Broken Arrow school works on C-Span video project

Some Broken Arrow middle school students are learning first hand the devastation caused by Oklahoma's wildfires. They're producing a mini-documentary for C-Span. It's for a contest called

Monday, January 30th 2006, 10:28 am

By: News On 6

Some Broken Arrow middle school students are learning first hand the devastation caused by Oklahoma's wildfires. They're producing a mini-documentary for C-Span. It's for a contest called "Studentcam".

News on 6 reporter Rick Wells decided to stop by and see how they're doing.

Jack Hamilton's 8th grade American History class at Sequoyah Middle School in Broken Arrow Is producing the mini-documentary project. Jack Hamilton: "It was a contest with C-Span."

Students must produce a documentary on a current events issue, gather information, video tape interviews, and edit the final project. There are four groups; each one has a different issue, smoking bans, three strikes law and prayer in schools.

Megan Aud and Victoria Johnson are working on. Victoria Johnson: "I was like wildfires.â€ Megan Aud: â€œand we all agreed on wildfires."

They called the News on 6 and asked for some video of wildfires, and then a parent drove them to Collinsville. They shot some video and interviewed the fire chief, now they have to write a script. Megan Aud: "We have to like write a script for like both of them to say and we can't think of anything to write cause he said it all in his interview."

Putting the puzzle together is the hard part. We talked about taking actual quotes and paraphrasing the rest to help weave the story together, kind of like what I am doing right now.

This is the first time one of Hamiltonâ€™s classes has done anything like this. Jack Hamilton: "they are learning to work together as a team." He wants the drafts done by Friday. Jack Hamilton: â€œthen Monday we can show them to us, right."

The mini-documentaries must be mailed to C-Span by the 28th of February.

There are cash prizes for the winners, but Jack Hamilton says the experience the students have gained is the real prize.