Amherst Middle School
Building confidence among students
As a teacher at Amherst Middle School in Buffalo, N.Y. and recipient of the New York State Technology Education Regional Teacher of the Year award, Rob Zdrojewski came across Adobe® Visual Communicator® software after searching on the Internet for chroma keying and green screens. Zdrojewski was immediately impressed with the product's functionality and price.
Zdrojewski immediately began thinking of how he could incorporate Visual Communicator into his classroom and decided to revamp his eighth grade class to focus solely on media and TV production. In addition, he saw it as the perfect tool to refine his school's weekly Morning News Show.
"After a little research on the web, I quickly realized that Visual Communicator was the perfect solution for helping me bring video production to my class, to the Morning News Show, and to my school in general," says Zdrojewski. "It is a cost-effective and easy-to-use program with a quick learning curve; anyone can learn how to use it. It only took twenty minutes for my students to learn, start to finish."
Expanding class curriculum to include video
Zdrojewski incorporates Visual Communicator into his daily class curriculum as well as an after-school media production club. They remodeled his classroom storage room into a TV studio by adding a 12-by-10-foot green wall (for use with Visual Communicator's green-screen effects), custom-made cabinetry, and news desk, so students have direct access to everything they need to create content and produce the Morning News Show.
The Morning News Show is generated in two parts. Students create the content for the program during regular class time, including everything from commercials to news segments, while the Media Production Club puts all the pieces together to produce a comprehensive, high-quality Morning News Show.
"Visual Communicator is the cornerstone of my eighth grade class," comments Mr. Zdrojewski. "Two hundred and fifty plus students use Visual Communicator and help create our Morning News Show. It's just like the six o'clock news, complete with commercials, news, and weather."
Increasing students' self confidence
Visual Communicator has substantially increased the quality and creativity of the students' news show. Zdrojewski believes that his students' self confidence has also increased because of Visual Communicator's easy-to-use features.
"The teleprompter is especially helpful because my students don't have to memorize lines, which makes them feel more confident and appear professional," says Zdrojewski.
Time is of the essence in Zdrojewski's class because students don't have hours and hours to spend creating their Morning News Show. "With Visual Communicator, my kids have a starting point to build off of; they don't have to recreate the wheel. There are so many templates to choose from that there is something for everything we do, the possibilities are endless," says Zdrojewski.
Looking ahead into the future
Going forward, Zdrojewski sees the endless types of projects his students can create. Imagination, he says, is the key. In the near future he plans to have his students create video resumes, portfolios, school play productions, graduation farewell videos, and book reports.
"Being a video producer myself and having worked with other video programs, I know what a true value Visual Communicator is. I find it simply amazing," concludes Zdrojewski. "I never thought I would be able to introduce something like this to my students because of time, learning curve, and money associated with it. But with Visual Communicator it was and is possible."
To view other sample videos, visit: amherstTechnologyRocks.org and click on Mr. Zdrojewski's website.
