Video Hosting: Schooltube

SchoolTube.com is the nation’s largest K-12 moderated video sharing platform, specifically designed for students and educators.

It is endorsed by many educational groups, and is accepted by most school divisions as the leader in educational video hosting.

In comparison to other video hosting sites, you do need to be a teacher in order to sign up for an account. Like the other sites, it is free to sign up for an account.

Due to the fact that they do screen videos to make sure they are appropriate for schools, the uploads can take a few minutes longer than sites like Vimeo and YouTube.

Once uploaded the videos are easy to embed on your WordPress sites. They are able to be promoted through social media sites; however, you will need more than just the short address that Vimeo and YouTube provide.

For more information or to sign up for an account go to:

http://www.schooltube.com

Staff Team Building: Trips

Taking the staff to a conference can be a very rewarding part of the year. Planning a trip takes quite a bit of work, but in the long run it is one of the most memorable experiences many of the young journalists on staff may participate in.

For a handout created by the Journalism Education Association on Why Conventions Matter click here.

Determine what you want the students to take away from the trip. Students are able to learn from session speakers, hear first hand critiques of their publications, speak to professional journalists, share with other staffs, and even compete in contests. Before you arrive go online and look at the session guide and make a plan. Here is a sample form you can use to have your students plan out there weekend.

Once you have the plan in place for the trip’s objective, then you can estimate how many students you can accommodate, how expensive the trip might be, and how students will be able to sign-up and pay for the trip.

It is a good rule of thumb to plan on groups of four students, because that is usually how many you can fit into a room. So groups of four, eight, and twelve are easiest to budget and travel with. Keep in mind also that groups of four need to be either all female or all male.

Throughout the year there are many trips to choose from; the national conventions from the following three organizations are usually during two times of the year.

Fall JEA/NSPA National Convention – November (1st or 2nd Week) – Various Cities

Spring Columbia Scholastic Press Association – March (3rd week) – New York City

Spring JEA/NSPA National Convention – April (2nd or 3rd week) – Various Cities

Spring Student Broadcast Network Convention – April (1st week) – Various Cities

Staff Application – Broadcast II

At the mid-point of each school year, staffs need to consider who on their staff might decide to return. In an ideal world everyone on staff would be interested in returning.  Those students would also hopefully merit a position on staff. But most know this is not the reality. This is where most staffs will have those individuals interested in returning, fill out an application to be on staff following the first year. Here is a sample application.

Script Form

This is a sample of the two column script form your staff can use to plan out the production of the story. Students should remember to fully describe not only the reporter’s words and possible soundbites recorded, but also the visual components involving b-roll and sequence shots.

Click here for link to pdf version.