Albany, CA — Every so often, people wonder if Jeff Castle went a bit overboard. But when asked why he purchased extremely sophisticated hardware and software tools — including Xsan, Final Cut Pro and Power Mac workstations — for Albany High School’s Regional Occupation Program (ROP) classes in video production, Castle has a ready answer: “A high school is the perfect place for efficiency. Where else do the employees show up for only 57 minutes each day?” It’s hard to argue with Castle’s logic. And, since ROP video enrollment has tripled since 2002, it’s hard to argue with his success.
Before Castle assumed his post as director of video and broadcast production at Albany High School, one small class spent the majority of the year producing a video yearbook. But the analog equipment used in the classes was mostly elderly and in ill repair and inspired little creativity.
“The students just weren’t excited about what they were doing,” Castle recalls of his first year. “They’d go out and shoot something that looked like a home movie and then try to edit it on one of the three computers we had. It just wasn’t feasible and the students weren’t motivated to work on their projects.
“They finally told me that they want to make films,” continues Castle. “Ever since then, I’ve been getting rid of the old analog, tape-to-tape stuff and building a cutting-edge digital studio. Thanks to the Mac technologies we have in place now, we’ve gone from 20 kids who weren’t thrilled to be here, to 90 kids who show up at 7:30 in the morning and won’t leave until I kick them out at midnight. It’s amazing!”
An Administrator’s Nightmare
With a Masters in Education and seven years of experience in the public and nonprofit sectors, Castle did not consider himself a filmmaker. But he did have an all-too-familiar understanding of what wasn’t working at Albany High School.
Says Castle, “In any computer environment, the most efficient way to work is to have centralized storage and a file server. But each of our workstations was an island: If a student was logged on and experienced a problem, I’d have to log him or her off, troubleshoot the issue and log the kid onto another computer. Then when they were done with their projects, they’d have to store them on an external hard drive, I’d have to put the projects into some sort of timeline and then print them all to video. As an administrator, it was a nightmare.”
