Homegrown student TV spotlights Hamilton HS
BluTV helps teens learn digital skills, explore possible careers.
HAMILTON – A growing and popular media production class at Hamilton High School is now celebrating a decade of success.
The BluTV program, which borrows from the high school’s Big Blue nickname, is helping teens explore possible careers in media production while learning the latest in digital skills useful for many other professions.
An elective class for Hamilton students grades 10-12, the program in recent years has ramped up its focus on spotlighting a wide variety of student and school activities while share their news features for both the school and public communities, said Mike Neri, a veteran of nearly 25 years of teaching at the high school.
“We produce videos about all the good things going on in Hamilton,” Neri said.
“BluTV has been around since 2013 and we are actually in our 10th season. When we began the channel, we were primarily responsible for daily video announcements that aired within the school building. But over time, our scope and focus has changed, but promotion of great things happening at Hamilton High School is still our primary focus.”
The BluTV videos are available to anyone on YouTube and their production, editing and distribution provides 40-60 students each school year instructional exposure and skill-set training for their futures.
Viewers can also subscribe to the BluTV YouTube channel. Their wide-ranging productions include school sports, theatre, musical events, student and staff profiles and community news features.
“Media production is applicable to a number of career fields and jobs. And I try to frame the course in a way that teaches media production as a creative outlet
that connects to any number of personal and professional interests,” he said.
“Most of the students in the program are not going into (media production) as a career field. Media production has definitely become more democratized in the sense that it is much easier to produce and publish videos than it was when I was in high school. Because of this, I see more and more homegrown video productions making their way into diverse fields from real estate to small business marketing.”
Neri said the city schools have “invested a great deal into our program by providing the recording and editing equipment that we use. And I’ve also purchased a lot of equipment and set pieces on my own. We also use our personal cell phones to record video for the channel.”
According to Neri, the nature of some other classes often calls for a traditional and relatively passive process of learning. But in the BluTV program, the teens are learning while doing.
So their creativity “sky rockets,” he said.
“The creativity level and the problem solving … all of those skills become really important because they are making something from scratch, that is of their own mind and their own creativity,” Neri said.
Hamilton senior Devon Adams appreciates the class.
“It’s an amazing program for everybody in the school … and having experience in doing video stuff is really important and useful in life,” said Adams.