Monday, June 13, 2011

Real Player-In Time Video(no time video): Student News Broadcasts

The first thing I did before I started this assignment is do a search for "is Real Player dead", and got some amusing results. I've never been a fan of Real Player. Well, it is certainly dead on my computer. I happened to be on my Win 7 (64 bit) boot so I installed it. Searched for a video and found one about "Producing a Daily News Broadcast" for middle school students. The page opens in Firefox and the player is there, but the video never plays. Chrome doesn't work either.

Fast forward to my Linux Mint boot. Get the .deb installer - wrong architecture (32 bit). Found a fix, installed some other libraries and stuff. Installed with command line and force architecture. Does it ... Nope! Player is there but nothing plays, Firefox or Chrome.

Real Player is dead for me.

The information provided in the lesson (sans video) included a lot of useful information about what can and does go on with the teacher's ongoing news production such as skills learned and standards addressed. However, it is not a lesson plan in the sense that it lays out processes and procedures for someone doing this for the first time could follow and be successful.  For a better lesson plan to begin such a project use this from the Media Awareness Network about video production of a newscast. (The Media Awareness website has a lot of great resources and lessons.)

Since I was interested in the student news broadcast I did a search and found some interesting stuff. Fox News in Connecticut has FOX CT Student News. FOX TV news professionals work with middle & high school students to produce news shorts (50 seconds max) and the best are aired on TV. The website has great guidelines and materials for the news production.

Sample: Bishop Gorman Weekly Student Newscast



I've always thought it would be interesting and fun to work with creating student produced news. The news stories produced by FOX TV are stories for, by and about the students. It's relevant, engaging, has a real audience, practices real skills and obviously involves a lot of technology.

I'd love to work somewhere where I could do this.

More resources and student produced news programs:

1 comment:

  1. Excellent post.

    (BTW: Too much work to get Real Player working. I never, never liked it.)

    I always liked the idea of student news, but it always seems to be presented in the same format (Do kids even watch news presented this way?). I know the goal is to give students an authentic experience, and replicating professional news broadcasts does do that. However, I would like to see students create a new format, or work off of a different format, for doing this. A few years ago I had my students use this as an inspiration: http://www.rocketboom.com/ . It was fresh and the kids found it much more engaging.

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