Name: Donna Smith and Shannon Prentice
School: St Hilda’s Collegiate School, Dunedin
Digital resource: Hilda’s Hub
Hilda’s Hub: https://hail.to/hildashub/publication/KdH5nLr
Describe the digital resource that you want to be considered for the award:
Hilda’s Hub is a student imagined, developed, run and led multi-facet media hub. Students decide on the stories they want to tell (events, people, social issues) about our school, to share with the school community – local, national and international. They capture video, imagery, write, edit, interview and post all the work. This is supports a cross-curricular focus and a multi-level involvement (students from Y7-13 working together). This serves as a great way to capture ‘life at St Hilda’s’ as the students view it, as opposed to what teachers and administrators share in the weekly newsletter.
Why did you choose to set up this resource?
Our Purpose: Provide an experience for students to engage and contribute to a multi-media platform, designed to give them the opportunity to learn and develop skills in an authentic and meaningful context.
Essentially, we wanted to develop a multi-level, cross curricular project to illustrate to the wide school community how projects like this can work. We wanted to give students the opportunity to highlight skills that they develop in seperate curriculum areas, and encourage the students to share and combine their skills to create a superior product through collaboration. We also wanted to give them the ability to practice their skills in a real-life situation. The range of these skills is vast, from writing, filming, editing, and designing to public speaking and researching and allows for true cross curricular learning to occur. We want the girls to embrace their different insights and perspectives and to value the unique vision that they each possess.
How do you operate and manage the resource?
As lead teachers of this project, we shared a vision (which we called SHC TV) with the whole student body and then students joined the project, in a variety of capacities. Two Y13 students lead the project (which they rebranded Hilda’s Hub) as Creative Directors and then roles as assigned due to strength and/or preference. We have a dedicated google account (email, google drive, youtube channel) to allow work flow. Other students can suggest ideas, contribute media or text through these mediums.
We post ‘articles’ in real time, as events happen, rather than having a ‘due date’ or a ‘publication date’. This is also linked to social media through Facebook, Twitter and we are currently looking at Instagram as another way for students to reach their audience.
What outcomes has it achieved for you and your class?
This has achieved all of our goals. The students have really taken ownership and students at all levels have found leadership skills that they didn’t know they had. They have embraced the attributes of a growth mindset and embrace their failures. We want this to grow as an authentic product, as students reflect on their productions and strive to product a higher level next time.
Hilda’s Hub has been really well received by the school community and students are really enjoying seeing themselves ‘on screen’. The students involved in the project are always suggesting new ideas, such as ‘Human’s of Hilda’s’ which is modelled on the ‘Human’s of New York’ model, and gives students the ability to learn more about the students in their hallways. We also have an International Correspondent – where international students will share information about their home town/country, which has been a great way for international students to reach of and share something of themselves with the domestic students. We are currently investigating how our senior students can gain NCEA credits from their involvement in this initiative.
As a result of the success, we recently presented at the international learning festival ‘ipadpalooza Gold Coast’.
