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Our Story - Celebrating OCV News: The Virtual Voice
by Karen Hamer
with contributions from Rachel Taylor, Monica Chappell, Enes Aydin, Daria Maystruk, and the OCV News student team
The students and staff who have been involved with OCV News: The Virtual Voice this year have enjoyed bringing our readers stories and content on a wide variety of issues. On this page, we share a story that is close to our hearts: our story.
We'll introduce you to the team of students and teachers who have been involved in this project, explain how we got started, take you behind the scenes to see how we work as a team to plan an develop an issue, and share some exciting news!
The Student Team
The Student Team
You've read their work and seen their names in print, you may have heard them in a podcast, seen them in a video, or read about them in an Instagram post. Now's your chance to meet the full student team! Click through the slides below.
The Teacher Team
The Teacher Team
The students have been guided and supported by three dedicated and creative teachers, Ms. Taylor, Ms. Hamer, and Ms. Chappell.
Collectively, they are 125 years young and have been teaching for 46 years! Individually, each has contributed their own unique strengths to the role of Managing Editor of OCV News.
Ms. Taylor strove to create an inclusive and equitable forum for student voices, build a virtual school community, foster wellness, and make the school's slogan — "innovative" — a tangible reality. She empowered team members with a start-up organizational structure, and offered encouragement and opportunities for leadership roles.
Ms. Hamer continued to build capacity among the student team, fostering collaboration, supporting student initiatives, and mentoring students in various aspects of journalism. She encouraged students to use their voices to profile community organizations, individuals, and stories that focus on equity and diversity.
Ms. Chappell (MC) landed in this collection of virtual voices partway through the year and infused new energy into the team with her enthusiasm and humour. She prioritized student wellness, celebrated student accomplishments, and enjoyed every minute of supporting the relatable and refreshing student journalistic content.
The students have also been supported by Ms. Safir, who has coached students in writing and assisted with editing, Ms. Perras and Mr. McLaughlin, advisors to the affiliated club, OCV Film Crew, and Mr. Charette, who supervised students in the Promotions Team.
How We Got Started
How We Got Started
We begin at the beginning, with the story of how we came to be:
SPECIAL EPISODE!
SPECIAL EPISODE!
A Blast from the Past:
A Blast from the Past:
The Humble Origins of the Virtual Voice
The Humble Origins of the Virtual Voice
by Enes Aydin, featuring Ms. Taylor
In this episode of The Voice of Virtual, podcast creator Enes gives our audience an insider's look at how it all started. Listen to the conversation as he and Ms. Taylor discuss what inspired her to initiate a school newspaper at OCV, why it's important for a virtual high school to have an activity like this, and what makes The Virtual Voice stand out from other school newspapers.
We hope you enjoyed that podcast! While the seeds of OCV News were planted in the summer, for the rest of the staff involved, their journey with OCV News began on September 10, with an email seeking teachers interested in helping to set up a school newspaper for the brand new OCV Secondary School.
From the Archives:
From the Archives:
Read the email Ms. Taylor sent to teachers that started OCV News: The Virtual Voice
Read the email Ms. Taylor sent to teachers that started OCV News: The Virtual Voice
This is a super busy time for you, I know, but with the blessing of our captain (Tim), I'd like to introduce a school publication, OCV School News, an ONLINE newspaper with colourful pics and video clips. News reports, feature articles, what's new in science, sports, social commentaries, movie reviews, comics, political satire, crossword puzzle... student submissions from all disciplines are welcome.
I know everyone's struggling, but this could be a good way to focus on something positive -- a shared goal -- and bring together Wellness and Literacy, build an OCV community, not to mention start the school year with an extracurricular activity for students who are bored, restless, and eager to get started on something real.
Let's give them the sense that they're not detached from their home school, but that they belong to a real school; it's up and running, it's making something, and they can help.
We need THE TEAM of teachers to work on this: If you're willing to contribute in any way, big or small, please fill out the form below.
Even if you're not interested in being on the team, here are some conversation-starters for your first day:
Brainstorm ideas for the name of your school newspaper.
What kinds of stories or types of content would you like to see in, or write for your school news publication?
What's going on in the city, province, country right now... What have you heard or read?
Who would you interview if you were writing for the school newspaper?
Should it be a newspaper or magazine format?
What do you know about our Virtual School and how it started up? What would you like to know?
Have a great day, and good luck with your planning!
