The Unity Composite High School Journalism 20 class, taught by Mrs. Ruth Cey, had the exciting privilege of using their skills to cover the 4A Boys' Provincial Volleyball Championships hosted in Wilkie last weekend.
They offered live streaming of each game in the McLurg and St. George gymnasiums. They used Twitter and blogging to update fans on what was taking place throughout the weekend. They interviewed coaches, players, officials and fans throughout the weekend and offered the interviews for prompt viewing on their website. They updated the SHSAA (Saskatchewan High School Athletics Association) game notes following each game so folks who were not able to attend the event could see how their favourite teams had done. And they are writing the sports story for the local weekly papers.
Mrs. Cey is no stranger to this undertaking as she had one of her first journalism classes cover the 2009 IIHF World Junior pre-tournament game held in Unity. Family in both Austria and Latvia were thrilled with live streaming of the game as well as the interviews with their players and continual blogging on the two-day event. She offered this same process to her class in 2010 when they covered the 2010 provincial girls' volleyball championship hosted in Unity.
Students who had seen the success of those endeavours were excited and eager to be part of the process again. They headed into the provincial volleyball event knowing it was not a one-hour or one-day commitment. They prepared weeks in advance practising interviews, setting up the website and helping with all preliminary work necessary to make their weekend's work run as smoothly as possible. And their commitment kept them at this weekend event for over 12 hours on Friday, then getting up bright and early Saturday to leave Unity by 7:45 a.m. and returning home after 9 p.m. that evening.
In each gym, two video cameras were filming the action on the volleyball courts, sending a live feed to a computer set up on the sideline in the McLurg High School gym and on the viewing balcony in the St. George School gym. A student was working at each computer, selecting the best shots and switching between cameras on the fly for the live web feed.
A team of students interviewed coaches, players, officials, volunteers and fans throughout the weekend. One student interviewed; another was recording with an iPad. After the short interview, both students were involved in editing the interview on the tablet and would have the edited version online, straight from the tablet, in about 10 minutes.
Students uploading pictures to Flickr were restricted to doing just two or three at a time during games because of the live video feed using most of the bandwidth, but between games, they were mass uploading.
Students ran between schools using an iPad to record video clips for a highlight montage to be prepared from the day's games and events.
Another student was in the McLurg computer room creating a sound track to accompany the video montage at the end of the day.
One of the students had created a QR code for the website so that anyone with a smart phone could simply scan the code and be instantly at the site. There were posters with the QR code at both schools (St. George and McLurg) and at UCHS too.
Students told me they had all the modern technology they would want such as 10 iPads, laptops and video cameras.
Ryan Kobelsky, of Wilkie, a Living Sky computer technician, was there throughout the weekend. He said the students "were doing phenomenal!" Ryan and Mark Strendin, from North Battleford, spent much time prior to the championship preparing for this event. Strendin did the webpage and coding as it is an official school division site, however, the kids set up their own blog.
By 1:30 Friday, they had already had 2,500 hits on the blog. And by weekend's end, they were well over 7,000 hits. As of Monday morning, following the event, the site had well over 8,200 hits, showing interest was still high in the website's content.
I asked instructor Mrs. Cey how she felt about the weekend's adventure with this journalism class. She replied, "It really was a great experience and opportunity for learning. It was really satisfying to see how the group pulled together as a team to cover the stories that occurred both on and off the volleyball courts."
She also stated, "We have many people to thank for the success of this project. Mrs. Robertson was supportive from the outset. Many staff members accommodated us, helped us with technical issues and encouraged us through the course of the weekend. Mr. Parker got the journalism team over to Wilkie and back. We also had strong support from the technology personnel at the school division. In particular, Ryan Kobelsky spent countless hours setting up, testing and managing the live stream. He was on site for the entire tournament to provide support."
In closing, Mrs Cey proudly acclaimed "It was also great that this project involved co-operation between two high schools who are often rivals. Watching our students volunteer alongside students from McLurg as they all contributed to the success of the event was really satisfying. I think this resulted in a win-win situation for both schools."
If you are interested in viewing their work log on to www.2011provincial4aboysvolleyball.blogspot.com
