SHOW TOPIC
2021-22 Program of Studies: Video Production/Film Courses with Mr. Dan McKosky
SPECIAL GUEST
Mr. Dan McKosky, Seneca Valley Senior High School Video and Media Teacher
Dan McKosky is in his fourteenth year at Seneca Valley. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Video Production and a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Ohio University as well as a Certificate of Advanced Study in English and Communication Education from the University of Pittsburgh. He teaches various film, video and animation classes and is the co-sponsor of the SVTV club and television station.
IN THIS EPISODE, WE WILL REVIEW
•Giving students an outlet for their creativity
•21st century skills
•Authentic audiences
USEFUL INFORMATION
www.svsd.net/POS
SHOW TOPIC
2021-22 Program of Studies: Video Production/Film Courses with Mr. Dan McKosky
SPECIAL GUEST
Mr. Dan McKosky, Seneca Valley Senior High School Video and Media Teacher
Dan McKosky is in his fourteenth year at Seneca Valley. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Video Production and a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Ohio University as well as a Certificate of Advanced Study in English and Communication Education from the University of Pittsburgh. He teaches various film, video and animation classes and is the co-sponsor of the SVTV club and television station.
IN THIS EPISODE, WE WILL REVIEW
•Giving students an outlet for their creativity
•21st century skills
•Authentic audiences
USEFUL INFORMATION
www.svsd.net/POS
FULL TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)
File Name: Voices E32 Dan McKosky.mp3
File Length: 00:12:06
00:00:02:23 - 00:00:07:25
Introduction: Welcome to Voices, a podcast brought to you by the Seneca Valley School District.
00:00:10:17 - 00:00:21:00
Jeff Krakoff: I'm Jeff Krakoff, and today I'm here with Dan McKosky, who is a video production teacher and also co-director of SVTV at Seneca Valley. Thanks for joining us today.
00:00:21:09 - 00:00:22:17
Dan McKosky: Not a problem. Thanks for having me.
00:00:22:28 - 00:00:30:17
Jeff Krakoff: So give us a little bit of perspective and history on SVTV When did it start? How did it start?
00:00:31:13 - 00:01:03:23
Dan McKosky: So SVTV has been around, I believe, since the late 70s, early 80s actually. And actually one of our a couple of our students a few years ago did a really exhaustive history of SVTV and made a documentary about it, which was really interesting. But the original founder was his name is Dean Marshall, and I believe he was an art teacher. And for several years he worked with the club. And and then it was taken over by Tim Hall, who still works in the district in IT.
00:01:04:03 - 00:01:35:10
Dan McKosky: And they did amazing stuff, set up the infrastructure for us and basically had a club where students could get together and broadcast. Plenty of shows and different types of events throughout the year, sports, district events, I'm sure they made lots of videos for other people who are looking for their services. And we've kind of continue to continue that tradition. I've been here I've been at Seneca Valley for about 14 years as the director of SVTV for I think 12.
00:01:35:24 - 00:01:48:14
Dan McKosky: And we've sort of evolved and tried to continue that tradition of of broadcasting as much as we can and giving an outlet for sports, for academics, for
00:01:50:18 - 00:01:58:02
Dan McKosky: concerts and music and items like that. And then, of course, we have the whole class side, which is separate from the broadcasting side.
00:01:58:18 - 00:02:12:18
Jeff Krakoff: So from everything you're saying, it's definitely a service to the community at-large if they want to see events, sporting events, performances. But let's focus on the students. What's in it for them to get involved in SVTV?
00:02:13:07 - 00:02:50:07
Dan McKosky: Well, it's not something we think about right away. But I would honestly I would say the thing that really sticks out to me the most is, is friendship and camaraderie. That is something that we think more about the technical skill. And there is, of course, a lot of that. But I will say that over the years, one of my proudest moments, as far as the after school activities is seeing kids who maybe didn't feel like they had a place kind of fit in here and really have a great a great time meeting people because you're kind of thrown into it and you have to problem solve.
