High Five for Teachers
“Red Canyon Alternative High School has had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with High Five Access Media in a number of ways. High Five has offered support in building the curriculum for Red Canyon's first ever Video Yearbook program, they have hosted students from both campuses at their studio, and have provided mentorship for both students and educators involved in the program.
"Besides creating memorable experiences for students from Red Canyon, Casey, Brett, and J.K. have been foundational for our school with their technical expertise, journalistic perspectives, and genuine camaraderie. High Five Access Media is an enormous asset to our school specifically and our community at large!”
- David Hanson, Teacher, Red Canyon High School
How Can We Help?
Are you an Eagle County teacher looking for resources for your classroom? High Five offers support, professional development and expert guidance to teachers who want to incorporate film, video, journalism, social media, digital storytelling, marketing or other media studies into their curriculum.
Interested? Please contact casey@highfivemedia.org for more information on any of these opportunities.
Field Trips
Bring your class to High Five Access Media! Field trips can be anywhere from 1 to 3 hours long and here are some of the hands-on activities we organize.
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Studio Tour: We’ll show students our production stage with 3-point studio lighting and live control room. We’ll also show off our collection of gear available for free checkout and the equipment that makes Channel 5 run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
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Basic Workshops: We offer an abridged version of our flagship workshops: Mobile Video, Camera Basics or Editing Basics. Incorporating video into your classes can give students creative freedom and new tools to express themselves, and as the pros, we can do the teaching for you. You may even learn something new yourself!
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Filming Activities: We can use our cameras, equipment and video production knowledge to create engaging activities that help students develop critical skills for the worlds of journalism, filmmaking, storytelling and beyond. For example, an exercise in interviewing and asking follow-up questions lets students think creatively to ask their peers something silly. They won’t even realize they’re practicing curiosity and developing active listening skills because they’re having so much fun.
Guest Speakers
Want your students to hear it from the professionals? Here are just two examples of past presentations we’ve given.
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Career Development Presentation: Let us guide your students to understand what steps they can (and should!) take at each point in their high school career to become a media maker. Whether they want to become a journalist, filmmaker, documentary producer, broadcast anchor, sports broadcaster, cinematographer, photographer, or even a social media content creator, we have the knowledge and the resources to direct them towards the right path.
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Digital Marketing Strategy and Job Overview: Show your students what it’s like on a day-to-day and big picture level in the marketing field. A reliable and growing career path, marketing can be an ideal field for digital natives who appreciate innovation, analytical decision making, and storytelling. We’ll share our knowledge and unique perspectives as a video-first organization.
On-Site Workshops
We’ve also worked beyond the classroom with organizations such as Mountain Youth and YouthPower 365 to bring video production education to extracurricular activities.
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Video for Social Media: Harness the power of your students’ favorite accessory: their phones. By learning simple skills like the Rule of Thirds and shot composition, they’ll start to think about how they can use media to represent themselves and stories or issues that sit near to them. With TikTok’s undeniable stronghold on today’s teens, you can bring in our media-literate and hip education team to help them develop critical skills to post and scroll responsibly.
Professional Development & Curriculum Support
Take Video Production Workshops to learn how to teach video yourself! Workshops are designed to give you a foundation in the three stages of video production, a.k.a all the skills you need to create your own short film or interview video from start to finish. Teachers have worked with us over the course of several months to a full year on curriculum development. We will also share our curriculum material, which you can use to teach your students.
Student Production Support
We also provide live-streaming support to student-led productions such as the Battle Mountain High School band and choir concerts each winter and spring. Students will run cameras and direct their own production, and High Five staff is there to help troubleshoot and ensure their work gets shared with audiences near and far with the power of social media.
Video Distribution
If you’ve made some videos in your classes, send the files to High Five and we will play them on Channel 5, Live on Five and our website. Ensure that our community can see and appreciate your students’ hard work, like Eagle Valley High School’s weekly EVTV episodes that cover a wide range of issues both in the school and in the Vail Valley.