Keeping Track of Camera Gear for Your Video Classes
During my first year of teaching, I sent a camera back to Sony for repair. When it was shipped back to the school, it was delivered to the main office. The principal called me to let me know it had arrived. I said I would send a student down to pick it up and bring it back to the studio. The principal replied, “Are you sure you trust a student to do that?” True story.
In this article, I will share how we manage the scheduling and tracking of all that expensive equipment in our labs that goes out of the building on location with teenagers.
I have gone through two major stages of “supply and demand” when it comes to student vs. equipment ratio. In the early years of teaching, we grew at a pretty steady pace, and video equipment was very expensive. The low hanging fruit in the professional video camera world was at a minimum of $6,000, and that might not even include a lens. In those early years, we only had two cameras available for several classes of students. Less equipment means larger workgroups and limited time filming so that other groups have equal time with the gear.
Fast forward twenty years, and that same amount of money will get you a half dozen cameras with superior quality to those expensive and very heavy SD cams. Having a fleet of cameras might mean smaller groups with extended checkout times, but now there is a whole lot more for you to manage.
Scheduling and tracking are essential for any size teaching program because we need to be good stewards of what we have been entrusted with by the school, taxpayers, and grant organizations. We all know that when equipment gets lost, stolen, or broken that getting it replaced is not always easy.
A Workflow For Scheduling and Tracking Gear
We have tried lots of different methods to schedule and track equipment over the years. The best approach we have found for our program is by using shared Google Calendars. It starts whenever a new set of gear arrives, and it gets assigned an ID number.
We keep it simple. Panasonic cameras might be Pani-1, Pani-2, or our Canon cameras might be DSLR-1, DSLR-2, etc. This is repeated for tripods, light kits, shotgun mics, and other support equipment. The higher the level of the class, the more gear is typically provided for their project needs. Each item already has an asset tag from the school district, so we use a spreadsheet to record all of the information from our simple ID name to the serial number.
A label maker is great for printing out the simple ID name for each item. The equipment bags are typically given a heavy-duty plastic luggage tag with a window that allows us to insert a card that includes the ID name and our school contact information. There have been a few occasions where that contact information had come in handy when a student got separated from the gear at an event. Yes, it's embarrassing to get that call from an athletic director at your rival school about a camera kit found after a sporting event, but it’s also a huge relief to get it back.
Once you have the ID system in place, you can track your gear as it goes through the scheduling process. Using Google Google Calendar, create a new Calendar typically found on your screen’s left side under My Calendars. Give it a name for the group such as Period 1, Juniors, Seniors, etc. We use words like “VP” for Video Production Classes, and “News” for the Broadcast Journalism classes.
Each calendar you create has a sharable link you can grab and email students. Ask them to join the calendar or calendars specific to them. These new calendars will show up on the left under “Other Calendars.” Once a project is assigned, allow them to start scheduling cameras and other gear for check out. If the class has five cameras available to them, they know that once DSLR 5 is on the schedule for Monday, they will need to look for another day to shoot.
PRO-TIP: Have them select the full-day option instead of a specific time, so the event they create gets fully highlighted in the calendar, making it easy to see at a glance. If you have a small number of cameras and students share gear between groups on the same day, then you might want to have them set up specific time slots.
We keep an old spare computer in the equipment with a large monitor so students can see the calendars when they are grabbing their gear at the end of the day. Most of them already have the calendar on their phones, but it’s still a friendly visual reminder to take the camera they initially checked out. We also keep a paper log they have to sign when they check out and return the gear. If something does come up missing or damaged, we can quickly check their signature and the Google Calendar to see who had the equipment last.
Hopefully, this series provides you with some workflow strategies that make life easier. Maybe this will spark a new idea that you implement in your teaching environment. I would love to hear what workflows you have created, so shoot me an email at tom.wilson@northcantonschools.org, or post it on Stream Semester’s Facebook Group Broadcast Education Professionals. We're all in this together, folks.
Meet the Author, Tom Wilson
Tom Wilson is the coordinator of district media and video-journalism at Hoover High School in North Canton Ohio. You can follow the work of his students on social media @nctvmedia and his unique production vehicle, the Mobile Storyteller Project.