From left: Jeremy Dudley, Annabelle Clemens, Nina Scandurra, Ron Mattice and Arianna Costello
Starting Monday, Albany High School will broadcast the daily morning announcements live in a news-style format on YouTube.
Live announcements at Albany High have been a longtime goal of Principal Jodi Commerford. And thanks to the tech wizards on the Student Help Desk, a trio of motivated freshmen will produce and anchor the announcements that will be broadcast on display devices in homerooms throughout the building. Parents, guardians and community members can tune in, as well.
Annabelle Clemens, Arianna Costello and Nina Scandurra will be the faces of the new broadcast. Their voices already are familiar to Falcons, since all three have been reading the daily announcements on the school’s public address system since early in the school year.
Costello and Scandurra were the first to answer the call to read the announcements.
“We looked at each other and said, ‘let’s do it. This is perfect for us,’” Costello said. Clemens – who has done play-by-play for little league games for years and is branching out to cover Falcon sports – jumped in soon after.
When the opportunity to do a live broadcast presented itself, the three freshmen seized it.
“They took it on and owned it,” Commerford said.
Members of the Albany High’s Student Help Desk were instrumental in getting the project off the ground, particularly seniors Hidayet Chowdhury, Nadav Asal and Thor Hammer. (You’ll hear Asal’s voice reciting the Pledge of Allegiance when you tune in each morning.)
"I was impressed by their ability to both learn the program and utilize it for their own purposes, pursuing things I hadn't even considered due to their own viewpoint. I feel like the announcements are a way to further the schools communal sense and as it expands it will give people the opportunity to get experience with a journalism and news production atmosphere," Asal said.
The seniors trained the freshmen to use Open Broadcasting Software, a free video streaming app. They also helped create practice sets and showed them the ropes about lighting, running the camera via computer, and using a “green screen” – a technique where a person is filmed in front of a green background that can be digitally replaced with a different background.
Guiding the process throughout were Instructional Technologist Jeremy Dudley and Technology Support Specialist Ron Mattice.
“Working with these three young ladies has been refreshing. Their energy and enthusiasm is infectious,” Mattice said.
Added Dudley, "The positive energy of this group of girls has motivated everyone involved to support this initiative."
Monday is the official kickoff of the broadcast. If you’re not familiar with the announcements, they provide information on everything Falcon ranging from the lunch menu to athletic schedules to club activities to school fundraisers. You can link to the live broadcast here each morning at 8:30 a.m., and if you miss it, you can watch it later.
The freshmen broadcasters look forward to continuing to do the broadcasts, refining the process as they go along.
“We’re going to be here for a while,” Clemens said.
