Manhattan High School should create a recording studio in the building, so that Video Production and other classes can film projects, speeches and assignments in the studio.
The Video Production class at MHS produces a weekly announcements show called the Big Blue Weekly, which is sent out to teachers to present to classes. The show is filmed in the MHS Student Media classroom, where computers are lined around the walls, except for a small area that serves as the backdrop for the show. In this Career and Technical Education class that is supposed to prepare future video professionals for college and jobs in this field, students are required to rearrange furniture for each production, pushing desks to the front of the room to make enough space to film. They also have to set up all the cameras, tripods and lights every time they get ready to shoot something.
But what if there was a place in the school that made it convenient for students to film videos? This could increase the quality of the work that the Video Production students produce. It could encourage more students to watch the newscast and stay informed if the students of Video Production could spend time making the shows entertaining rather than setting up equipment.
A recording studio, which many high schools and even some middle schools across the country have, would not only be useful for students in the Digital Media CTE classes, but also for other programs at our school, like musicians. Musicians at MHS, whether they are part of music groups like band, orchestra, choir or out-of-school parties, just want to make music for fun. With a real studio, they would be able to create and perform music in the school.
If the school had a dedicated place for students to record that could improve the quality of different classes assignments. It would also help more students get involved in the media production in the school and do more recruitment for the classes that cover these skills. Having a recording studio could allow students to produce their own content and try something new. Getting more students involved in livestreams and podcasts would improve the quality and those students would be able to produce more fun things for their school.
A recording studio would give students from Video Production classes a much more convenient and better quality place to film videos, which can provide them with more space to experiment with various aspects of production. Now only will video production students benefit but also any student that is a musician or is enrolled in a class where you would need to record video to make a project. Giving students these sort of opportunities with a studio will open a whole new world of discovery and also foster imagination that leads to the thing that school is all about LEARNING!
