Ville Platte High School offers new program to teach students digital media

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By: TONY MARKS
Associate Editor

A new curriculum program is coming to the campus of Ville Platte High School that is designed to gain students’ interest in the media and to keep more students in school.
“It’s all about digital media because al lot of things are going online these days,” stated the school’s principal Melanie Miller. “We’re going to focus on the writing first. We incorporated a journalism class, and Nick Jagneaux is going to teach that.”
The journalism class, according to Miller, will give the juniors and seniors the foundation teaching writing techniques. “They’ll start off initially doing stories around the school,” said the principal. “They’ll cover athletics and new events that are going on at school. Then, they’ll come up with a newsletter that we’ll put online.”
Miller said that 20 students have signed up for the elective class next year. She also said that the classes will move also move on to different types of media “just to get them into that avenue because we’re always going to need journalists.”
“I’m hoping to reach out to KVPI to teach the students how to do radio broadcasts and radio prompts for ads,” Miller added.
“I think it’s going to be really good for the kids, and it’s something new. Eventually, we’ll move into music production where they’ll learn how to record music and do songs.”
Others parts of the program will be shooting videos, making commercials, and doing news broadcasts.
Miller’s larger plan is to bring back the school’s newspaper and to have digital access. “We can do it digitally online so family in other states can still get the newspaper and see Ville Platte High’s newspaper.”
The principal called the new curriculum historic because “this is something they’ve never had.” She concluded, “I’m hoping that it just grows each year, and I think it will. When they start seeing the work that they’re doing by doing their own newscasts and showing it to the student body, I’m hoping it motivates them to stay in school and to further their education.”