Songs for Tsunami

On Thursday, March 31, Cold Lake High School will be hosting the second instalment of Songs for Tsunami. This is a fundraiser for relief in Japan. Teachers are being sponsored by students to sing songs Karaoke style! After the first lunch hour over $480 was raised.

RTV has been covering the fundraiser. A student recently interviewed Mr. Darrell McDonald about how he came to organize this great event. Rhiannon was very nervous but did a great job doing her first LIVE interview! Darrell's wife Miyuki is from Japan, and Darrell spent many years there. They have 1 daughter together, Julia who is very impressed with the singing!

Tomorrow we will stream the entire lunch hour of karaoke live on Ustream. We hope to have as many people watching as possible across North America as well as in Japan. Miyuki will blog about the streaming on her blog and will invite her friends and family to watch us.

You can watch the fun for a great cause on our Ustream channel starting tomorrow at 11:50am. RTV students will be running cameras and our switcher to do a 3 camera broadcast complete with graphics and song titles.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/royals-television

Please join us!

Crowdsourcing Voiceovers

Our students are working towards the final days before we produce our first TV magazine style show for our division. The first show is about health and wellness initiatives in schools.

Along with a lot of leg work my Nicole Garner and myself, we have created an intro in Apple's Motion that has our division logo and mission statement before the title of the show. The show's title is going to be "Northern Lights Spotlight".

I thought it would be cool to crowdsource the voiceovers and ask you, my tweeps to provide their voices by having you record the division's mission statement. I'll then mash them together along with the intro music to make a cool into. So if you're up to helping me here's a grainy look at the template I've chosen from Motion:

Now, here's what I need you to do:

1. Use a USB mic, or a mic that you can input into your computer directly.

2. Record your voice in Garageband or Audacity or other recording program. If you don't have anything, you can use Aviary's Myna and record it directly into the web based recording studio. Make sure you are in a quiet place that doesn't have a lot of echos (don't record it in your bathroom! :P)

The script I need you to read is:

"Working together to help every student learn and excel... this is the Northern Lights Spotlight" (with a distinct pause before the second part)

3. Email me an .mp3 file of your recording. My email is coolpoolteacher (at) gmail.com.

Thanks so much for helping me out! I'll add the name of whoever sends me a recording in our show's end credits! You guys rock!!

Crowdsourcing Voiceovers

Our students are working towards the final days before we produce our first TV magazine style show for our division. The first show is about health and wellness initiatives in our division.

Along with a lot of leg work my Nicole Garner and myself, we have created an intro in Apple's Motion that has our division logo and mission statement before the title of the show. The show's title is going to be "Northern Lights Spotlight".

I thought it would be cool to crowdsource the voiceovers and ask you, my tweeps to provide their voices by having you record the division's mission statement. I'll then mash them together along with the intro music to make a cool into. So if you're up to helping me here's a grainy look at the template I've chosen from Motion:

Now, here's what I need you to do:

1. Use a USB mic, or a mic that you can input into your computer directly.

2. Record your voice in Garageband or Audacity or other recording program. If you don't have anything, you can use Aviary's Myna and record it directly into the web based recording studio. Make sure you are in a quiet place that doesn't have a lot of echos (don't record it in your bathroom! :P)

The script I need you to read is:

"Working together to help every student learn and excel... this is the Northern Lights Spotlight" (with a distinct pause before the second part)

3. Email me an .mp3 file of your recording. My email is coolpoolteacher (at) gmail.com.

Thanks so much for helping me out! I'll add the name of whoever sends me a recording in our show's end credits! You guys rock!!

Calling All Experts

My broadcasting class is getting very close to shooting their first news magazine style program. In partnership with the Board of Trustees in Northern Lights School Division we will produce a show that will be posted to the division's new Youtube channel.

Where I want to go with this is for students to make connections to and learn from experts in television particularly in the area of pre-production of this style of show. I have been very fortunate to be working with amazing experts within our division and in our community but I also want to show the students how to use social media to make positive connections for learning with this project. If you are currently working in broadcasting or have experience with this style of programming, drop us a line on Twitter (@clhsroyals) or email (clhsroyals at gmail.com).

I'm excited at the possibility of having a world of experts lending their experience and knowledge to help my students learn about broadcasting. If you know someone who knows someone, pass this on to them!

Producing our First Magazine Style Show

It's been a while, and I always apologize for not blogging enough, but this time I'm not. With the flury of daily activity for RTV News, time is tight. I'm going to call this "just in time blogging". (Buzz!)

We are in the final 10 days before the students will produce a magazine style show for our school division. I must thank our Communications Director Nicole Garner from Northern Lights School Division. She has been instrumental in organizing the majority of the interviews, generating ideas, planing out the show, formatting, and so much more.

The NLSD-TV program wil serve two purposes. I'm interested in both, but am biased towards #2. First, the show will highlight the great things happening in our division using Youtube, the premiere media consumption site in the world. Secondly, my students will have a true client to work with. It's elevating the stakes to a real world (buzz!) experience for my students.

Currently we have 4 major stories that are going into the program. Due to geographic considerations of our district my students have only been able to get to one local school in Cold Lake to interview a staff member about their breakfast program. Another interview I did when I was in a neighbouring community for PD, and the last interview was done over the phone. I used Skype to record the call and it turned out great! I highly recommend spending the 2.3 cents/minute and a call recorder program for over the phone interviews.

From here students are going to write the scripts, leads and tags for each segment, edit them to length (around 2.5-3 minutes each), add graphics and export for production. Seems easy, right?

The finished segments will be evaluated by Nicole and our Board Chair, Walter Hrcyauk who are coming in next week for a production meeting. All aspects of editing, lower third graphics, audio levels and shot composition will be scrutinized. Nicole's experience in broadcasting will be invaluable in our class.

At the production meeting the show's script will need to be outlined, so we'll definitely be meeting with our script writers on that day as well. All of this will be done by the students. I hope to sit back and see the interaction with the Nicole and our Walter to see how they listen, make recommendations, and take feedback.

I'm really excited to see this first show going. We will plan a post production meeting to dissect the show and make changes for the next one. Stay tuned...