Aragon Leadership will create weekly video announcements of events at school in the coming months. The announcements are scheduled to air on Thursdays and will supplement the daily overhead announcements as well as the live announcements on Tuesdays.
Leadership hopes that this new method of relaying announcements to the student body will exemplify the two goals the group had going into this year: inclusion and visibility.
Leadership advisor Melissa Perino says, “A lot of the time the announcements coming from the loudspeaker aren’t a very effective source of communication [with the student body] because a lot of [students] can’t hear them or class is resuming during [that time].”
Junior Andrew Wang, a member of Leadership’s Technology Commission, says, “I think the announcements will be a good way to get [the students’] attention because students have a better learning experience when looking at a screen. A lot of the other schools in the district have been [incorporating] video into the classroom, and we wanted to do it too.”
A group of Leadership students will be working in conjunction with photography teacher Nicholas Carrillo’s Art of Video class to create the announcements.
Perino says, “We’re hoping that by the spring we can have up-and-running video announcements. We’ll have Leadership students as our anchors [for the videos.] They will film on Wednesdays, and we’ll play them on Thursdays. In addition, the really great thing is that we’re going to have Mr. Carrillo’s class record special segments of interest.”
The one-minute special interest segments will focus on a variety of topics. Wang says, “Because of the segments of interest, the announcements’ [content] will range from everyday announcements to comedy sketches and club spotlights.”
Carrillo says, “The way my class works is that the students have nine projects each semester. One of those projects will be to create a segment of interest video for the video announcements. I believe that participating in news like this will give the kids [in my class] experience working in a career-technical way. It’ll be a great opportunity for them.”
Aragon Leadership hopes that video announcements will increase student involvement in the school. Perino says, “Earlier in the year, we tried to use Google Docs [for student feedback], but not every student participated. [The video announcements] will help clubs get their message across more clearly and increase involvement.”
The video announcements involve much preparation. Perino says, “We already have classroom 133 reserved [as a studio], and we’re going to have a day to set up the technology in the studio. Then, we’re going to have an in-school field trip for [the] video announcement commission where Mr. Carrillo is going to train them in using each piece of technology. Then the goal is to start the announcements in the first week of January.”
Wang adds, “It might take a while for tech commission to get into the system of filming because there’s a big learning curve. However, our sole focus now is the video announcements.”
Carrillo says, “The next step from here is to [get] the news anchors comfortable with their scripts. Every new segment has a similar flow to it, and it’s about getting into a flow that makes sense and is dynamic enough for kids to watch. I think that with the kids that we have from Leadership coupled with the segments from my [Art of Video] class [and] the organization of Ms. Perino, it could be a really dynamic show.”
