To Sort

Traditionally, there has been a handpicked group of 17-18 students in one section of EJ that has been responsible for production of the daily morning Longwood News Show, a five minute broadcast replacing the “announcements.”

This past year 2005-2006 enrollment has expanded to include two full sections of open enrollment students.

The consequences of these changes from the classroom teacher’s perspective:

Students are not invested in the production. Two classes can not put on a daily show. Students are then waiting for production time. Additionally, there are not enough “jobs” for all students on any given show and this leaves 15 students with little to do. The down time causes behavior problems that actually interfere with the production (noise etc). A single teacher can not teach the 13 working on the production [the priority focus of the class] and the 15 who are not invested in the production.

Despite the expansion of the classes, the actual space for the classroom has gotten smaller. The teacher’s desk is moved into the studio area and the editing booth now

Ability (or disability) and maturity are also new factors for consideration. Not all students are ready for the responsibility of production, have the self discipline to be quiet while others are working, or to follow procedures for safety and proper use of the equipment. In fact, as I’m writing this I am watching students tease the talent on an actual broadcast. From making funny noises of many ilk to pretending to throw a water bottle repeatedly and laugh out loud and snicker audibly on the tape for broadcast, some of these students simply don’t belong.

Student and parent expectations are now crucial to the success of the class. Students believe that the news should be exciting like a cross between Kill Bill and a Fox News Alert. Parents believe that direct observation of participation is not a valid grading tool. That misbehavior is only caused by poor teaching skills. As well, both fail to understand, or acknowledge, that with each section added the actual ability to broadcast is reduced.

In terms of equipment, we could possibly do digital editing if we had the software and computer stations that would allow us to work with large files and capture video directly to hard disk with fire wire. The new computers we have had added to the classroom do not have the capacity to do video editing or have video editing software. We must rely on the aging video editor system.

This is where we stand at the end of 2006.

Vision of the Future

Given that the class size and makeup will not be changing in order to make this class viable the following needs to be addressed:

Curriculum needs to be redesigned to effect expectations:

· Electronic journalism includes some component of media literacy especially for journalism, video news broadcast, documentary, web cast, pod cast, radio, web site production, computer editing and graphics as well as traditional news gathering.

· Production projects need to reflect the diversity of media.

· Non-production assignments.

· Not sacrificing the educational reality of electronic journalism for the desire of a morning news show.

Equipment needs:

· In terms of equipment, we could possibly do digital editing if we had the software and computer stations that would allow us to work with large files and capture video directly to hard disk with fire wire.

· There needs to be separate lockable space for the media of each of the three classes.

Grading needs:

· The nature of production is such that a teacher needs to heavily rely on participation at a percentage greater than 20% (the standard for all other English Classes) that is it needs to be 40%. A breakdown should be 40% participation (completion of daily production jobs as scheduled and effective use of non-production class time), 20% HW, 20% Project, 20% notebooks.

· This means that there is a big part of the grade based on the teacher’s direct observation.

· Consequences for students disruptive to the production process need to be spelled out.