Rachel
Within a day, almost 20 teachers had responded, expressing an interest in helping out. Many of these teachers contributed to a Jamboard, brainstorming ideas for the paper and signing up to help out with various roles. Excitement was building! Check out some of their ideas:
OCV teachers brainstormed possible names for the school newspaper.
As you can see, there was strong interest in having a name starting with 'v' so there would be alliteration with the school name.
What do you think of their suggestions?
Ultimately, it was up to the students to decide on a name for their paper, and they chose OCV News: The Virtual Voice, combining two ideas.
The teachers also brainstormed initial suggestions for content and organization of the newspaper.
The students would eventually bring many of these ideas to life, although regretfully, our Puzzles, Puns, & Pics section never included "something with numbers for the math people."
Over time, the student team would come up with many creative ideas of their own for articles, columns, and features in the paper.
The first student meeting took place on September 25, with only six students in the club! Over the following weeks, more members would join, and there were many decisions to be made. We discussed the format and frequency of publication, developed a system for receiving and processing submissions, and began to establish student roles within the club.
One of the most exciting decisions to be made was setting the publication date for our first issue. When we were given permission to run the school-wide contest to select a mascot for OCV Secondary, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to use the launch of the paper to reveal the new mascot.
Students worked quickly to compose articles for that first issue, and students and teachers worked together to learn how to use Google Sites. On Tuesday, October 13, after a memorable Thanksgiving weekend and only a month after that initial email to staff, we were proud to publish OCV News: The Virtual Voice Issue 1.
To revisit our first issue, or any of our previous issues, click the pics below!
What We've Accomplished
What We've Accomplished
Throughout our ten issues, students have produced all sorts of content for the newspaper.
Though they tend to prefer writing, some have also experimented with podcasting and video production, and many have regularly contributed photography.
Several students made the commitment to write a regular column that would appear in each issue, ensuring consistency throughout the year. To learn more about these columns and the student columnists, check out the images to the right. These were created by Daria Maystruk and have all been featured on thevirtualvoiceocv Instagram account.
Other regular features include updates from Student Council, articles on OCV Clubs, recipes, book reviews, a horoscope, jokes, comics, the crossword puzzle, and Sunshine Cat of the Month.
We've had a partnership all year with the OCV Environment Club, whose members have provided us with exceptional articles on environmental issues.
We have also received many submissions from teachers sharing their students' work, including science projects, art, cartoons, infographics, podcasts, memoirs, and videos of dance choreographies.
Thank-you to Our Contributors!
Thank-you to Our Contributors!
We have had 183 student contributors to OCV News over our ten issues, and a variety of contributions behind the scenes from over 60 staff members as well. Below is the complete list of student and staff contributors to OCV News. Thank you to each and every one of you!
Behind the Scenes: The Production of an Issue
Behind the Scenes: The Production of an Issue
The student team meets every Friday at lunch. A lot of the work that goes into producing a newspaper happens individually or in small groups, so the Friday meetings give everyone a chance to check in with each other.
We often get updates on what's going on with our affiliate teams, the OCV News Film Crew and the Promotions Team. Students sometimes propose new ideas and seek feedback or collaboration from other team members.
We always check in on the progress of our current issue by reviewing our Content Development doc. This is a document where students suggest ideas for content for the issue and sign up to commit to produce specific pieces. Check out a sample below:
OCV News student team meeting, May 2021
Once they've signed up, it's time to get writing! Some pieces are creative writing or opinion pieces that probably don't require any research. Others, such as the travel articles and many of the science articles, may involve consulting multiple secondary sources to get accurate information. For some pieces, the students engage in primary research, reaching out to members of the community to conduct interviews.
Grace was the first student to conduct an interview for an article, interviewing Samantha Ingram, communications manager at the Ottawa Food Bank for her article on this important community resource in Issue 3. Many others have followed, including Aaya, who has has conducted video interviews with Michael Lifshitz of Illumabilities, student trustee Joy Liu about the M.E. Project, and human rights activist Amira Elghawaby; Enes, who has interviewed members of the OCV News team for his podcast; Tina, who interviewed entrepreneur Scot Miller, owner of La Cantina Streatery; and Daria and Abeed, who interviewed Dean Nelson about strategies for conducting interviews!
The students found the interview process so meaningful that they wanted to share their knowledge and skills with others. They planned and hosted One on One: Interviewing 101, a highly successful workshop for OCV students.
Click the pic to read the guidelines OCV News students have used for interviews.
After the research, student writers work to get their articles done by the deadline.
