Game Changers drug prevention and education program being piloted in Harrison County, West Virginia | State Journal News
Lake County News,California – Konocti Unified awarded $1.6 million grant for elementary music program
Lessen LAKE, Calif. — A key new federal grant is supplying the Konocti Unified College District the methods it requirements to establish a new new music method for elementary learners.
On Dec. 8, at the very last regular university board meeting of the yr, Katherine Wiley, who teaches and serves as band director at Decrease Lake Significant and the Konocti Training Center, gave the trustees the superior information.
Wiley reported the district has obtained a $1.6 million Aid for Arts Training Method grant from the U.S. Division of Education to provide songs again to the elementary educational institutions.
Konocti Unified acquired a single of 27 grants — eight of them presented to sites in California — awarded via the software this 12 months.
“I’m truly thrilled,” said Wiley, now in her seventh yr with the district.
She stated she hopes the effort will create up a method that is serving the district extended soon after she retires. “I nevertheless have 35 several years,” she quipped, introducing, “I’m tremendous stoked.”
In an interview with Lake County Information, Wiley stated she’s unaware of the district ever obtaining such a large arts-similar grant ahead of.
“It’s a very big offer,” Wiley stated.
She said Konocti Unified’s “On-Ramp” grant is to be dispersed to the district in excess of four years. The plan is to have the new new music program completely ready for the begin of the 2022-23 school year.
“There are four most important targets of our grant,” Wiley reported.
She mentioned those people ambitions are to employ a complete-time elementary new music instructor, present teaching and ongoing guidance for up to 32 arts integration specialists, produce an on the net arts education curriculum that elementary faculty teachers can use through the calendar year and bring in community artists to assistance dietary supplement individuals arts integration lessons.
She reported the district has about 2,000 pupils in grades kindergarten by means of seventh grade, with four elementary schools and one arts training magnet university, Konocti Schooling Heart, or KEC.
An chance occurs
Wiley claimed the grant was introduced to the district’s consideration in the spring by Robert Bullwinkel and Kim Morin of Huge Concept Consulting, a agency that can help educational facilities and communities function jointly to provide higher high-quality arts education to their learners, in accordance to the company’s internet site.
Huge Plan Consulting has been working with Konocti Unified for two yrs, and Wiley reported Bullwinkel thought the grant would be a very good fit for the district.
The grant aims to enable rural districts, which serve at-possibility youth, that want to produce a arduous arts application, “Which is all the things we ended up about,” Wiley mentioned.
Wiley reported the software was owing in April, which gave the district a truly short turnaround time. Even so, Bullwinkel did most of the do the job in producing the grant, with district personnel offering the essential information and facts.
They needed to get letters of aid and present info about the university student human body, such as the fact that 36{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} of the district’s pupils fall below the federal poverty line, with 84{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} qualifying for totally free and lessened lunch, Wiley mentioned.
Wiley reported the relaxation of the grant preparation method provided laying out what the application would seem like and what the district’s qualifications for a successful software would be.
They tied the grant to the English language studying normal, as a lot of of the district’s students study under grade stage. Wiley claimed they imagine rigorous arts instruction enhances looking at scores.
Wiley claimed they observed out in mid-October that they had been given the grant. They are now in the setting up method, which Wiley identified as “very interesting.”
The subsequent measures in creating the method include obtaining input from academics, mom and dad and the neighborhood at huge, she said.
The district will host its first informational meeting on the plan from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 13, in the Carol McClung Meeting Centre at the Konocti Unified College District Place of work, 9430-B Lake St. in Decrease Lake.
Wiley, who is the method supervisor and will be responsible for creating most government selections, explained that as they get started to solidify what the On-Ramp application will glimpse like, the district options to host an extra informational conference and celebration of the arts sometime in late spring.
At that celebration, Wiley reported local community customers will be invited to participate in arts functions when mastering about the possibilities their college students have in the coming school decades.
She explained there isn’t really a date or place set for that function nevertheless, but it will be held someday in the night to enable a lot more local community users to go to.
“After that, we’ll be looking for volunteers to provide on the steering committee,” Wiley reported. “We want that to be a assortment of instructors, assistance team, administrators and group associates.”
Wiley mentioned that the steering committee will consist of about 10 people today who will serve in the course of the size of the grant, be the feed-back team, brainstorm thoughts, be proactive problem solvers and “really make positive this thing takes off.”