00:02:50:09 - 00:03:18:21
Dan McKosky: You have to talk to the people next to you. There's communication is key. And I find that a lot of times the bonds that come throughout that are really, really amazing and nice in addition to, of course, like I said, the problem-solving aspect and the technical literacy and and actually providing a service for someone and being accountable to the community, not just for me, but to have your product out there and for to know that people will be watching. So we have to be on our do our best work.
00:03:19:12 - 00:03:25:20
Jeff Krakoff: I imagine it's also for kids with a creative bent. It's a great outlet for that.
00:03:27:00 - 00:03:58:18
Dan McKosky: Definitely, yeah, so we we get all types of students and and again, the the after-school club, the broadcast side of it is a little bit different from the classes, but there are students who excel in both in both venues, the classes and broadcasting different events, too. But yes, we get all sorts of creativity in multiple ways. So even the kids who think, well, I'm not I'm not much of an artist, I'm not a visual person, they find them flexing their creativity skills all the time.
00:03:59:16 - 00:04:15:05
Jeff Krakoff: So there's a place for people with creativity and they may already have some type of video skills, but it sounds like a lot more. What about just somebody who's organized and a problem solver, somebody that's a project manager? Are there places for pretty much any type of student?
00:04:16:09 - 00:04:47:08
Dan McKosky: Absolutely. We we always hope that we will get students who are in our classes, but also doing the broadcasts and vice versa and part of the club. But that doesn't always work out that way. They have other schedules, they're busy, they've got other commitments or they play sports. So we do have kids that come on and help us and are really good at, say, tech, technical directing or directing the show. They're really good at organizing. They're really good at communication, or they want to learn more about those things.
00:04:47:10 - 00:05:21:04
Dan McKosky: And even though we don't have them making videos or doing the creative side of it in other ways, they still are great at that. And that is something we see in our classes as well. There are kids who are sometimes hesitant to take the classes because they think, well, I'm again, I'm not an artist, I'm not creative, but we try to cater to different sensibilities. So creativity, I always say in my introductory class, we we focus, I try to cater to the class, to our artists, to people interested in business, to people who are interested in writers and people who like performing.
00:05:21:12 - 00:05:24:12
Dan McKosky: So it's not just one or the other. You can you can find something here.
00:05:24:21 - 00:05:38:28
That's great. So an education. People talk a lot about providing and teaching 21st century skills. How does how do your classes how does getting involved with television feed into that?
00:05:40:00 - 00:06:14:17
Dan McKosky: I think in almost every way it is, it fits in with that idea of 21st century skills, because we are we we emphasize creativity, which is something we don't think about quite as much at the high school level. We talk a whole lot about technical literacy, problem solving, understanding how technology works, and maybe maybe sometimes I don't have the answer. So doing research, finding the answer for yourself and and and being able to communicate what the problem is, being able to express yourself visually.
00:06:14:19 - 00:06:41:15
Dan McKosky: So we, you know I would love for every student to be confident, to speak in front of a crowd, but not everyone can do that. But if you can express yourself visually, that's almost as important nowadays as anything else. I also find that, as I said, communication is huge, teamwork is huge. Even media literacy and understanding the messages that we're receiving, where we're receiving them from and understanding what is a valid source and what isn't.
00:06:42:21 - 00:07:05:08
Jeff Krakoff: More important, every week we move forward. So if I'm a student, I can obviously learn skills. You mentioned the idea of friendship, camaraderie. I can earn a grade. But what about the idea of I'm trying to build a portfolio, whether it's to get into college or even down the road professionally? What kind of opportunities are there for students?
00:07:05:15 - 00:07:37:29
Dan McKosky: Definitely. So for those students who plan on going into film and media in some way, we do have, so I teach seven different classes. Six of those are production classes. One of them is more of a theory class. But I found in a number of classes students have been able to build portfolio pieces. And one of them that comes to mind because we just finished our screening last week was our documentary class. So our students take an idea from from just an idea.
