#MediaMonday: Pop-Up Contests
Good Morning Everyone,
Today marks a new day for STN. This year, it has been my privilege to take part in bringing STN members all new content including the contest that I get to announce today.
With the success of the HorrorFest last year, we are taking that idea and creating quarterly contests called "Pop-Ups". These contests will be official STN events but will exist outside of the normal pool of Challenges and Nationals. The idea behind these is to give students something that is new, collaborative, and fun while offering opportunities to learn and grow. The fun thing about pop-ups: you don’t know what you're getting until the details drop!
So, without any further delay, here is the first pop-up contest for 2021-2022:
A COLLABORATIVE PODCAST CONTEST!
The Collaborative Podcast is unlike anything STN has ever offered before and it takes a total readjustment when it comes to what defines a school contest.
Here are the details:
Schools will register teams up to 5 students before Sept. 3rd.
Schools will receive a registration notice from STN before Sept 6th.
STN will take all teams and mix them up and randomly pair them with 3-4 other schools. This pairing is the official team!
This means that, hypothetically, a team might consist of a school from Texas, Montana, California, and New York with schools of all sizes.
Teams will receive contact information for your other teammates, allowing for collaboration before receiving the "Prompt" on Sept. 6th.
On Sept. 6, teams will receive their inspiration prompt, giving them everything they need to start writing a podcast show.
On or before Sept. 17th, schools will have to collaborate remotely with their team schools, planning out an entire podcast show!
Then, the final product will:
Include a story segment from each school on the team
Be anchored by the team, guiding the audience from story to story
Be free of audio mistakes
Include locationally-relevant NAT sounds
Include royalty-free music and/or sound effects
Call attention to the geographical location of the journalist, but not school information.
Be no longer than 10 minutes in total length
Be an audio file no larger than 350MB
The final podcast will be rated on its effectiveness to follow the prompt, on good practices of audio production, and on your ability to include all members of your team. Entries that do not feel collaborative will not be scored as well as entries that embrace the collaborative workflow.
Finally, (and this is super cool), awards will be given to the winning entry, not the winning school. This means that every entry represent the schools involved, not any one educational entity or geographical location. How cool is that!?!
We wanted to start the year by breaking down barriers of location, ability and experience by bringing our students together in a whole new way. If we are truly a "student network", what better way to prove it than this?
Also, for all of our teachers, we are creating a totally new type of lesson videos and plans to go along with each pop-up contest this year! These lesson videos are called STN Crash Courses and the first is about using your phone to record a voiceover. Follow us on social media for the videos and links.
Check out the contest at www.studenttelevision.com and reach out with any questions that you have!
Talk to you soon,
Josh Cantrell