School to Community Connection
January 28, 2004

You don’t have to give up the final season of “Friends” or stop watching PBS’s “History Detectives” yet but Comcast Channels 26 and 27 will continue to evolve right before your eyes throughout the new year.   Access Healdsburg is filling the Media Center at Healdsburg High School with state-of-the-art broadcast and production equipment.  Our Bulletin Board debuted in November and satellite broadcasts from the “Arts Channel”, “NASA”, the “Annenburg Channel, and “UCTV” are planned to begin next month. 

Access Healdsburg is the non-profit organization that was created by the Healdsburg Unified School District and the City of Healdsburg to run the Media Center at Healdsburg High School.  AH goals include the promotion of media literacy to all ages, including our students, while demonstrating the value of electronic communication for all of the Healdsburg community.

At Healdsburg High School, specifically, the following programs and activities are being fostered, supported and planned.

• To provide Media Center access and equipment for new HHS media literacy classes.

• Providing training programs for students (and others) in the Media Center and community TV orientation; preproduction; field production; studio production; post production and editing; broadcast and community TV scheduling and operation.

• Access Healdsburg is planning broadcast taped recordings and programs of HHS school, athletic and community events as part of ongoing community TV programming.

• Individual teachers hope to provide taped lectures, demonstrations, Power Point and multi-media programs for broadcast as distance learning, 21st Century or general interest purposes.

• Language and visual arts students will be able to post-produce individual and team assignments for local broadcasting.

• Science, applied academic and other students can create multimedia programs to archive, broadcast and chronicle projects, events, and assignments.

• HHS students can earn Community Service hours by recording and creating audio-video programs with various local nonprofit and community groups seeking technical help in gaining access to community TV

• Access Healdsburg could sponsor an annual student film festival!

• Students in extra-curricular clubs and programs could broadcast information and features about their activities and projects with multimedia programs.

The list of ideas and opportunities continues to grow and beginning next month the training will begin.  Access Healdsburg, through its director, Gary Gorka, is beginning after school classes in Video Production through our 21^st Century Program.  Students will learn to make their own TV shows, documentaries, sports, news, or music video programs.  Classes will include media literacy, planning/storyboarding/directing.  Hands on training will include digital video gear, lighting, audio, and computer editing software.

Our hope is to bring relevance to the students of our schools and the members of our community.  We hope AH makes people feel more connected to the schools and community and we all become a bit stronger because we’ve grown closer together through this process of sharing information and ideas.

Written by Dick Bugarske