She extra, “They’re the foundation.”
Wiley claimed district Superintendent Becky Salato will have a role in earning positive every thing is working effortlessly.
Developing a new program
The music system the district is making will emphasis on the elementary grades for the reason that, amongst KEC and the high faculty, “We have a pretty vivid arts schooling program,” reported Wiley.
KEC is superb for center university degree pupils and the substantial school has a extensive wide variety of lessons, she explained.
Part of the drive for the grant is that Wiley said academics seen inventive students coming into higher college who had been missing foundational skills.
As an case in point, she mentioned they have been seeing tunes college students who haven’t observed a quarter take note and never know what it’s called.
Like lots of university districts, Konocti Unified was impacted by the money impacts of the Good Recession, Wiley reported.
“We had a quite strong elementary music plan right before the recession,” she stated. Then, when cuts to staffing transpired, the elementary tunes teacher placement inevitably went away.
A few of years in the past the district attempted to have an elementary school audio place once again but it didn’t carry on right after the very first two a long time, Wiley mentioned.
Wiley claimed a great deal of that had to do with how the energy was rolled out, with that teacher envisioned to provide all 4 elementary faculties at the very same time and only receiving the probability to see pupils as soon as each individual other 7 days. “It was a quite tricky undertaking that the individual was requested to do.”
The new tunes trainer situation the district needs to create will divide their time involving Burns Valley and Lessen Lake Elementary, and also will emphasis on forming associations, Wiley reported.
She explained that posture is to be funded in element by the grant for the to start with number of yrs, with a motivation from the district to pay back the foundation income when the grant is finished.
There also will be an arts integration component. Wiley stated they can train audio, visual and drama benchmarks whilst even now carrying out what is deemed a additional conventional curriculum. “How to do that however is a tiny challenging,” and not a lot of academics have that arts integration history.
So the enhancement of 32 arts integration experts will consider spot over the summer season. Members in the plan — which Wiley mentioned will be for current teachers and volunteers — will discover how to combine the arts with other topics in a significant way. There also will be a person on website to help teachers in artwork integration.
In envisioning a productive software, Wiley reported they want each individual pupil to enjoy it, and for pupils moving into center faculty to know what they are passionate about and what they want to pursue for electives each at the center and high faculty concentrations.
She reported they want to persuade literacy, and see college students studying and comprehending at better degrees. They feel that arts integration will assistance pupils that experience divided from materials to experience related once again.
They want to see standardized tests scores increase together with a sizeable increase in college students reading at or over grade degree, she said.
Wiley explained they also want the local community to feel additional welcome at faculty internet sites by placing on performances and reveals of college student art operate on a normal basis.
She stated most of the parts of the program should really be together by August, in time for the university yr to start. By that place she expects the elementary tunes instructor ought to be hired.
Neighborhood members are invited to the Jan. 13 meeting to understand far more about the software and how to get concerned.
Electronic mail Elizabeth Larson at This e mail tackle is getting protected from spambots. You require JavaScript enabled to see it.. Stick to her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County Information, @LakeCoNews.
Marin parents say physical education lacking in county program
As with many Marin 9-yr-olds, Elena Ncho-Oguie has extra than sufficient electricity following school to journey her bike, jump on a trampoline or walk close to her Novato neighborhood with her mom Alicia.
What the fourth-grader, who is on the autism spectrum, doesn’t have, is certain in-man or woman bodily schooling coaching that could assistance her learn how to toss a softball, be on a athletics team or dribble a basketball.
Even even though Marin schools are back again to in-man or woman understanding this tumble, Elena has so much only received one particular 30-minute class per week in what is termed adaptive physical instruction — or APE — at her distinctive education course at Edna Maguire Elementary Faculty in Mill Valley. The course is run by the Marin County Business office of Education and learning.
In addition to that staying only fifty percent of what Elena’s individualized educational strategy requires, the 30-moment course is distant on Zoom, not in individual, and is with a trainer from an additional county, Alicia Ncho-Oguie claimed.
“If you can visualize, adaptive actual physical instruction on Zoom,” Ncho-Oguie stated. Mainly because of the absence of in-man or woman speak to, the trainer who calls in on Zoom usually just asks mom and daughter to toss a ball with each other.
“And then she puts on a video that Elena is meant to check out about stretching,” Ncho-Oguie claimed.
Elena is not by itself.