Many students seem to work best under pressure, or perhaps they want to simulate the excitement of working for a real newspaper by engaging in a frantic scramble to meet a publication deadline, often waiting until the very last day, or even the last minute to submit their articles.
Check out the timestamp on that last submission!
Some students have developed their skills in negotiating extensions for their pieces. Thea, our horoscope writer, was once granted an extension on the condition that she write a favourable horoscope for aquarius.
Many submissions pour in at the last minute! The owner of the Submit Your Work to OCV News Google Form woke up to this inbox the morning after the submission deadline for Issue 9.
Submitted articles are proofread for spelling and grammatical errors and uploaded to the website. But we don't just leave the articles in their original text form. Part of our mission is to "do what paper can't," so we make our paper as interactive and engaging as possible, adding a variety of intertextual elements, inspired by Ms. Taylor's vision for the paper:
"Part of what I was hoping to happen was to use some innovation with the virtual format so that we could include videos, podcasts, and multimedia. Something that I was really excited about doing, too, was exploiting the possibilities of what's called intertextuality, and what that means is where you have an article, and you might have moments in the article where you have links to other websites, but also incorporating the visuals, and the auditory, and the text, and it's in a blended form. I was really excited about that because that kind of intertextual stories have been online for quite a while, and I thought that it would be pretty cool to put that into the newspaper. When you've got a virtual school, then it makes sense to really exploit technology in the way that you deliver the news." - Ms. Taylor
Our student writers often include links to accompany their articles, and the website team will usually do further research to add more intertextual elements. They are careful to make sure that the intertextual pieces complement, and don't contradict, the message of the student article.
Examples of intertextual elements include YouTube videos, links to websites with more information about a topic, Google Maps inserts, and links to reader polls. A picture can double as a button linking to an external site, and we've made frequent use of this feature, with our phrase "Click the pic!"
Sometimes the intertextual elements were videos or podcasts produced by the students. We even had several opportunities where we were able to include links to previous articles within our own paper, such as the button on the right.
Example of a picture as a button:
Click the pic to read Ms. Taylor's vision for OCV News. You will be redirected to Issue 1.
When everything has been uploaded, formatted, and proofread, the only thing left to do is hit the Publish button. Most issues have been published the last Tuesday of the month, although some readers may have noticed that we usually publish the day before, on Monday afternoon. We do this as a courtesy to our readers in Australia, where it's already Tuesday!
Promoting the Paper
Once we've published, we need to promote the paper, and we have an entire student team devoted to this. Through their Instagram account, which has over 700 followers, they promote the release of each issue, posting teasers to highlight various content in the paper.
But they don't stop there! Our Promotions Team has run contests, taken audience polls, conducted surveys, elicited external submissions for the paper, profiled student writers, published a series of mental health tips, produced daily video announcements for the school, and staged a teacher takeover with the principal, Mr. Hawes!
Celebrating Our Accomplishments
Celebrating Our Accomplishments
In April, Ms. Chappell decided to nominate the Virtual Voice student team for the Youth Ottawa RBC Spirit of the Capital Youth Awards in the Strength Through Diversity category, which is awarded to an individual or group that has played a key role in addressing issues of equity and inclusivity in school or the greater community.
She and Ms. Hamer prepared a written nomination for the team, and the students had to contribute to a group statement. This statement had a word limit of 500 words, and they used every single one! You can read our nomination submission below:
Click the pic to learn more about the Youth Awards.
We were excited and honoured to learn that the team made the shortlist of finalists. The next step was to have two team members represent the team at an interview with panelists from Youth Ottawa. We are very proud of Caroline and Amira, who participated in the interview on behalf of the group. The following week, we found out that the student team had been selected out of a very competitive field as one of the recipients of the award! We look forward to celebrating together at the Awards Gala in October.
Congratulations!
Congratulations to the entire student team of OCV News: The Virtual Voice on your Spirit of the Capital Youth Award for Strength Through Diversity!
You have inspired so many as you have used your voices to raise awareness for issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion.
-The Teacher Team
Our mission at OCV News: The Virtual Voice was to be an innovative online student newspaper that aims to inform and entertain the community, magnify student voices, and inspire students to action, one story at a time.
Our mission at OCV News: The Virtual Voice was to be an innovative online student newspaper that aims to inform and entertain the community, magnify student voices, and inspire students to action, one story at a time.
As we close the year with Issue 10, we can say:
Mission Accomplished!
Thank you to everyone at OCV Secondary who has supported our project.
We wish the entire OCV community a wonderful summer!
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