This blog post is from Adjunct Professor Frank Chindamo

In February of this year, my students were pitching their advanced web series ideas. I’ve fostered so many web series over the years that these new ideas (student cooking and thrifting series, for example,) seemed a bit tired.

Way back then, even though the worst bad news we were hearing was about the environment or the impeachment, I still wanted to offer these students, many of them graduating seniors, a brighter look at the world they were about to enter.

So I pitched THEM the idea of shooting a “Good News” series. One where the whole class would act as one production unit, one team. This was collaboration, not competition.

Surprisingly, they loved the idea and made the brand their own. And rather than use the old medium of YouTube, we all agreed that TikTok seemed fresher and more fun. Hence the series was born.

HOW WE ADAPTED ONLINE

While many teachers are using YouTube to share work, I’d always been a rebel and we use a private Facebook group. There you can add discussions, tags, likes, scary faces, response links and videos, etc. And former students can chime into the discussion as well. I haven’t yet started using Canvas for video discussion, but I can tell you not one student had either, but all of them had — and do — use Facebook. So, zero resistance.

As for launching the videos, TikTok gives preference to videos shot within their app, so we simply share our phone screens using Zoom. Here’s how to do it on a Mac with an iPhone. (PC/Android directions are probably similar.) Illustrations below.

  1. Open Zoom
  2. Plug a charger cable into your computer’s USB port and your phone’s charger port
  3. Click Share Screen
  4. Mouse over to the upper right-hand corner to “iPhone/iPad via Cable” *
  5. Give it a few seconds to start up
  6. It should open iTunes, but just close that and do NOT synch your phone to your computer at this time. Just close iTunes.
  7. “Allow” access to the phone (sometimes it asks, “Trust This Device?”) Click “Yes.”
  8. Wait another couple of seconds, and boom – you should see your phone screen on your computer screen, and so will the participants in your Zoom meeting. (Should I have told you to close anything embarrassing first?) **

RESULTS SO FAR

At this moment we have about 20,000 views, with an amazingly good ratio of over 2,000 likes. That kind of popularity is usually reserved for sunsets and kittens!

See https://vm.tiktok.com/sgX4VS/ and of course, please Like and Subscribe.

It also helps to write a Press release if you want to publicize your students’ achievements. I wrote this with feedback and approval from the students, and so far, it’s gotten picked up by:

Chapman’s Slate: https://blogs.chapman.edu/dodge/announcement/good-news-for-you-dodge-students-tiktok/

Interactive TV Today (coming soon, 40,000 followers): http://itvt.com

And this month to Jackie Koppel’s “Everybody Loves Lincoln” Good news Instagram with 6,000 followers: https://www.instagram.com/jackiekoppell/

We’re also trying to get onto John Krasinski’s “Some Good News” channel because

  1. A) He has two million subscribers and B) We thought of it first!

 

SO FINALLY, HERE’S THE PRESS RELEASE

April 20, 2020:

Chapman University’s Advanced Web Video class has banded together to create the popular “ForYouFromUs” TikTok channel of all Good News stories.

Amid all of the bad news flooding our Twitter feeds and news stations, our students have put their energy into creating some positivity!  Each weekday, they share a different TikTok from a member of the class highlighting their favorite recent good news story. They’ve covered… the possible One Direction reunion, the time a classmate ran into YouTube star David Dobrik, Disco parties for seniors in Korea, funny babies, and of course the news flash that “A Plane has just landed safely.”

Here’s the Channel Link