Naomi Meredith [00:00:00]:

Are you ready to start your school-wide news club? But how should you get started? In this episode, I'm going to be sharing with you the three top tips for starting your school-wide news club without ever having your students go live on camera. I am so excited about sharing all the behind the scenes secrets when it comes to hosting your school-wide video news club. This is a club I am extremely passionate about and a system in process that I have put together and carefully kept track of so I could share it all with you so you can have the same success and positive experience for your students and school-wide community. I'm going to be sharing with you some awesome tips in this episode, but if you want more, jump in on this live workshop that I am going to be hosting for you, Naomimeredith.com Newsworkshop and Inside.

Naomi Meredith [00:01:31]:

In this two-hour live workshop, I will be sharing all of the tips and tricks when it comes to starting your news club, all the way through recording, editing, the tools that you need, and all the way to the end when you're ready to hit publish every single day. If you are listening to this podcast in real time, make sure to check out that link and jump in so you can join me live and other teachers to interact with me. But if you can't make it live or you're listening to this way months later when this is posted, don't worry, the whole workshop is going to be recorded so you can access the information on your own time, but also still have the same success. The link will be in the show notes, and we are excited to have you inside the workshop. This episode is part of a series that I am doing all about STEM after-school clubs. I hadn't talked about this before in my episodes. I've kind of hinted at it here and there, but you guys kept asking, so I am here answering. In the last episode, 117, I talked about what you're missing out on by not having a video school News Club.

Naomi Meredith [00:02:43]:

So, if you haven't listened to it, make sure to check it out after you finish this one. So you're here, you're convinced you're ready, you would like to start a school-wide news club where the kids are recording the news, and you have a team that's editing, and the videos are posted every day. But it sounds like a lot of work. And let me be real, it is a lot of work. It is a lot of work, but it's a lot more work if you don't have any systems in place. Just like anything, I am the kind of person with anything that I'm really passionate about, especially when I'm in my creating mode, whether it's lessons, clubs, or content for you guys. I have so many ideas swirling in my head, but I won't implement them until I figure out a system that will be implemented to do all of these things and something that can be repeated over and over and over again so I don't really have to think about the whole process. So, I have a lot of things swirling in my head.

Naomi Meredith [00:03:46]:

Like this workshop was swirling in my head for a while, but I don't do it until I know I have a system in place that is going to work, and I will, of course, iterate things and fix them if they don't. But for the most part, when I implement something, I have some sort of system in place. My podcast manager knows who implements this. I have all the ideas, and I will get them out there. I just have to figure out the system first. So, the same goes for hosting your school-wide video news club. There are lots of ways you could do this, but if you have a system in place that is repeatable, that you can do every single day, week after week, year after year, you're going to find so much more success where you don't have to think about the little things and all that creativity will flow in naturally. So much so this process works that I was able to repeat it and get more teachers to help me on my team, so I wasn't doing this alone. I even shared this process with my teacher friends at another school, and they use the same exact thing, it has been extremely helpful for them, and they use the same exact process and, again, add in their own little bits of creativity.

Naomi Meredith [00:04:58]:

So, there is a method to the madness, and I'm going to be sharing with you three top tips to get those things in place. If you are ready to get started with your school-wide video news, the first tip for setting up your school-wide news is to have a consistent schedule. This was the biggest club that I had ever hosted my first year. We had 40 kids, which is quite a bit of kids, and we had never done this before, and I was impressed. Forty kids signed up for a club that I had never done before, which was super exciting the second year because kids had seen what the news can be and its capabilities and all of those benefits that go to the previous episode. I talk about all those benefits of it. I had 80 kids sign up. 80, it doubled.

Naomi Meredith [00:05:52]:

So, you need to figure out a consistent schedule. And I didn't cut anybody. I actually had a method where I kept everybody on my crew. So you need to create a consistent schedule so you are getting out this news on time. Also, with the format, I had this because that's a lot of kids. I wanted a lot of kids to have opportunities to think about the format. We had a recording team, and we had an editing team. Kids could not be on both teams, so they really had to choose.

Naomi Meredith [00:06:23]:

Most kids actually knew if they wanted to be on camera or not, but you had a couple of kids who wanted to do both. So I'm like, you really do have to pick. Or maybe you do this for half the year, and then you switch to the other half of the year. So, having that consistent schedule where kids were recording in time for the news to be edited and then in time for it to be posted for the following week, we really had to be consistent with our schedule. Likewise, you really need to think about when you have upcoming breaks, what are you going to do? Are you going to record ahead of time? Are you not? Are you going to have teachers help you? Are you going to be canceling days? You really want to map out the whole year of when you're hosting the club because that makes a huge difference. Each year that I hosted the news, I actually recorded on different days based on our school calendar and the days we had off because that actually did make a difference in how often I would see kids, and I needed the kids to come every week. There were times, I will say, when there was a glitch or something, and I had to record the news at home with my little dog, Frederick. And all the kids in the school, by the end of the year, knew that my dog's name was Frederick, and they would ask about Freddie.

Naomi Meredith [00:07:34]:

Freddie Boy. They gave him nicknames because they had seen him. Maybe I also said his nicknames on camera, but there were times when I might not have thought about it, and we were scrambling. So, really look at your candle. Your candle. Really look at your calendar to make sure you have a consistent schedule. The next tip for setting up your school-wide video news is to have scripts. 90% of the time, I did not let the kids talk off-script.

Naomi Meredith [00:08:06]:

They were not allowed to do that. I told the kids this is different than creating videos at home. And for fun, that's different. I do that, too. I create fun videos, blah, blah, blah. But I would even show them my videos of my podcast. So, I do record videos of my podcast while I'm doing this simultaneously. But I did show them the videos.