According to the most latest pupil rely, in slide 2020, 3,840 Marin pupils had IEPs — or individualized educational programs — for exclusive instruction, mentioned Jonathan Lenz. He administers the Marin County SELPA — or specific schooling neighborhood strategy area — for the county instruction place of work.
Of all those, Lenz could not say how lots of have APE approvals incorporated in their academic ideas, because the selection was so small “that it may well be viewed as a breach of confidentiality,” Lenz said.
“We — and the California Division of Training — do not publicly report university student info sets that are significantly less than 11,” he said.
In addition, “not all pupils with IEPs obtain APE providers,” Lenz explained.
“APE is recommended by a district when a student has been decided to be not able to participate in general education actual physical training or a modified physical training method,” he reported.
Of the evident handful of Marin families that do have approvals for adaptive bodily training, their small children are possibly having the APE online on Zoom — or not at all, mother and father stated.
“Our loved ones chose to keep on working with his company in this method as there are currently no other possibilities offered which would allow our son to receive all of the minutes agreed to in his IEP every week,” Kentfield mum or dad Jenny Novack mentioned of the on-line courses.
Novack’s son, Phillip, 9, receives two 30-moment physical instruction courses for every 7 days. Both are on Zoom — a single through the faculty working day and the other just one right after school to accommodate the teacher’s occupied program.
“We truly feel that we have no selection,” Novack claimed.
At situation is that Marin has not been equipped to hire any individual to fill the one particular comprehensive-time adaptive physical schooling instructor slot that is accessible, Lenz said.
Since there is not enough demand for each and every Marin faculty district to hire its possess whole time APE expert, the one place is a shared position that is pooled amid the numerous county districts. Some faculty districts could only will need an adaptive actual physical training trainer for two several hours a 7 days, for illustration.
“In buy to deal with this will need for a competent supplier, the districts have partnered to merge their unique APE staffing needs into a person shared place that would serve all of the APE demands inside of the districts collectively,” Lenz said. “Unfortunately, that situation is at this time unfilled. ”
Marin school districts and the county education and learning workplace are aggressively recruiting for the place — but with no luck so far, stated Mary Jane Burke, Marin educational institutions superintendent.
“We have a million openings in a range of positions in distinctive instruction,” Burke explained. “These are specialized positions. We’re undertaking all the things we can to get them stuffed.”
Marin mothers and fathers, in the meantime, worry that their children will skip out on finding out motor techniques and athletics workforce socialization that could support established a foundation for them to take part in lifelong sporting activities and work out routines.
Kira Cordasco of Corte Madera stated her son, Hudson, 11, who is in sixth quality at a county-run course in Fairfax, was intended to receive two 30-minute APE lessons a 7 days. So much this slide, he has been given none.
“They explained they never have a therapist accessible,” Cordasco mentioned. “So it’s been 13 hrs missed.”
Appropriately, Hudson is “not getting the PE that other little ones are getting, and that which is expected by regulation,” Cordasco stated.
“He’s not developing elementary techniques — ball-playing, throwing, motor coordination — lifelong capabilities that he will will need to be in a position to have interaction with his peers,” she claimed.
Cordasco reported she thinks there are several Marin moms and dads who don’t even know their youngsters could be acquiring APE.
“They don’t know they can question for it,” she reported. “I’m advocating for my son, and I’m advocating for all the other kids out there who really should be receiving specialised actual physical training with an adaptive PE therapist.”
All California general public elementary students through sixth quality are meant to get a minimal 200 minutes of physical schooling just about every 10 times. Commencing in seventh grade, students are supposed to get 400 minutes each 10 times.
Even if all the Marin adaptive actual physical education classes took spot as planned, they would nevertheless slide small from what was essential by state regulation — and they nevertheless would only protect a fraction of the complete specific education and learning pupils in the county. Lenz mentioned he had no word on what the point out may possibly do to keep faculty districts accountable if the circumstance in Marin is not settled.
“If the district does not deliver the expected compensatory expert services, the district can be discovered out of compliance,” he reported. “The California Department of Education may have interaction in monitoring functions to make sure the district is compliant.”
