INNOVATION PROPOSAL

Leaders, Educators, Life-Long Learners,

I propose a question. Do you know your learning style? I would venture to say that most of you are not auditory learners. According to the VARK system, there are four learning styles—visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and reading/writing. Every day, our students come to our campuses and begin their instructional day by receiving essential campus updates, typically known as morning announcements. 

Morning Announcements like your daily news brief are a staple of the K-12 learning day. Without them, how will the campus body synchronize, disseminate information, or widely celebrate that special birthday for those within our campuses? 

For the most part, this portion of the instructional day starts with someone picking up the internal communication system, dialing into the campus-wide intercom, and speaking noteworthy announcements to the staff and student population. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but our instructional days start with an antiquated process. One that lacks engagement and shockingly alienates a large portion of the campus body. Students who do not learn auditorily, students who are not well versed in the English language, whether they are early childhood learners, ESL learners, or students with hearing disabilities. How do we reach those students? Natalia Wisniewska of the Universitat de Barcelona found that the L2 pronunciation of post-intermediate advanced EFL learners can be enhanced by exposure to authentic audiovisual English materials regardless of the chosen learning mode (Wisniewska, 2021). Video presentation accommodates all learning styles using captions, animation, and interactive feedback components. Why are we reliant on a manner that does not offer all students the opportunity to learn to their maximum potential?

We have an excellent opportunity to innovate the delivery process of the elementary morning announcement to enrich the learning experience and the overall communication capabilities within our 34 elementary campuses. Today's students value YouTube, so let's leverage that infatuation! I plan to innovate the delivery of morning announcements for the Elementary setting by delivering a template that closely mimics the delivery style of a high-quality YouTube content creator in hopes of engaging elementary learning in ways never before seen.

To address this opportunity, I plan to build upon the voiceover mentality but implement the content via a live-streamed or prerecorded video content medium and forgo utilizing the internal intercom system. This innovative way to deliver content will cater to all learners, including those with listening disabilities.

I propose to provide all elementary campuses with a segmented iMovie template that they could use to deliver their daily campus updates via live streaming or web-hosted. This template would allow campus content creators to alter the daily content with little custom creation.

The default template segment layout will revolve around the 2-3 minutes format and includes the following topics:

• Introduction

• Honor the nation

• Moment of Silence 

• Weather Update

• Lunch Menu

• Character Trait of the Month (Counselors)

• Thought of the Day

• Heart Health QOD or Physical Education Challenge Update

• STAAR Math and Science Question of the Day

• Calendar Update

• School Closeout Theme

There are several benefits to this recommended solution:

1. Students of all learning styles will feel included in the daily updates.

2. Campus leaders will have the opportunity to present themselves to the entirety of their campus population every day.

3. Campus leaders will have a platform to reiterate safety measures without calling an assembly.

4. Students' engagement surrounding the campus environment, activities, and culture will vastly improve. 

To succeed in this project, I will need 2-3 minutes of daily instructional time to present the daily program. The requested time will replace the current model used to deliver announcement updates. I am asking campus personnel to contribute to the daily announcements for the segments listed. I also request that we institute a media lab at each campus outfitted with lighting, a green screen, furniture, microphones, and a camera system to aid staff and students in recording the necessary content needed if other means are unavailable. Students benefit substantially from in-house video-related content as it is a powerful student engagement tool. 

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Very Respectfully,