Huston Middle School: Reflecting on the Past, Looking Towards the Future

For the past 45 years, our school has held strong traditions of academic excellence, quality programs, and outstanding students. For the past eleven years, our school has operated a very successful multimedia/television program called WBUC. This program produces a daily television announcements show, which is broadcast throughout the school on closed-circuit television. In June of 2006, our school will begin renovation for the first time in its history. Our proposal is to capture the past, present, and future of our school through documentation of the renovation process. This project will connect the students and resources of the WBUC television program, newspaper, and yearbook staffs, along with the rest of the student body, faculty, and community.

To complete this project, we will gather artifacts from the school’s past. Those that cannot be scanned with the printer/scanner in the proposed budget will be photographed with the Olympus D-545 cameras. We will also photograph present students and activities and progress on our building throughout the renovation process. In addition, we will completely document the finished building, especially through photographs.

We will utilize the Tool Factory software to a high degree. The Tool Factory Workshop software will allow us to create promotional materials about our project that we can use not only in our school, but in notifying the community about our project. The publishing and word processing features will be a great asset in this department. The Multimedia Lab V and Whole Class Fresco software packages will allow us to use images we have taken to create unique layouts for printed pages (montages) and allow us to be creative with the photographs for the print and DVD copies of our project. Finally, the Tool Factory Home Page software will allow us to create a web site that can be the home for our project. This will allow people to see the progress on our building and on our project from their own computer. This is a great way for alumni and people related to the school to see our project from around the world!

The photographs that we take, information we document, and items we archive will be compiled into several “documentaries” about our school and its history and future, including a photo book, pamphlet/information sheet, DVD, and web site. These items will be available to staff, students, alumni, and community members. The process in putting these items together will be planned, organized, and completed by students, with guidance from faculty advisors and school administration. A total of sixteen students in the WBUC program plus selected other students will design the media “documentaries” and collect and edit the photographs, information, and memorabilia to include.

This project will be very beneficial to the school and the students involved. First, our school will have a one-of-a-kind memory of its history and future that can be shared for years to come. Also, students directly involved in the project will not only be able to design and work on a specific part of the project, but will learn about and utilize the latest in photographic and multimedia technologies. This type of project would also meet numerous Pennsylvania State Education standards, including technology, language arts (reading, speaking, writing), research, and community service.


Academic Objectives

Students will:
- Be able to effectively operate a digital camera.
- Demonstrate appropriate research, interview, and documentation strategies
- Utilize modern technologies
- Demonstrate appropriate basic history of our town and school district