Hello, my name is Paige Naab. During my sophomore year, I have been a reporter for WACS News. Although the WACS News team is fun and very exciting, next year I plan to study Animal Science at BOCES. I enrolled in Multimedia Production because I wanted to learn more about the school’s news site and the news world in general.

The quality of my work has improved greatly. At the beginning of the year I was very shy and nervous to film someone, especially someone that I didn’t quite know. My work was shaky and unorganized and I didn’t quite understand what I was doing. As the end of the year was approaching, I realized that my work was better than I thought it could be. I was more confident in my skills and being prepared to film people that I may not know. I believe my best project is the first “Mr. Mikulski’s First 100 Days” video. I had a proper intro and outro and I had all of the necessary titles needed. Also, I was able to work with the Intermediate School Principal, Mr. Mikulski, and film him signing the very important “executive order”. I was happy to find a fun way to announce the creation of the Alden Intermediate School twitter account. Mr. Mikulski was very cheerful to be apart of WACS News and I’m grateful that I was able to meet him. I believe my worst project is the “Resolution Check-Ins”. I didn’t have any intro or outro and I did not use titles. It was very rushed and unorganized. I didn’t have enough time to film all of the teachers either. The project didn’t quite fit the expectations that I held for myself. Through these experiences I’ve learned a lot about the technical side of WACS News. At the beginning of the year I learned how to edit videos in iMovie and throughout the year I’ve been improving how quickly I edit my videos. I’ve also learned the proper writing techniques to make a story out of nothing and to make the story sound interesting, even when it shouldn’t be. I’ll be sure to hold on to these techniques for future assignments.

Some advice I would give to future students would be to manage you time well. You only have roughly two weeks to film, edit, write and article, and hand it in on time. You will definitely need to stay after for advisement for some of your projects. The challenges I’ve faced were very minor, some being technical and some being situational. The few technical errors I had were do to microphones not working. The situational errors I encountered involved people canceling interviews or not getting back to me at all. At the beginning of the year I was not prepared for the class. I thought it would only be filming and putting videos up on the WACS News website. I could’ve asked someone how the school news team operated before I jumped in blindly. I think that if I had gotten insight before I joined Multimedia Production I would’ve been better prepared.

I believe being apart of WACS News has sharpened my time management skills and I’ve been able to focus better as well. WACS News does a lot for the school and community. It is a fun source of information and funny topics. It’s a cool source to learn about students and events in our school and community. My overall experience in this class was very positive. I had a lot of fun filming and editing, and I’m glad I was able to meet new people and even some new teachers. Everyone in the class is super nice and everyone gets along very well with each other. Over the course of the year I’ve learned that I should socialize more and hang out with more people. I don’t step out of my comfort zone enough and I am very awkward with people I don’t know well.