Fulbright Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program 2022/23
The Fulbright Educating Excellence and Accomplishment Program (Fulbright TEA) is sponsored by the U.S. Section of State, Bureau of Instructional and Cultural Affairs. The 2023 application will mark the 25th calendar year of the Training Excellence and Accomplishment System (formerly the Teaching Excellence Awards software) and the fifth yr the software will be recognised as the Fulbright Educating Excellence and Achievement Plan. Qualified nations around the world for the Fulbright TEA Software Media Literacy application are Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
Instructors are nominated to take part in the Fulbright TEA Application centered on their academic experience, academic training, leadership and skilled working experience. Final assortment of Fulbright TEA instructors is made by the J. William Fulbright International Scholarship Board (FFSB). The FFSB is an unbiased, presidentially appointed board that has oversight duty for all Fulbright educational exchange systems.
Suitable Instructing DISCIPLINES ARE:
- English or English as a International Language
- Language/Literature of your residence nation
- Foreign Language
- Social Experiments (civics, record, international studies, legislation, etcetera.)
- Media scientific tests, communications, journalism, or associated fields
- Math, Science
- Specific Instruction in the disciplines stated over
ELIGIBILITY Needs
Applicants should:
- Be present secondary university-degree*, full-time lecturers of English, English as a Foreign Language (EFL), the language and literature of your residence nation, social experiments, civics, history, world wide scientific studies, media studies, communications, journalism, regulation, math, science or social scientific studies, such as unique instruction academics in those people subjects at institutions serving mainly a community population
- Have gained at minimum Bachelor’s degree or equal
- Have concluded at least 3 several years of comprehensive-time educating by the begin of the program, with a choice for those who have accomplished at minimum 5 yrs of comprehensive-time teaching
- Reside in the region of citizenship at the time of application and of program participation
- Receive a minimum amount rating of 500 on the paper primarily based TOEFL or 61 on an net dependent TOEFL or an equal English language evaluation (please observe that you do not need to have to acquire the TOEFL take a look at at the time of application – we will arrange having of the test for all semi-finalists)
- Have practical experience or demonstrated curiosity in the field of 21st century media literacy and significant imagining
- Exhibit a dedication to keep on instructing following completion of the software and
- Have submitted a finish software.
* Secondary-level lecturers contain both equally middle and significant college teachers serving college students among somewhere around 12 and 18 decades of age. Instructors accountable for training supplemental grade amounts ought to instruct middle or higher school pupils far more than 50{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} of their do the job time in purchase to be qualified for the program.
The Fulbright TEA Program promotes variety in the classroom and in finding out. The Fulbright TEA Program supports inclusion and strongly encourages lecturers with disabilities to apply.
The Fulbright TEA System is an upper degree university or graduate stage educational software for training instructors. Academic administrators (these as associates or officers of the Ministry of Education and learning) and college administrators who train a lot less than fifty per cent of their time, total-time trainer trainers, college college, private English Language tutors, and teachers from colleges generally serving expatriates are not qualified.
U.S. citizens or permanent people are not qualified to utilize.
Personnel or people of personnel at a U.S. Embassy are not suitable to use. Current IREX staff members and consultants and their quick family associates (spouses, mothers and fathers, young children, and siblings) are not suitable to compete in any IREX-applied grant programs, possibly as people or as the dependable social gathering symbolizing an institutional applicant.
We do not discriminate towards grant applicants for the reason that of race, colour, faith, sex, sexual orientation, age, countrywide origin, incapacity or any other guarded characteristic as proven by U.S. legislation.
Programs NOT Conference THE Earlier mentioned ELIGIBILITY Needs WILL NOT BE FORWARDED TO THE Assortment COMMITTEE.
IREX reserves the appropriate to verify all the information and facts provided in the application. In the event that there is a discrepancy, or data is found to be wrong, the application will immediately be declared invalid and the applicant ineligible.
Plan Elements
Lecturers who are picked to take part in the Fulbright TEA Software will:
- Take part in innovative undergraduate or graduate level classes at a U.S. host university.
- Observe classes, co-instruct, and share their abilities with U.S. colleagues in U.S. secondary universities.
- Engage in an on-line professional studying neighborhood with other contributors to share greatest methods and other elements of host and household country educational techniques and
- Get section in other training and cultural routines even though on plan in the United States.
On returning household, teachers will be envisioned to share the information and expertise obtained on the application with academics and students in their property educational facilities and inside of their communities.
