Hitting their stride at RTV

Signs of Success
Today I am home with my son Jack who is sick. After a couple games of Star Wars Trouble and watching an episode of House Hunters International (you like it too) I noticed it was almost time for the RTV News at Cold Lake High School. Our school uses Ustream each day to broadcast our news show. I was pleasantly surprised to watch the anchors Kyle and Tyson present their team's brand of news complete with Wayne and Garth 'party on' sign off today.


Shining Stars Are Developing
Each week students have shown improvement and I'm really proud of the work they are doing. Students this week did pan to keys, two shot interviews, live in house segments, and produced great packages. Both weather anchors are developing their own unique personalities. Adrien is simply known as 'the weatherman' now! Yesterday's newscast was probably their best to date.


While we always have some audio and composition issues, these are items students are conscious of and are trying to improve on. They've become their own critics, and have really stepped up to look at each time they go air as a chance to get better.

The segment that Tyson (2:48) did really showed his hard work. He signed out equipment, went to the protest event and got the interviews. Audio quality aside, this showed he was willing to do the hard work to put his story together. He even called the Walmart store manager for an interview. Here's some background on this story from Global Edmonton. Yesterday he did a live in studio segment. He really knocked it out of the park this show. A possible "muggie" award nominee for September! (each month I give an RTV mug to an outstanding student in the newsroom).


Working on Blogfolios
One thing we are still working on is our blogs. I think I need to spend a bit more time with each student as they are blogging on Friday to make sure they understand the process of communicating their learning and demonstration of the outcomes from our first unit. At the end of each unit I really want students to identify how far they've improved each week and communicate that in their blogs. I may have to change my guiding questions and get some feedback from them on this as well.

We're off to a good start, the RTV news crew should be proud of their accomplishments so far!