Newscast

Why Innovation in Technology? (what is the purpose of the project? How does it fit into your classroom curriculum, school-wide tech initiative, etc?)

Student inquiry is the focus of our kindergarten classroom. Throughout the year, students have been learning how to ask questions and are learning to use different resources to investigate answers to their questions. They use their observations, books, technology, and experts to gather information, and then have conversations about what they learned. K101 News has offered students an exciting way to share their research and conclusions with their families.

The Process (step by step guide to the project with text, images, and video)

1. What is a newscast?

First, we had to think about what makes a newscast a newscast. In order to investigate this, we watched videos to learn from experts. We observed adult reporters and anchors from ABC News and we observed other kindergarten newscasters to learn more information.

2. What does a newscast need?

After watching videos of other newscasts, we brainstormed together to think about the details of our newscast.

Who is in a newscast? What materials do we need? How will we put it together?

We came up with roles such as reporters, cameramen/camerawomen, graphic designers, directors, photographers, and editors. We also decided that we need special equipment: a camera to film the newscast, a green screen for a studio, and a computer to put it all together.

3. How can we design our newscast?

Once we decided on the details of what we needed to create a newscast, one of our students noted that every newscast has a logo. We looked at logos from ABC, FOX, NBC, and CNN. Then, we chose the shapes and colors to include in our logo. We decided that K101 12 News would be the name of our newscast!

4. How do we use the equipment?

After designing our logo, we were ready to practice using the camera, green screen, and computer. We found a spot for our studio in K101, set up the camera on our new tripod, and each took turns using a reporter voice in front of the camera. Then, we practiced how to put it all together in iMovie and add our logo to replace the green screen. It took a few tries, but we finally figured out how to make sure the logo went behind our faces!

5. What else does our newscast need?

Once we were confident in front of the camera, we rewatched professional newscasts and noticed that they have an introduction. We rehearsed what we would say as a group and choose music to add in the background. We stood in front of our green screen to film an intro in English and Spanish and put it together in iMovie.

6. What will we investigate?

After learning how to use all of the equipment, we had to decide on the content of our news. Throughout the year, we have been keeping track of any questions we think of on our "K101 Wonders" chart. We wanted to have a time to investigate the answers to our questions and thought that K101 News would be a great way to share what we learned.

7. How will we investigate?

K101 scientists have been investigating throughout the year using technology, observations, experts, and books. For K101 News, we had to think about what would be the best way to investigate our questions. We observed pictures and took notes to show what we learned.

8. How will we put it all together?

After researching and taking notes, we practiced how to read our notes in front of the camera. Then, we filmed our findings and uploaded the videos to our computer. We added the videos to iMovie and chose the pictures to add to the background. Last, we added the K101 News intro and typed our names into the credits!

Assessment

Throughout this process, students were assessed on their oral and written language.

• Were students able to come up with a question?
• Were students able to use information gathered from pictures, videos, etc. to have a conversation about a topic?
• Were students able to share their ideas using complete sentences and academic content?
• Were students able to write a sentence to share information about academic content?
• Were students able to read their sentence to the camera as a reporter?

Next Steps (successes and challenges)

After producing a few episodes of K101 News, we reflected on our success and challenges throughout the project:

Next Steps

For our next steps, K101 reporters would like to continue investigating answers to their questions. Now that we know how to use tools such as the green screen, camera, and iMovie to produce K101 News, we can focus more on the content of our episodes. We would like to use more resources to find answers to our questions, and possibly explain more in our answers.

Try it on your own!