College Coursework:
Weekly Seminars: Teachers will participate in weekly seminars at their host university that includes shows and conversations led by university team, school users, and invited instructional professionals. The tutorial seminars will concentration on new educating methodologies, articles-primarily based instruction, challenge-based mostly learning, infusing thematic matters into curriculum, lesson setting up, and educational technology instruction for academics. Topics of seminars may incorporate recognizing bias/propaganda, stereotypes, and misinformation strategies for improving upon students’ important wondering, analytical, and conversation abilities how media literacy encourages civic engagement / the function of media in democratic societies and fostering cyber protection and electronic citizenship in the classroom.
U.S. School Placements: The application will also contain a practicum of at least 40 hrs with a U.S. spouse teacher of English, social experiments, background, civics, communications, journalism, math, or science in a U.S. secondary college near the host college to actively have interaction participants in the U.S. classroom ecosystem. Cultural enrichment, mentoring, and assist will be delivered to individuals in the course of the program.
On-line Expert Learning Neighborhood: Each Fulbright instructor will take part in a digital neighborhood with other intercontinental educators to collaborate and share most effective procedures about education and learning and management in the taking part countries.
PROVISIONS OF THE FELLOWSHIP
- J-1 visa support
- A pre-departure orientation held in participant’s home country
- Spherical-excursion airfare to and in just the U.S.
- Tutorial system fees
- Housing (normally shared with other system fellows) and meals
- Accident and illness overall health treatment protection (does not cover pre-current problems)
- Transportation to the practicum school (as necessary)
- A every day allowance for incidentals through the college tutorial program
- A expert progress allowance
- A baggage allowance
- A workshop in Washington, D.C. and
- The chance to utilize for alumni little grants for alumni in good standing.
Choice Process AND Criteria
Fulbright TEA Fellows will be chosen by a merit-primarily based open levels of competition centered on eligibility and the criteria beneath. Leading candidates will be interviewed by an interview panel, and have to just take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) or equal English examination, or supply valid success from inside of the earlier calendar year (take a look at date no previously than Could 2021).
Selection Conditions:
- Demonstrated commitment to educating in the industry of secondary education and learning
- Demonstrated management possible
- Expert and instructional encounter and achievements
- Opportunity for developing extensive-expression linkages between U.S. and property nation educational institutions and universities
- Preparedness (like maturity, versatility, and capability to functionality independently) for an intense U.S.-based training application with extremely limited free time for personalized journey or sightseeing
- Willingness and potential to operate and are living collaboratively with intercontinental friends to foster a positive learning community for expert improvement
- Articulated tips for implementing program experience to strengthening secondary education and learning in the property state
- Capacity to specific concepts obviously and successfully
- Oral and penned English language techniques enough to regulate coursework, take part in specialised seminars, and produce displays in U.S. faculties (a least paper-dependent or equivalent TOEFL score of 500 is required for Fulbright TEA participation)
- Applicants who have experienced couple of or no chances to vacation to the U.S. will be provided priority
- Desire will be supplied to candidates who are customers of or who perform with pupils from below-served communities or traditionally underrepresented groups which includes but not constrained to women, racial, ethnic and religious minorities, people today with disabilities, the LGBTI neighborhood, and persons from numerous geographic places of the place.
- Choice will also be given to applicants who have not formerly obtained a Fulbright grant.
How to Implement
Software deadline: February 15, 2022.
The on line application is offered at: https://fulbright.irex.org and also out there on the program webpage: https://www.fulbrightteacherexchanges.org/
Guideline for the applicants (PDF 1,2 MB)
For far more data check out the method web-site at https://www.irex.org/fulbright-tea, or call the U.S. Embassy Community Affairs Workplace at BelgradeFulbrightTea@point out.gov
HGSE Launches Online Education Leadership Master’s Program Targeting Mid-Career Professionals | News
The Harvard Graduate School of Education plans to launch a fully-online master’s program in Education Leadership as part of its efforts to increase access for mid-career professionals, HGSE Dean Bridget Terry Long said in an interview Wednesday.
The new program is an outgrowth of an online, part-time cohort the school accepted through a one-time summer admissions cycle in 2020.
“When we went remote, we realized just how many talented, dedicated people are out there who want a master’s degree in education, who are not able to move to Cambridge, and so we’ve launched an online master’s degree,” Long said.
“[The program is] really focused on that group of people who would not otherwise be able to come to Cambridge, so it’s really about access, and new populations of students who want to benefit from Harvard,” she added.
Long said the program’s first cohort will arrive in summer 2022, and that the school will likely give students the ability to “come to campus for short periods of time” during the two-year duration.
