Every two weeks, students at Highland Schools are greeted with these words from the Highland News. The program, designed by students of James Higdon’s Media Production Course, serves as a snapshot of life for those in the neighborhood’s hallways. In preparation for each episode, students participate in a raffle that places them in groups that host the show on camera, film, edit and more. Once the groups are chosen, they begin to come up with story ideas that will populate the next episode. These rooms can fall into one of three categories: student life, academics, and activities. In the recently featured episode of Monday’s JJ Nichting Company’s In Touch Southeast Iowa program, these stories included student critiques of ISASP’s standardized tests, a cross section of male style students and faculty in the street talking about what they’re currently reading and a preview season for the Huskies golf teams. KCII News recently joined the class to talk about the amount of work it takes to produce an episode and what they learned in class, “Mr. Higdon recommended that we build a script in bulk. I was definitely nervous for the first episode, but over time you get used to working together and being able to edit on the computer. You just have to get used to the process. We have classes every other day, it’s a hour and a half class and it takes all those two weeks to complete an episode. It takes all that time, but like in this episode, our story only lasted two minutes. Maybe it’s only one episode six minutes, but you have to watch it a few times to make sure it’s good. It’s a long process. I’m grateful when we get longer interviews. It’s easier to cut a piece than to lengthen it I gained an interest in the editing process. make some progress. Our plans are more dynamic. In episode seven, we do picture-in-picture stories. We have a movie apart from what we filmed on the I-Pad in the episode. I encourage children to take a class like this. It’s quite fun to have a course that isn’t textbook based and expresses creativity. »

Higdon also talked about the progress he has seen students make over the semester. “The first thing I see is the level of confidence. Everyone’s confidence is up. There are people in the class who didn’t want to be filmed at all and became confident in front of the camera Their willingness to explore new things Try new modifications Try new ideas Children deepen their ideas for stories, which is really good too.

You can hear the latest episode of Highland News and a full interview with class members on the April 25 and 26 JJ Nichting Company In Touch With Southeast Iowa programs in the podcast section of KCIIradio.com, and find the latest episode posted every two weeks on the Highland High School Facebook page.