The Jaguar Times had no fear as they transitioned into eLearning

by Makenzie Hilling, Student Life editor

The following story was written by a student on the staff of The Jaguar Times as part of Hilliard Bradley High School’s Journalism Production course.

The Jaguar Times brainstorms on Zoom for broadcast in elearning. Photo by MaKenzie Hilling.

The switch to elearning was hard on all students and class settings. Being at home is not an easy thing to do when you’re trying to learn. The Jaguar Times have had to face this common enemy and still give news to students from home. Although this transition has been hard, The Jag Times members have actually succeeded.

As a member of The Jaguar Times, I asked my colleagues how they thought online broadcasting went. When asked, Anna Alford (12) said, “I think it gave me a new appreciation for being creative. I feel like online broadcasting was easier to create than the ones in class.” Anna also thinks that, “being forced to communicate ideas also gave me more insight to the other members and made me feel more involved.” Anna was a part time anchor and a staff writer, but the next member is actually our news editor. Alana Bridges (10) elaborated on the difficulty of creative broadcasting during elearning, “this year has been very hard without people at school to participate,” however Alana feels that, “elearning was a great opportunity to see people’s strengths, we had more people editing and on camera which allowed for a lot of fun segments.” Although the Jags have been locked in quarantine, we have been able to produce high quality news with the extra time we had.

The head editor for The Jaguar Times is Miss Braemer. She reviews everything before it is sent out. Even though it was tough on the students to produce news, figuring out what to do was a very stressful time for Miss Braemer. The many unknowns made figuring out broadcast extremely difficult, but she said, “I think we did fantastic, I am super impressed.” She then followed up with, “I was very nervous since this was our first broadcast from home, but I was blown away.” Miss Braemer compliments the members of The Jag Times for their efforts and contributions to each segment. She continues, “I absolutely think we were forced to be creative and think outside the box which helped our news.” With now being back in school, the broadcast quality could potentially go back to normal. But, Miss Braemer mentioned, we may be “incorporating” online mentality into in school broadcasting to keep the production value on the same stride that was made from home.

A couple students like Laura Powell (12), Stella Thress (11), and ReAnne Daye (12) have made comments about this online news. Although the news only aired twice a week, Laura Powell said, “I’ve actually watched every online news you guys sent out,” as she usually doesn’t when in class, and said “I thought they were really different, but in a good way!” The quarantined news seemed to get more hype and exposure than the regular in school broadcast. Stella Thress mentioned, “I loved the creativity that was used for online news, it looked like they were really trying and it caught my attention.” It seems like students took an interest in the online version of broadcasting. Even ReAnne Daye said, “I actually enjoyed watching the news from home, it just seemed like it was centered more around student interests.” Even though we’re back in school, broadcasting can still be as fun and creative as it was during quarantine. The extra time and effort put in will definitely show when more students finally start getting involved in an activity made to benefit them.