Live Tv Gratis
Reporting live from the lunch line A middle school class creates 'real' television weekly and shows its teacher just how 'drag-and-drop' its generation is.
There's a news team in California with members who were a mere twinkle in their parents' eyes during the Reagan administration. Aviara Oaks Middle School in Carlsbad, a suburb of San Diego, enjoys the distinction of being the only middle school in the nation that produces a live weekly news webcast.
But the school is not content simply to enjoy its singular status. It's concerned with "creating real television." Every Monday at 8:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. PST, the Aviara Oaks news program, AOTV, is broadcast over local cable and the Internet at aotv.org. It takes at least two hands to count the awards AOTV has won since 1999.
Broadcasts cover everything from school issues to finding the best french fries in the county. Students have even put together a parody of a Nike commercial.
"It's a balance," says Aviara Oaks TV production teacher Doug Green. "We recognized early on that we're first and foremost a school news program." But because AOTV has a global audience, the young TV journalists see it fit to go on location to events like San Diego Chargers football games. AOTV even sent students to report from the red carpet of this year's Academy Awards.
Green says that the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students in his program learn to master five areas of broadcasting as they take turns behind the newsroom camera, in front of the lens, and on the mouse for desktop switching and effects creation. Drawing names out of a hat enforces the variety of roles that the students must play. Of the school's approximately 600 students, 270 are involved in the production classes.
At the heart of Aviara Oaks' broadcast operations is hardware from GlobalStreams, which earlier this year acquired the assets of Play Inc. The combination of a Trinity and a similar streaming-equipped GlobeCaster unit allows AOTV to switch among up to 10 video feeds during the live broadcasts. The "all-in-one" tools also offer editing capabilities and virtual set creation. AOTV employs extensive lower-third graphics, DVE, and bluescreen to give its students a true professional TV newsroom experience.
Everything is live except prerecorded clips, and the whole production takes about 15 students.
The Web wasn't originally intended as an outlet for the student broadcasts. The live shows have been airing on a community-access channel since the 1998-1999 school year, but webcasting wasn't in the plans until Green got a phone call from the CEO of Play suggesting a move toward a global audience with a new gratis GlobeCaster.
Unfortunately, graduating students from Aviara Oaks currently are unable to continue on an academic track in TV production, as no area high school offers instruction. Green hopes to change that by helping the school district's high school update its technology to catch up to his middle school's savvy.
Green is impressed by the ease with which his preteen producers have taken to the GlobalStreams system. "I think it's very intuitive," he says. "Kids are so drag-and-drop now."
Trevor Boyer is associate editor for Video Systems.
For More Information
GlobalStreams
St. Louis
314-997-5100
www.globalstreams.com
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