00:07:38:11 - 00:08:19:15
Dan McKosky: They find professionals and experts in their field. They conduct interviews, they shoot footage for it, and they piece it together into something really professional. And that one, I think, is something that a lot of high school students don't typically do. So when they can say that on a on a demo reel or on a resume, I made this 20 minute professional documentary. You can look at it, you can watch it. That's that can be pretty impressive. Other skills we do we we do two different broadcast classes. And I think that is a skill, too, even though we're not like a like a big mainstream news studio, we do have all those positions that students would would go through in a in a bigger setting.
00:08:19:23 - 00:08:49:29
Dan McKosky: And they have to get used to working in a crew and they actually have a product at the end of it, whether it's the morning announcements or our broadcast news show, they have they have something there to work with. We do We have lots of projects, hands on projects in every class. As I said, aside from the one film studies class where students would have done things as diverse as stop motion animation to news packages, to narrative films. So they'd have a lot of variety there.
00:08:50:11 - 00:08:56:23
Jeff Krakoff: That's awesome. So you mentioned a documentary was just completed and screened. What was the topic, I'm curious?
00:08:57:04 - 00:09:31:26
Dan McKosky: Well, there were I had nine students and every student picks something, pick something different. And as long as it it's something that we find can be done, they're free to pursue whatever topic they want. So we have we had topics all over the place. And if you would watch the program of the four or five document, we did it over two nights, four or five documentaries together. It's such an interesting mix. So on night one, we talked about the benefits of studying abroad. We had one about the future of theater and how the pandemic has affected theater audiences and theater performers.
00:09:32:24 - 00:09:59:10
Dan McKosky: We have one about urban sprawl. We have had one about Israel and Palestine. We had one about working in a fast food restaurant during a pandemic. So there's sort of all over the place and and everyone is approached with the idea that there's like a surface story. And then there's a deeper story. And that's our way, that we try to try to get people interested, even if they see a topic and say, I'm not really interested in that. We always want to try to appeal to the audience and get people to watch.
00:09:59:21 - 00:10:05:24
Jeff Krakoff: All right. So if anybody listening wants to see any of the documentaries or they out there for viewing and then where can they go?
00:10:05:29 - 00:10:24:03
Dan McKosky: Yes, they are. We had we had two screenings. They were virtual and they were live. But of course, those are now live on our YouTube channel. And it's YouTube, dotcom, Seneca Valley TV, all one word. And they should be the top two, the last two videos as of now on that list.
00:10:24:24 - 00:10:39:12
Jeff Krakoff: Well, what you're doing some great stuff there. So if a student wants to get involved, I know where we're getting the point of registering for classes pretty soon. That's obviously one thing. But if they want to get involved on the SVTV side, how do they go about doing?
00:10:40:11 - 00:11:18:12
Dan McKosky: Well, as far as SVTV goes, like everything else, this is a different year, as you can imagine. So we are doing we are still doing events and actually tonight we have swimming. So we're doing the swimming senior night they are, a little bit smaller than normal, but we still welcome we still welcome anyone. And there's no fee to participate. Unlike a lot of clubs, we typically, in a normal year, students would stay after we would feed them, we would set up kids would have time to do their homework, or they could come back later right before the show. But it gives us a good time to kind of go through the show and work through the problems and kind of get people up to speed, because sometimes they'll say, I've never done this before.
00:11:18:14 - 00:11:48:24
Dan McKosky: I'm a little nervous. It's no big deal. People who have never been here before do great jobs on night one. So basically all they would need to do is just is just find me and talk to me or our our co-director, Janice Plutnicki. And we're available. I'm in the SVTV studio most of the day. They can email me, they can find me on TEAMS and I try to get my students to spread the word as much as possible too just so other students will maybe like to find out about it.
00:11:49:07 - 00:11:53:14
Jeff Krakoff: All right. So that's Dan McKoskey, thank you so much. And keep up the great work.
00:11:53:16 - 00:11:54:21
Dan McKosky: Thank you. Thank you so much.
00:11:54:27 - 00:11:55:27
Jeff Krakoff: All right. Take care.
00:11:56:09 - 00:11:56:24
Dan McKosky: You too.