My school, Riverside Primary, does a daily morning announcements over our video distribution system. The LMS coaches 4 students as anchors with a daily script for a month at a time, and each class gets to have 2 anchors at some point during the year.
My LMS gave me a tour today of the video distribution system. Apparently, the "big black box" is called a Head End Unit? In the past, we had several cable channels available in our classroom, including PBS, ABC, Disney, and some others, but last year, the county apparently went to digital services, and our unit is analog, so they are not compatible, and now we get no channels. And apparently the unit is very expensive to replace, but at some point, it will become too outdated (it already is) and have to be replaced. We usually only watch a few whole-school streamed events each year: Polar Express, an MLK video, and Dr Suess movies at his birthday event.
We have 4 school studio inputs, 2 of which are connected to VCRs and two are connected to VCR/DVD combos. We user to have a mixer, which allowed quick at a button switching between computer images, the 2 video cameras, and the DVD, but it was destroyed in a lightning storm, and was expensive, and has not been replaced, so now switching between different media is a little more awkward. That is the extent of our news room.
As I said, we used to have PBS on our system, but no more. Some classroom teachers routinely use United Streaming (Discovery Education), though a lot of the material is a little over the heads of our primary kiddos....
I believe most schools have antiquated distribution systems. We have the same system at our school. We signed a contract with someone for them to install the small 19 inch mounted TV’s in our classroom to watch Channel One. We can only watch VHS or DVD’s through our system and the teacher must call the media specialist to begin the video. Our schools used to produce a student lead segment every couple of weeks, but we have had a change in media specialists and no longer have it.
ReplyDeleteIt is great that you even have a news room, even if some of it was destroyed. My school does not have any of this type of equipment at all. We also have outdated TVs that are analog, but we never really used them for anything beyond watching videos anyway (also no DVD players). I find that at least in the upper elementary, United Streaming is very useful. I use it quite a bit. I can see though with younger students, it might go over their heads. I think it is awesome that your school has a daily news broadcasting that students from each class can participate in. The use of a script for each of the daily announcements is probably very helpful for both the LMS and the students. It can make the daily broadcast more manageable for the LMS and can make the students feel more comfortable broadcasting if they are following a script. They know more what to expect and can feel less nervous.
ReplyDeleteTo the poster above: What is Channel One? That is something that I have now seen mentioned a couple times, but I do not know what that is.
I am in a high school and we are fortunate enough to have a Video Broadcasting class and they produce a live newscast every Friday. Students in the class learn the ins and outs of production and live recording. They do on location news stories, cover athletic events, and interview students/teachers. I went down and toured the newsroom this week and it is awesome. It's just like a news studio-on a smaller scale obviously, but still very real. The newscast is aired through our MediaCast system. This is the digital source for all of our videos shown throughout the school. On MediaCast our school district subscribes to all major channels: ABC,CBS, CNN, FOX, History, GPB, Weather Channel, and Discovery just to name a few.
ReplyDeleteOur closed circuit distribution and our TVs in our classrooms seem exactly the same way you described. We have 19 inch Tvs mounted near the ceilings of every classroom. We get a closed circuit channel that the morning show is on and we have a channel for showing DVDS and VHS tapes. We cannot show any streaming or anything from the internet on it at all. It's possible that the media specialist could show something over closed circuit from the internet but does not offer that service for teachers at this time. If you want to show something on the internet, you go to a computer lab or show it on your projector in your classroom.
ReplyDeleteThat's terrible, Lesa, that you can't show streaming or the net. we don't have the TVs in our rooms at all. Our school is relatively new, so we started with ceiling mounted projectors with a wall box & remote control to use it. Initially, when I started there 6 years ago, we had pull down screens, so we could stream video and watch DVDs and VHS from our classroom player, or from the media center's streaming. Now we all have the Smartboards, so basically we have "big screen" tvs, good for everything.
DeleteThe school I am at has pretty much the same circuit distribution system as you do. We still have the primary channels that are played PBS, our local school channel, fox 5, and channel 2. Most of our closed circuit programs, like you mentioned, are used for the daily news that our students and Media Specialist broadcasts, holiday movies/educational movies such as MLK, Dr. Seuss, and some Charlie Brown movies for Valentines Day and Christmas. I would have to our main stream for closed circuit is for the daily news. Our school does an awesome job with this. Green screen and everything! However, there are still the DVD's and some VHS that are still used. With technology increasing each year, we have moved to uploading movies from different stream lines, such as United Streaming and Teacher Tube.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like the announcements at your school are like the ones at mine...over the PA with an administrator speaking. I will say that daily students lead the pledge beginning with 5th grade and going down from there. But that is the only student involvement. I'd be interested in learning more about how your MCS does her announcements. It sounds much more interactive.
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