Students currently enrolled in the remote, part-time program have voiced frustruations over remote course offerings and their lack of access to campus. In the interview, Long acknowledged those frustrations and said HGSE remains committed to accommodating remote students.
“When we committed to saying you could take the degree online, we wanted to guarantee for students who don’t have the ability to move to Cambridge that we could support them to degree completion and they wouldn’t have to come,” Long said.
Long defended the school’s remote learning offerings.
“We decided to have half of our courses online because we were so committed to the online students, and in some ways that was safe for us, given the fact that the Delta variant and Covid hurt so much,” she said.
“But this is the difficulty of being in a complex university with every tub on its own bottom — you try to maximize the opportunities, but you can’t quite control,” Long added.
In addition to increasing access through online programming, Long said the school is working toward creating a more engaging student experience in its newly-redesigned master’s curriculum.
The restructured program will graduate its first cohort in spring 2022. It features new Foundations courses held prior to fall term — which will become mandatory for future cohorts after this year — that Long said are an opportunity to “build a relationship with faculty, with teaching fellows” before starting at HGSE.
“We’re hearing a lot about the benefits of that — about how it reduced levels of anxiety, how it helps people feel part of the community and feel included, again, before they had even started,” she said.
Despite ongoing uncertainty over the Omicron variant, Long said the school is working to provide current and recently-graduated students with opportunities to visit campus through “homecoming” events in January and May 2022.
“[These] would be concentrated weekends to invite both those who graduated in spring 2021, as well as those who are continuing in the online program, [to] just have a chance to come to campus, to have some faculty lectures, to have social networking events,” she explained.
Those events would complement the joint commencements in May for the Classes of 2020 and 2021, which the University announced in November.
“The cohort that started fall 2020, as well as the ones that are continuing to this year, they never had a chance to come to campus,” she said. “We know that was a huge desire at some point to come, not just to come to campus, but to also meet their faculty, to meet each other in person.”
—Staff writer Omar Abdel Haq can be reached at [email protected].
PACF grant allows Kanawha Elementary School to expand broadcasting program | News, Sports, Jobs
Fourth-grade teachers Sarah Minor, left, and Stacy Allman, right, stand in the newly-renovated Brave House broadcasting room at Kanawha Elementary School. A nearly $4,000 grant awarded by the Parkersburg Area Community Foundation will allow the school’s Brave House Broadcast Project to purchase new and specialized equipment for students to use to produce new video and audio content. (Photo Provided)
DAVISVILLE — Kanawha Elementary School will revamp and upgrade its student media studio in the coming months thanks to a grant from the Parkersburg Area Community Foundation.
Fourth-grade teachers Stacy Allman and Sarah Minor said the nearly $4,000 grant will allow the Brave House Broadcast Project to purchase green screen equipment, new cameras and microphones and other equipment to produce student-led video content.
Students in Kanawha Elementary School belong to one of four Brave Houses which compete in character-building challenges and community service projects. The student media room has been renovated to include colors and logos from each of the four Brave Houses.
Students do a daily video broadcast called Breakfast with Brave House.
“It’s video announcements with content,” Allman said.
They also create standalone videos of events and projects throughout the school. Fifth-grade students act as house leaders, broadcasters and IT support.
Most of the video recording and editing now is done only with Wood County Schools-issued iPads. Students and staff have repeatedly run into the limitations of the technology, including poor audio, insufficient lighting and limited recording capabilities.
“We noticed the quality of the video was not that good for the amount of effort out students were putting into them,” Allman said. “The sound was pretty poor. When you are broadcasting to the school, you want it to look and sound good.”
The new grant-purchased equipment will allow the students to greatly improve their broadcasting capabilities, and officials hope they will be able to offer help to area agencies in producing video and audio content.
“I’m excited to get new equipment that I have never used, that the kids have never used” Minor said. “A lot of kids are interested in that content creator space. It is popular and very high interest. I think it is really going to benefit the students.”
“They look for stories throughout the school” and opportunities to showcase other classes, Allman said. For example, students produced a segment where kindergarteners told Thanksgiving-related jokes and third-graders created their own Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons.
“The students work really hard. They have a lot of pride in what they do,” Allman said.
Minor said the specialized equipment will not only allow them to produce more polished content, but also will provide more opportunities for students to learn writing, broadcasting and editing skills.
“It is incredible how fast those skills develop,” Minor said.
Officials plan to purchase the equipment and begin producing new and improved content in January.