Naomi Meredith [00:08:30]:

And for the most part, I do have a script. So, I'm not reading word for word, but I am using a script while I am talking to you guys. But I told them that there are different videos for different purposes. Anybody can turn on a phone and take a video, sure, but the purpose of our school-wide news is to deliver information. And with that, we do have to have a script so that we get the information accurate and that we are keeping it consistent for our audience because they're depending on us for this important information. They got so good at reading the scripts. They were a lot like Will Ferrell in the movie Anchorman because they would just read it, and then they wouldn't always know what they were saying. And it was funny because sometimes they realized after the fact that they said something, and then they would start giggling, or they would be surprised to be like, oh my gosh, is that really happening? Because they know what's going to happen ahead of all the other kids a lot of times.

Naomi Meredith [00:09:31]:

And so they got pretty good at reading this script. So it was really cute when they would get excited about an event happening because they were finding it out as they were reading it again. Having a script is really important. It sounds boring, but trust me, it's not boring. Having a script is really helpful for the presenters because they know the flow of how the script is going to go. And I had a lot of kids who actually struggled at reading, who wanted to be on my news club. It was totally voluntary, nobody was forced into this. But I had a lot of kids on there, and there were certain parts that they knew that they could be confident at reading because the script was the same all the time.

Naomi Meredith [00:10:12]:

Some of the content would change, but the exact format of it was exactly the same every single time. This was also helpful for my editing team. So we recorded on one day, and we edited on the next. Now, I did mention this in another episode. I was the editor for the first half of the first year, and I did watch every single video before they were posted, every single one. So I watched 300-plus videos? So, I got pretty fast at editing. But this helped the editing team because as they were editing same for me, we had the script pulled up, and then we had the video right next to it.

Naomi Meredith [00:10:51]:

So we would actually edit in partnerships where they would go through the script and make sure that the kid said everything. Sometimes, here and there, recording groups would actually miss a section. So my editing team had to record and put that section in, or this was sometimes really sad. Sometimes that, the other groups, the kids who are recording, their microphone wasn't on. I have had that happen to me on my podcast. Their microphone wasn't on, and then the editing team had to record for them. So, having a script was really helpful because we didn't have to recreate that information. And also, having a script is helpful for your audience for the rest of the school.

Naomi Meredith [00:11:34]:

The school knows what we're going to say. They knew exactly the format of what we were going to say. We even said birthdays and lunch. And if we didn't say somebody's birthday, there was an uproar for sure. I definitely got emails and texts about that, and we had to add that in. So, knowing that consistency and format was not boring for anybody. It built into that routine because kids knew how to fill it out. There was some ownership for the kids who were presenting.

Naomi Meredith [00:12:03]:

They did have to help fill out part of the script. But there was a whole system to this, and trust me, it will make your life easier. And the final tip when getting started with your video news is to use easy to use equipment. We didn't really use a lot of fancy stuff. There are a few reasons for this. The first year that we recorded, we used iPads and then some tripods that I got from a grant. The next year we had different student computers, and it worked out a bit better, and I was trying to streamline things even more. I'm always working on efficiency in everything that I do.

Naomi Meredith [00:12:43]:

But the second year, we used student computers, and students recorded directly in WeVideo. W-E-V-I-D-E-O. We video all one word, no spaces. So we use that platform so students would record in WeVideo. And then, the same video was opened up the next day for our editing team, and the video was there for them. So, we used very simple tools. Eventually, we added in a few more fancy things like we tried green screen. When the kids were able to present on camera efficiently and effectively and work together as a team, I showed them how to record and set up their green screen.

Naomi Meredith [00:13:23]:

And then also my editing team, I showed them how to edit the background. We also started to add in microphones. We played around with that. So you really don't need that big of equipment to get started with this. Also, this is a huge benefit of not going live. I didn't have to worry about the internet issues. Let's say the Internet was down that day, the kids just couldn't watch it. But I wasn't dependent on the internet, always working at all times, which wasn't always the case.

Naomi Meredith [00:13:56]:

We use very simple things, and honestly, there were times we just use my phone to record. So if you just have a phone, if that's the only thing you have, you don't have iPads, you don't have student devices, use your phone, and you can get started with some video news. Another reason why I did this is for one, let's be real budget. I didn't have a big budget to buy all that fancy equipment and lighting and all of those beautiful things, but I didn't want to. Yes, I wrote a grant for Tripods. That was something I did want, but I really didn't want to get super fancy things because I wanted to show the kids what you can do with constraints. The tools we were using were not fancy, but we were able to publish something that was better than just a basic home movie. So I wanted to show kids those hacks.

Naomi Meredith [00:14:53]:

And guess what? With this podcast, I don't use a whole lot of fancy stuff, either. I have a podcast microphone that I actually won at a conference. It was definitely meant to be because it was right before my podcast actually launched. I use my phone camera as my camera for the video version. I have a desk lamp that I got at Walmart and a stand up light that somebody gave me in my computer. So I don't have a whole lot of fancy things either. I'm not in a fancy recording booth. And I wanted to show kids that you can create something with very, very simple supplies.

Naomi Meredith [00:15:32]:

So keep that in mind when you're getting started. As a recap, here are some three simple tips that you can use to get started with your school-wide video news. First, have a consistent schedule. Next, make sure you write those scripts. And third, use easy to use equipment. In the next episode, I'm going to be talking with two of my friends who also run their school-wide news, and they use the exact system that I did after passing it along and talking with them. And so this episode was a lot of fun chatting with these friends, so make sure you don't miss out. And while you're at it, before you hang up this podcast or turn it off, make sure you check out the show notes and check out my workshop, where I'm going to be sharing with you even more tips and the whole system that I use for setting up my school-wide news.

Naomi Meredith [00:16:29]:

You can grab that at naomimeredith.com/newsworkshop.