Brooke Wohlrabe MEDIA TRAINING — Fairmont High School teacher Jonas Nissen, left, runs a camera in the school’s television studio. Students Ameya Komaragiri, left, and Parker Vetter, sit at the desk.

FAIRMONT — Two new media production classes are being offered at Fairmont High School this semester. The classes are taught by English teacher Jonas Nissen.

Nissen is teaching Audio Visual Production, which is a basic course for students in grades 10-12 and Intro to Broadcast Journalism, which is for juniors and seniors.

“That’s where students are creating content specifically for journalism purposes,” Nissen said.

There are 15 students enrolled between the two classes.

Nissen is in his sixth year of teaching at Fairmont, but he has many more years of experience. He previously worked with the video production program at Bethany Lutheran College for a decade.

In addition to the new production classes, Nissen also teaches CIS Composition, American Literature, Intro to Film and Intro to Literature. He also facilitates the Audio Visual Club that was started last school year.

“The club caused the creation of these classes,” Nissen said.

He shared why he think’s it’s important to offer the production classes.

“I really believe that video production is the primary form of communication in the future. If people want their voices to be heard, they’re going to have to be savvy with cameras and editing and equipment of that nature.”

Nissen said he’s trying to help students develop their voices. He also pointed out that the pandemic has changed the nature of communicating, as people are relying more on the internet. He believes these skills will be useful to students in the future.

“When I’m in the cafeteria and kids are surfing the internet on their phones, they’re looking at videos, they’re not reading text,” Nissen said.

The students have been working in the school’s television studio, which hasn’t been used for that purpose for many years. The school previously had some production classes in the 1990s and Cardinal Country was a production students put on until it ended in the late 2000s.

So far this semester, Bruce Abitz of Gemini Studios has been working with Nissen to get everything up and running again. They plan is to run their first production this week and Nissen hopes to run another yet this school year.

Nissen said the production will be a cross between the evening news and Good Morning America. He said they’ve developed a PSA on student academics and plan to do a teacher spotlight.

“We’re trying to stay on the positive side of stories. Obviously we need to talk about Covid, we can’t avoid that. But we’re doing a story on one of the charities in town to try to convince the students to volunteer for it,” he said.

He said he hopes the production will run on the community access channel, during halftime and intermission at games and events, on the televisions around the school and on all of the school’s social media accounts.

“We’ll do our best to reach the greatest audience possible,” Nissen said.

Nissen said the class will create pre-recorded content because they lack the equipment to do a full live broadcast. While the school has been supportive in providing funds for the program, it’s hard to get equipment and there have been delays.

“We need a tremendous amount of things and everyday I think of more things,” Nissen said.

They’ve needed to get curtains and lights for the studio, microphones, cables, a green screen and monitors. Nissen said they received some donated ladders from Fleet & Farm.

Nissen said if there are any businesses willing to donate some merchandise, it would be greatly appreciated.

While the program is just getting started, Nissen looks forward to seeing its growth in the coming years and providing students with useful skills.

“In the end, whatever direction these students go, I want them to have the ability to communicate through video in order to reach a greater audience with greater impact,” Nissen said.