An excerpt of my one hundred and one ideas...

Number 27:

Create a platform for student news agencies.

So why this idea?

I want to create authentic and engaging learning for students when they make "mock" news programs.

Example: our I&S department have a unit every year where the year 8's are creating this sort of news program. All sound and good and 21st century like. They have to have a local start, a regional story and a story with some international content.

Here comes the problems. The local story can be fine and they can make all shooting themselves and use (what they have of) media literacy to create that. The regional and the international stories is again something else entirely. Here they scan the big news agencies and tend to download some footage from YouTube to get footage and content. Yes they write the story and the narration, but is that engaging for them and is it authentic learning?

Nada. There's no agency and no empowerment and nothing that comes from the students own sphere and is still some adult things brought upon them.

They should be empowered to find their own stories about things they can relate to and are engaging for them and they should be encouraged to contact other students in countries and cities where some "breaking news” take place

And the one million dollar question?

How are they going to do that?

Well, like in the real world the news stations are relying on a bunch of different news agencies and bureaus that can provide them with footage and information from the burning points around the world. They pay for that and they pay to be able to use the footage and the stories provided by those agencies. (One of the perhaps most known is Reuters bureau).

 

However, this is not the only way. All news stations and agencies also participate in networks and are helping each other with footage and stories, so for example if something are happening in Argentina, not all TV stations has the founding to send a team there, so they collaborate with a local station and they provide the footage and background news.

We are now in 2016, we are 16 years into the 21st century and many - if not most- schools in the world can connect and collaborate via the world wide Internet. Many and again if not the most of schools have access to digital video and audio equipment and hopeful all -or at least many should have touched the skills called the 21st century skills whereas media literacy is one of them. This should mean that they in fact could provide footage and background information on news and stories in their town, region and country.

So basically the idea is that schools could start to play “news agencies” for each other and share footage for each other to use in "mock" news programs.

Say that our students in Hong Kong are creating a “mock” news program and they find that something they find interesting and feel like exploring are happening somewhere in India, they can then connect to students there and get background information and even interview and the students in India could provide relevant and authentic footage and share that using either google drive or some other cloud based sharing platform.

With this, you will empower young people and engage them in a real authentic learning experience because they are adopting real life workflows and communicating with real people who are like them about stories and themes that really interests them.

So the conclusion of idea no 27:

I am going to initiate our very own little RDC News Agency, Hong Kong and offer other schools in our network news stories and footage about news and stories from Hong Kong and maybe southern China.