Middle School Teacher Keeps His School’s Newscast Alive Remotely
Happy Valley Middle School’s media arts teacher Steve Oliver was quick to act when his school switched to the online model during the COVID-19 crisis. He runs the school newscast to help lift the spirits of his school’s community. With the help of teachers, he has successfully increased viewership, engaged fellow teachers and students, and provided a therapeutic outlet for himself and others. It is not too often that middle schools offer a media arts program, let alone have a newscast. We spoke with Steve about his unique middle school newscast.
Tell us about your newscast.
I teach a media arts class that is primarily 6th graders, but 7th and 8th graders can also take it, because it is the introductory class before you can take my two advanced classes. We have a photography and yearbook class, then we also have another class called Heron TV which is our video production class that produces the show. That is an every-other-day class. I have two sections of kids that work on it.
Normally, I have teams of five students that work all semester to make their episodes. They do lots of different bits, like a joke of the day, a random fact of the episode, and they try to get some interviews with people. We have a small studio at the school where they record two anchors that host the show. We normally do it way in advance in order to have quiet time in the class where they can sit down and do it. We push episodes out each week, and then our administrators will have a more current message and we plug that in. That was the normal model.
How have you built an audience for your show?
We have a student population of about 1,100 students. We are a pretty large middle school. It used to be that teachers would just show [our newscast] during the first period. I also put it on YouTube so parents are able to see it. We have a school Facebook Page so each week, I post an episode to Facebook as well. We also have a public access channel that I share with my districts. There are some other news shows from other middle schools. I was at the gym with my son a couple of months ago now, and he was like, “Dad, you are on TV!” Those get seen by a few people.
Whose idea was it to keep the newscast going once school closed?
When school got canceled, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, so I just went home. I grabbed a couple of cameras, because I figured I might need to do something. Once the school realized that we were going to do the online model, my administrator contacted me and wanted me to keep the show going. The problem is that I don’t have a lot of contact with my students - just with Google Classroom. I can post, “Hey, please record a video,” but I don’t necessarily have two-way communication. Our district doesn’t allow for video chatting with our students, which I think is pretty good. It is nice for teachers because it doesn’t give us this expectation that we have to be online all the time. For me, it worked out really well. I just post my lessons as a video.
How are you putting together the online newscast?
As a video teacher, it is pretty easy to put those video lessons together. I then post those in Google Classroom and just have assignments for it. The first two episodes have been made by me and other teachers. I put out a call to everyone saying, “Who is willing to film on their cellphones?” I gave them access to a folder in Google Drive to upload the footage, and we keep it as organized as possible. We actually do Google Hangouts for some of it and record it that way. The video quality is not really all that good but it works in pieces. I’ll film some sections with my camera.
I have had students contact me about wanting to do pieces. I had a student film a couple of segments the other day. I am actually rolling out an assignment right now; we are doing a new section for the show called Heron Shoutouts where students can just say “Hi” to a friend or thank a teacher. I am making it an assignment for all 250 of my students. They record video, upload it to their Google Drive and then hand it in to the Classroom.
What kind of editing software are you using?
The problem is that not everyone has access to video editing software. At school, we use Mac computers and Final Cut Pro. I would say only about 20% of my students might have a Mac at home, maybe less. Of that, only about 1 or 2 kids use Final Cut. The same software that I have been teaching isn’t even accessible. A couple of students have reached out to me saying that Clipchamp is good software. We experimented with Wevideo, but it's a little wonky. I haven’t ever worried about kids editing from home until now. Now it’s all we have.
Have you encountered any other roadblocks?
It is a lot more work doing it from home. Normally, at this point in time of the semester, my kids are on autopilot. It is such a front-heavy class to teach all the skills. Then, it's really just spinning plates. Especially with middle school kids. If I had a high school group, I would trust them a lot more. Some middle schoolers I can trust to go off to do whatever they want, but some definitely not. You need quiet for video, you need a lot of collaboration. It is always a bit of a circus teaching that class. Doing it from home is a new approach.
How are you coming up with story ideas?
Right now, we have standard sections of the show that we call staples. That way kids can always be working on something. Every single episode has a joke of the day, a random fact, and a joke of the week. Generally, we do “Ask a Heron” and things like that. Some of those were already made by my beginner students. Those were all ones that were pre-made at school. The problem is, all the other things were made by my teams that were planning on creating episodes, and their content is still on their computers in the process of being edited. It's never going to see the light of day. A lot of our content right now is just teacher driven, bu it still falls in the same categories.For our next episode, we have an episode with a student who has a YouTube channel called Tsunami Skateboarding. He put a video out of his first six months of riding a skateboard: from being a complete beginner to actually being pretty good. He has at least 100k subscribers and about 500k views. I saw his video and commented on it, so he sent me some footage. We are going to feature him and a bunch of teachers who are also going to be riding their skateboards.
Next week's theme is all about Newton's first law. We have lots of different things around that. We are doing another section called “Woah, That's Science” with the speed of a sneeze. We try to connect it all together there. The May 4 episode is going to be exciting, because when that happens, we make it Star Wars themed. We are going to have tons of kids submit content for that. At the early stage, it is all about begging kids to give me things, because I cannot go find them. I have to cast a wide net and hope they bring some things back. It has been really freeing since we are no longer at school, because there is no longer a time limit. I used to have to keep it under 10 minutes. People would send me things, and they would instantly hit the cutting room floor. Now, it is like “Make it as long as you want, Steve.”
How are your students engaging with the content you are creating?
The students are engaged. I don’t really know, because I turn comments off. A couple of years ago, I left the comments on thinking I wanted engagement. So many kids are just not appropriate with it, and there’s a lot of management.
Teachers seem to be enjoying it. I am getting a lot of feedback from them. I’m getting kids to contribute, so that is a good sign. We normally have 250 views after a couple of weeks of just sitting there. Now, on the first day, we will get about 700 views an episode.