Ellis Middle School seventh-grader Heather Johnson looked more like a producer than a student, sitting in front of one of two PCs located in a small room within the school’s Instructional Media Center.

With Window’s Movie Maker up on the screen and a script in hand, Johnson began recording voice-overs for her take on the school’s trip to Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center.

This is the new face of multimedia education in the school.

In its third year now, the video production class at Ellis Middle School found its beginnings when media/IMC teacher Marilyn Oswald took the idea to then-principal Paul Besel in an effort to get more technology-based ideas. The idea quickly found legs and was off to a running success.

It isn’t a big class, hosting a total of 12 students every quarter — six per session. But it stands out at the school as one of the most requested classes, reflecting a direct correlation between technology and the students who are now growing up with this ever-expanding world of electronic opportunities.

“I think they like it,” Oswald said. “What I hear from kids who took the class is that they want to take it again.”

The class isn’t an overly difficult venture into the world of multimedia use. The program used by Oswald and her students is a relatively simple program included with most PCs and acts as a perfect jumping off point for students wanting to get to know the art of video editing.

Through five projects, students begin an understanding of Movie Maker itself with each project introducing them to more skills, so when they get to the final project they are doing things such as effects, transitions, voice-over narration and more.

“Our last project is a newscast using footage the students shot of Ellis,” Oswald said.

The class has even gone so far as to shoot video outside the class. At one point Oswald’s class shot and produced an introductory video for fifth-graders coming to Ellis for the school counselor’s office.

The class doesn’t stop at simply teaching when voice narration begins or ends or even the seamless integration of footage. It goes into the ethics of video production as well.

“We talk about copyright laws, making sure to give credit,” Oswald said.

Like all technology offered in schools these days, Oswald’s video production class goes outside the classroom. Oswald related a story of a student who showed a class project to his grandmother and found out she was so impressed she asked the student to shoot and edit a family reunion.

“(Students) will tell me of things they are doing at home,” Oswald said.

But to know of the success of the class is to ask the students themselves who shoot everything from basketball games to plays and even spelling bees.

“It’s really good,” Johnson said while waiting for a script to print. “I like it a lot. I have a new digital camera with video on it and I have gotten better on zooming in and out and things like that.”

Ethan Anderson joined the class on the advice of an older sister.

“My sister was in it two years ago,” Anderson said. “She said, ‘You should try to be in this class.’”

Like the world of multimedia in general, there are plenty of avenues for growth and this class is no different. Oswald has ideas that would carry what the students could do one step further.

“It would be kind of nice to have a video yearbook,” Oswald said. “Video of all the activities … but who knows.”