- When you think of public education,
one of the first things that people
usually don't think about is innovation.
But fortunately all it takes is a few people,
a good idea, and enough people working together
to make that idea happen
and you can do some super cool stuff.
Right now I am in the broadcast studio
of my classroom where I teach.
The lighting is sort of weird,
but I really like the way that the set looks
without the lights turned on
so I decided to go with that.
I've made quite a few videos about this space
and the set and how I built it
and how I use it to stream to YouTube,
but there's more than what happens in this room
that's worth streaming.
Especially when it's the end of the school year
and it's graduation season
and not everybody can either make it out
or get a ticket to be a part of their students' graduation.
So several years ago at my previous school,
which was in a different district,
we started hiring a company to do livestreams
of our graduations.
And what that company would do,
is they would get a light stand,
kind of like this.
They would get a Go-Pro
and put it on top of the light stand,
kind of like this
and these light stands go super duper tall
and they would just set up a Go-Pro like this
in the middle of the football stadium
where the graduation takes place,
and that would be the livestream.
It'd be one shot, one camera.
They would mix the audio from the soundboard
to this video signal so it had really good audio
and then just this one shot
and then they would stream it out
and people could watch it.
The thing was though that company charged us
over $5,000 a year to do that.
We started doing this in 2013, 2014.
So times were a little different,
streaming was different.
Obviously they handled the whole set up on the computer end
but realistically we're paying $5,000
for a Go-Pro to be set up
in the middle of a field for three hours.
I feel like we could do better.
And fortunately when I came to my current district
a couple years ago, I started experimenting
with doing our stream through YouTube
and then our district's technology department
was also interested in looking
how to livestream the graduations,
so we came up with an idea
that was significantly better than this.
What we decided to do was make an investment
in equipment that my students and I
could keep in our classroom for the school year
and at the end of the school year
that equipment would be used
to livestream the high school graduation.
With four traditional high schools,
if we had wanted to do livestreams like I just mentioned,
it would have cost us $20,000 a year as a district.
So what we decided to do was take $20,000
and invest in some equipment.
Some cameras, switchers, cables, headsets,
all of the gear we would need to do our own multi-camera,
high-definition, really good, slick looking livestreams.
So in that first year to livestream four high schools,
instead of paying a company we took that $20,000
and bought equipment and then we took care of it ourselves.
So in a way it was kind of a wash.
It cost the same amount it would have anyway.
But then the following year
we did those same four high schools,
but we didn't have to pay anything
because we now already had the equipment
so in theory we actually saved $20,000.
This year, which is now the third year
that we've been doing these livestreams.
In addition to the four traditional high schools
in our district, we're also doing livestreams
for the three alternative high schools.
So that's seven livestreams total,
which means this years livestreams
using a traditional company like the ones we dealt with
in the past would have been $35,000.
We had the first year of investment
and now the two years of doing our own livestreams.
That's $55,000 that we didn't have to spend
and our product is even better.
It looks better, it sounds better,
and it gives students the opportunity
to actually do these things themselves.
And kids of course, rather than a company that's hired,
are gonna have a lot more fun
and be a lot more interested
in doing a livestream for their own school.
And the way this really works,
so if there's any schools or districts
that are kind of trying to figure this out,
the way we do it is mainly through collaborating
with our districts technology department.
They kind of spearhead the whole thing
because there's so many network issues and setup issues,
so they're the leaders as far as setting everything up
and making sure it's working.
And then we have our students come in
and actually work the events
and then they can help with the tear down and the clean up.
Of the four traditional high schools,
my students do two of the graduations,
and two of the other schools each handle their own.
And then our districts technology department
handles the three graduations
from the alternative education high schools.
So it is still a ton of work, it's not easy.
The set up takes hours, the tear down takes hours.
Sometimes things can go wrong,
but fortunately we have a great technology department
that knows how to plan ahead,
knows how to solve problems,
and more importantly is actually interested in doing this
and because they actually care about it
and think that it's worth doing,
then it gets done better and so everybody wins.
