Amherst Middle School

Building confidence among students

As a teacher at Amherst Middle School in Buffalo, New York, and 2004 recipient of the New York State Technology Education Regional Teacher of the Year award, Rob Zdrojewski came across Adobe® Visual Communicator® software in June 2004 after searching on the Internet for chroma keying and green screen software.

“At that time, I was most familiar with Adobe Premiere®, and I was aware of the learning curve and time commitment involved with traditional nonlinear editing programs,” notes Zdrojewski. However, he quickly discovered that Visual Communicator was a different type of video software program and was impressed with the product's functionality and price, making it easy to implement with his middle school students in a three-week unit.

Zdrojewski immediately began thinking of how he could incorporate Visual Communicator into his classroom and decided to revamp his eighth grade class units to include media and TV production. In addition, he saw it as the perfect tool to refine his school's 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 20 minutes for my students to create videos, start to finish."

Increasing students' self confidence

After using Visual Communicator for a few months, Zdrojewski found it substantially increased the quality and creativity of the students' news show. He also believes that his students' self confidence has increased because of its 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. He also notes that even special needs students enjoy working with Visual Communicator because they can pause the teleprompter and jump to content manually. Visual Communicator allows any student at any level to make high-quality video projects.

Zdrojewski created prerecorded video tutorials to teach Visual Communicator. This unique learning-on-demand method has proven very effective and efficient. Kids can pause, rewind, and fast forward through the self-paced training videos, addressing many learning styles.

Looking ahead

Going forward, Zdrojewski sees the endless types of projects his students can create. Imagination, he says, is the key. In the past few years, students have created video resumes, portfolios, school play productions, graduation farewell videos, and book reports, to name a few.

"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 the time, learning curve, and money associated with it. But with Visual Communicator it was and is possible."

Expanding the uses of Visual Communicator

After three years of success, Zdrojewski now has three additional uses for Visual Communicator. The primary use is for a morning extracurricular Tech TV club that produces a live morning news show, which is broadcast to all four school buildings within their district. After the show is completed, they upload it to their AmherstTechTV.org website so parents and the community can view it as streaming web video. "This has had a great impact on how we communicate with parents. A daily video that is posted is much more appealing than a printed newsletter that gets mailed home periodically," notes Zdrojewski.

The second way of using Visual Communicator is for teaching video production as a class curriculum unit. Zdrojewski's students work individually or in pairs on their projects using classroom lab computers. The first required project topic is assigned to them, and then they choose their own topics. Topics vary, ranging from Caring Message videos, in which students explain in their own words the meaning of famous inspirational quotes, to comedy club shows and commercials that include fictional products and more. Next, students save their scripted projects to their network folder and then enter the TV studio to reopen their project and record within the TV studio.

"Since the kids have rehearsed on the classroom machines, they usually can record in one take. This helps us get many kids through the recording process within each class period," Zdrojewski remarks. At the end of each unit, Zdrojewski creates a custom DVD containing all the students' projects from the rotation, and kids take it home to share with family and friends. In addition, Zdrojewski's students have entered their video projects in national competitions and won hundreds of dollars in cash and software prizes. "It helps brings the real world into the classroom, as our kids see what others across the United States are doing with video production, while competing in friendly online competitions to win prizes and recognition," states Zdrojewski.

The third way of using Visual Communicator is for producing specialty productions throughout the year. For example, in September, students assembled a welcome video for parents on open house night. It included the principal's opening message as well as parent-teacher association members. Because they didn't have to perform live and could read their script from the teleprompter, the adults involved felt much more comfortable speaking in front of the camera.

Another specialty project is the annual geography bee. Kids present in front of a green screen, and Visual Communicator replaces the background with a photograph of the place they seemingly have traveled. The students create skits for the schoolwide assembly that are a huge hit among the students.

Visual Communicator is also used to create a photo slide show of pictures taken during the school's annual musical. Both behind-the-stage and onstage pictures are taken and set to music. At the end of the year, Zdrojewski and his students also create a Moving Up Day video tribute to the eighth graders. Students sell the DVD to parents for a school fundraiser.

All of these new activities take place in the TV studio that Zdrojewski voluntarily constructed over a two-year period. He handled nearly all stages of the construction — from designing, demolition, and framing to drywall, painting, countertops, and wiring. "I saw the possibilities with Visual Communicator and wanted to grow it within our school. We needed a better facility to handle greater volumes of projects and kids, so I volunteered to make it happen with the construction project."

Today, Visual Communicator is the cornerstone of Amherst Tech TV. Hundreds of students each semester use it to create the school's Morning News Show. To see student samples and pictures of the construction project, visit AmherstTechTV.org.

Amherst Middle School

Building confidence among students

Increasing students' self confidence

Looking ahead

Expanding the uses of Visual Communicator

Websites and publications

Next steps

Products

Solutions

Industries

Help

Learning

Ways to buy

Downloads

Company