Blogging in the Classroom

I teach communication arts at a high school level. Most of my students are juniors and seniors. We create a morning show for our school population to watch each day and we also create a 30-minute television show that is broadcast on our local cable TV channel. This show features student video creations on lots of different topics. One of the challenges is to come up with creative ideas for the show.

In order to create a list of fresh ideas, the students are required to submit an article weekly. This article must be a story from any reputable source (newspaper, internet news source, magazine, school newspaper, etc.) and students are required to interpret this article in several ways. Instead of handing in a printed article from the internet, etc., students could post the URL for the article and blog about how this article could generate an idea for a video story.

When this was a paper assignment, students had to cite the article. This would no longer be necessary if the students linked the article to their blog entry. We would already have the article’s URL for future reference (if we chose to use it as material for a story).

The second thing the students must do is summarize the article. What is it about and how could we use it as a possible story idea? The article itself may not be the story idea, reading the article may spur a new idea that would make a great story. Example: I read an article about newlyweds and how they managed their money once they were married. This article would not be a great story for our show, as it does not pertain to teenagers (our viewers); however, it got me thinking about dating and who pays for what these days. This would make a great story and some of the ideas that they talk about in regards to spending in the article could be used in our video story. This summary would be a required paragraph in the blog.

Next, students need to tell me how they would take this idea and shoot it as a video. We discuss how one of the most important aspects of a video is the introduction to the piece. If we do not grab the viewer’s attention immediately, we may lose their interest and they may grab the remote and change the channel. Therefore, the next paragraph required would be a statement about how they would plan out their creative introduction to the story. This would be the third requirement on the blog rubric.

The fourth requirement would be a shot list. This is a simple list of at least five (5) items that would need to be shot to make the story a reality. This is just another way to check and see if we would have enough visual material to make the story work. All articles do not lend themselves to video, some are too statistical and some could not be shot in our local area (such as a story about Lance Armstrong riding in the Tour de France – unless the student was going to France, how could she get any original video footage? A story may not be put together exclusively from internet footage. Students must add some original video footage to their story). An example of a shot list in relation to the dating story mentioned above would be:

-interview girlfriend and boyfriend about expectations for dating expenses
-show places they might choose to go or not go due to money
-movies
-restaurant
-home setting with friends watching movies
-groups of friends meeting up at a free place – like parking lot or school
-family setting like a dinner with one of their families

If a student finds an article that is interesting to him/her and can complete the requirements of the article assignment, then we have a good start on plans for a video story. Some of the planning is already done in the article assignment. Final research and planning would need to be added and then the taping process could move forward.

Doing this assignment as a blog would be great. I could also require students to comment on at least one to two articles that are posted by classmates adding ideas to the storyline. They could even rank what they feel are the top 10 story ideas and we could have a top ten list of ideas each week to begin our brainstorming. This way the blog would become interactive and the students could connect and collaborate. Students could even post links if they know of something out there that could help a classmate’s story idea.

Students have not always liked doing articles for my class; however, my serious student journalists have told me that they do not know how we would come up with enough ideas without this weekly activity. I think putting the technology twist onto the assignment might just be enough to hook the reluctant participants into the activity.

I also like the idea that I can give the parents the class blog site so that they can see exactly what is required of their student, and what is and is not being submitted so they can encourage their student to participate.