WCTV's 'Wareham On Demand' helps students showcase videos, projects

Apr 2, 2013

Wareham High School is on demand!

New software provided to the school by Wareham Community Television allows students to share projects and videos on a YouTube-esque platform, and gives teachers the opportunity to share quiz notes, lessons, and more.

The system is called Wareham On Demand, and is powered by internet broadcasting software called EduVision. WCTV pays all of the fees associated with the service.

"We want to be a partnership with the schools," said Christian Fernandes, WCTV's Education Coordinator. "We want their programming to come back to us."

Parents, fellow students, and anyone on the internet can check out Wareham's videos.

Teachers are going to be getting up to speed on the software this month, though some are already using it.

Tech-savvy English teacher John Wilson has uploaded videos he calls "Quiz Notes," which give students everything they need to study for his classes' weekly quizzes.

A computer program records notes that he projects onto a board, as well as questions asked by students.

"Everything that happens in the class is picked up on the computer and recorded," Wilson explained. "A student who is out [absent] can get the notes, but not just the notes -- everything in class."

Wilson has been making the videos for some time, but said that the Wareham On Demand portal may be a new home for them.

"I had been posting on the Ning network," said Wilson. Ning is a social networking website on which users can build their own communities about a subject. "I'm going to try posting on the Wareham [On Demand] network ... and see if that works differently, if that works better."

Wareham High School Principal Scott Palladino said he's excited about the software, and noted that teachers are able to control what gets uploaded onto the site.

"It was something that we thought would be great to showcase a lot of the students' work, and it's also a site that we have control over," Palladino said. "When [the students] put things on YouTube, sometimes people make inappropriate comments."

Palladino said he hopes teachers embrace the technology.

"The teachers can use it as an enhancement or supplementation of their curriculum," he said. "I would envision, in another year or two ... it's really going to be a huge enhancement of the high school experience."

Fernandes says he is working on getting the high school teachers on board. Then, he plans to get teachers using the software in all of Wareham's schools.

"My main goal is to at least have one [teacher] in each of the departments in the schools using it," Fernandes said. That way, the portal will be able to provide "a sense of what's going on in the schools."

Check out Wareham On Demand by visiting http://warehamondemand.eduvision.tv, or by visiting the Wareham Public Schools website, www.warehamps.org, and clicking "Wareham On Demand."