From the district in terms of money,
to the technology department
getting to be innovative with technology,
to me as a teacher getting to be
a part of doing something innovative
and then finally to students throughout our entire district
who get to be a part of something super cool,
which is livestreaming their graduations.
When I was working with the district
and we were trying to figure out
what would be best for graduations
we basically took the idea of this set up
and just tried to do our best to make it mobile.
I don't want to focus too much on specific equipment,
but I'll tell you what we use and what works really well.
So we basically built the whole broadcast around
this switcher right here, which is the Black Magic.
Which is the Black Magic Television Studio Pro,
and this is a really awesome switcher.
There's a software version of it
but the hardware version
with these physical buttons is really, it's kind of key.
This can take eight different inputs four HDMI,
four SDI, and of course,
you can get Black Magic has converters
to convert any kind of signal into any other kind of signal
and we use tons and tons of converters
to get all the signals where they need to go.
But the whole point is you take all your cameras,
and we're using these Canon XA, the little camcorders,
which are great, like the quality is awesome.
And we just have those connected via very,
very long SDI cables, so that's kind of the first thing.
I would recommend getting some sort of camera
that has an SDI output.
The physical switcher is great
because it sends one output signal,
that output signal goes through another converter,
it looks kinda like this, and goes into OBS
and then OBS, which is free software,
sends out the stream to YouTube, Facebook,
wherever you wanna stream.
It can handle any platform.
And of course out in the field we have a monitor
that has all these right here.
You have all your inputs,
and then you have your preview window,
which is what's next,
and your program window which is what's currently live,
so you know this is what's live, this is what's coming up,
and then you cut to it, you bring it up.
We also have some wireless headsets
so students can actually be talking,
the director can talk to the camera operators
and tell them what kind of shots to get,
when they're gonna be live,
which is kind of a necessity
if you're doing a multi-camera live broadcast,
but as far as teaching goes,
it's actually a amazing way
to build students' communication skills too.
For the livestreams we do still hire an outside company
that does the audio because they set up the whole PA system
and then we just take an output from their board
into our switcher, this has two XLR inputs.
I do think before we go out there that it's worth mentioning
that since we did move from a Go-Pro on a stick
to five cameras that the amount of work
and communication increased exponentially.
Because now you have the beginning
of the graduation ceremony
where you've got speakers,
so you have principals and valedictorians
and salutatorians and public officials
and superintendents giving their talks
that the students need to film.
You've got performances by bands and choirs.
You've got presentations of colors.
All kind of different stuff happening.
You've got audience reaction shots
and it's really important
that everyone is able to communicate those things
really clearly and really effectively to one another
and then when the actual graduation starts,
the seniors are getting their diplomas from multiple stages
so you're kind of cutting back and forth
knowing that in the split second it takes
for someone to get their thing and smile that
that could be the whole reason
that somebody's actually watching your livestream
is to see that one specific moment
and so you don't wanna miss it.
(upbeat music)
(fireworks exploding)
What I can emphasize for anybody in any working environment,
whether it's a school or not,
is that there are oftentimes opportunities out there
to do things that are different
and to do things that might be a bit innovative
and sometimes the reason they're not getting done isn't
because you're not allowed to do them,
it's just because no one's done them yet
and sometimes it can be really simple and obvious.
Like, hey, $5,000 for this is a bad deal
and other times it might be a little more complicated
but I think the key is always finding new ways to sort of
re-evaluate why you're doing something
and how you might do it differently.
And that's not only gonna help you continue to grow,
but it's also gonna keep you from getting bored
in your career or your job or your life.
I always kinda struggle to balance my teaching life
with the stuff that I talk about on my channel,
but they are really connected in a lot of ways,
since I'm a digital media teacher,
and my channel focuses so much on digital media.
They are really connected.
I did put together a whole playlist of like,
"My life as a teacher."
And I think it's really cool to see what can be done
when you're in a supportive,
collaborative, innovative environment,
so that's a super cool playlist to check out.
(upbeat music)