Are you ready? (for the video announcements)

Video announcements began Feb. 9 to spread information to high school students in a visual way, said Computer Education Teacher Mr. Seth Reitz.

According to Mr. Reitz, creating video announcements was an idea formed by a group of people. He said that he had a new class that could work on them and Public Relations Contractor Mr. Norman Jones and Principals Mr. Michael Bergey and Mr. Andrew Rantz wanted to see video announcements.

Mr. Bergey said that the video announcements were created to be a project for the new Communications Media class that started this semester. He added that the students work on and create the images that are showed during the announcements.

He added that the video announcements are overall more engaging for students. Mr. Bergey said that Mr. Jones explained to him that video content is viewed more often than text content, such as the announcements in student emails.

Mr. Reitz explained that the video announcements include positive messages, projects that his students make in class and other student information.

He said that the process for getting information onto the announcements is by email to High School Secretary Ms. Carrie Davister or him. A transcript of the announcements is printed out every day from the email announcements and used for the video announcements, he added.

Mr. Reitz said that some advantages to the video announcements are that they give a visual component to information and people can hear them better.

He added that the video announcements don’t always work to plan. He said that one day he received messages that said that the audio and video didn’t match up, but he couldn’t quite figure out why at first.

Mr. Reitz explained that the software he uses for the announcements works; however, it has issues that don’t allow for the announcements to work perfectly every time. He added that to fix this issue he has to shutdown the software on his computer.

Mr. Reitz said that the reason for having announcements in email form as well as video form is to reach more people and make information stick in their minds. According to Mr. Reitz, to keep an audience attentive to the message, information has to be spread in multiple ways.

“Just standing up in front of them and saying it, that’s going reach some people, but you’re going to miss a bunch of other people,” said Mr. Reitz.

Mr. Reitz said that his goal for the video announcements is to polish them to a point where they are like a news broadcast. He added that Mount Carmel High School does them well and he aspires for his announcements to be similar someday.

Math Teacher Ms. Maggie Roberts said that she graduated from Mount Carmel High School, and she always enjoyed the announcements and wanted to push for something similar here.

Mr. Bergey said that teachers in charge of the Positive Behavior Intervention Strategy also expressed interest in creating video announcements. He added that while the teachers in charge of PBIS were interested in creating the new announcements, there isn’t really a connection between the two.