December 2007 — Special Feature
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THE Journal's 2007 Innovators : 2
Rob Zdrojewski
Amherst Middle School (NY)
The principal clears his throat, and
teachers in classrooms throughout
the school call students to attention
as they all strain to hear the speaker
connected to the PA system. The
principal says good morning and
then reads through the events of the
day—sports scores, assemblies,
local happenings, and other items
of interest.
That was in the old days. These
days—at least if you’re at Amherst
Middle School in Amherst, NY—
the students direct their eyes to
their classroom monitors, where their classmates deliver the
morning news.
The daily newscast was the brainchild of Rob Zdrojewski’s,
Amherst’s technology education teacher, who wanted a project
to complement his curriculum. He determined that a
morning television show would suit his needs perfectly.
Acquiring a $2,500 grant from Best Buy,
he fashioned a studio from his 10-foot-by-12-foot office—by
his own estimate, putting in about a thousand volunteer hours
of labor on weekends, evenings, and school breaks. He then
began using Adobe Visual Communicator
to create the broadcasts. And he called the program Tech TV.
Students produce the daily news show. They sign up for
newscaster and behind-the-camera “intern” jobs; eventually
they become senior producers. Currently Zdrojewski has six
senior producers and five crews, one for each day of the
school week. The students show up at 8 in the morning and
rotate jobs: writing scripts, selecting graphics and music,
operating camcorders, formatting graphics, directing, working
with digital photography, setting up lighting, checking microphone
levels, designing backgrounds, and producing DVDs.
They record each show live, and it is broadcast via a closedcircuit
system to the rest of the school. Every student in the
school participates in the Tech TV program before graduating.
The students learn skills in project management, teamwork,
presentations, and writing, and Zdrojewski says that they gain
an enormous amount of confidence.
What’s next? Zdrojewski wants to send student reporters to
sporting events and dances, and he wants to use Visual Communicator’s
V-Screen Wizard to create virtual backgrounds,
so that even if the reporters are in the studio, they’ll appear as
if they’re on location.
