
The video broadcasts are almost entirely student run, from camera technicians to on-air anchors.
WHS senior Matt Stevenson, who anchored the first video broadcast, said the upgraded morning announcements help engage students in activities going on in the school.
To keep the students entertained, and so that the anchor’s aren’t just reading off of a script, they sometimes dress up, — such as in Vikings colors or in the Spirit Week themes — have special guests and have light hearted banter back and forth between the anchors.
Although the video announcements are in their infancy, Peters said staff have discussed incorporating the video announcements into class curriculum with a television broadcast unit or class.
If the video announcements prove to have staying power, Peters said they are hoping to have a contest among students to name the news program so that it has more of an identity.
“It’s a way of doing something where you can give ownership to the students,” he said. “We’re able to put the show on without too many troubles at this point, but I hope it blossoms into something bigger.”
Tags: daily updates, woodbury high school, high schools, morning announcements, education
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