Love football but can’t make it to every game? Wish there was a way to watch your kid in the school play, but you just can’t postpone that business trip? Longing to involve your long distance relatives in your child’s graduation experience but know they’d never make the trip?
Bernie Sanders and Joe Hawkins have a solution, and it puts your kids to work.
Sanders, the man who created the Panther Network and broadcast audio from Nease football and baseball games for the past five years, has upped the ante. Myschoolstreams.com now offers streaming video of virtually any school related event.
The Web site offeres live streaming footage of football games from Nease and Ponte Vedra high schools. The games are now free, but when traffic picks up with playoff games, it will cost $3 to watch a live game and $2 for an archived game. Half of the money goes back to the school.
Sanders and Hawkins met with the television production students at Nease High School last week to discuss their involvement in the project.
"What I learned with the kids at Nease is that they were already there," said Sanders. "This is a revenue producer for the school. If the broadcast team wants to stream graduation, they get that money."
Junior Kristen Kemp filmed last week’s homecoming football game for the Web site. Kemp said she spent half of game filming from the press box and the other half filming from the sidelines.
"It was pretty hard, especially with the producers giving you instructions," she said. "I learned a lot. It gave me a taste of what this might be like, professionally. I hope to do it again."
Earlier this week Hawkins made a presentation to the TV production kids at Ponte Vedra High School in the hopes that they would be prepared to film tonight’s game. Sanders said they’ve worked with the school board and hope to expand the opportunity to all of the high schools in the district.
The idea for myschoolstreams.com came from a request made by a parent five years ago. The father of a friend of Sanders’ sons, who attended Nease at the time, was stationed in Iraq. He wanted a way to get video or audio of his son’s baseball games.
Sanders brought a microphone into the press box at Nease, and streamed the audio onto a Web site. That Web site became The Panther Network, which has received as many as 5,000 hits during championship games.
Sanders is not worried that streaming video will take away crowds from sporting events.
"This is not high definition TV," Sanders said. "If you can’t travel to the games, $3 is a pretty good option."
He sees no problem in letting the students stream video from any event at any of the schools. Sanders said the students who do the work, get the cut of the money. If the drama club films and streams a performance of the school play they will receive a cut of the revenue from the website. If the TV production students film volleyball games, baseball games, or graduation, they get a cut of the money generated.
As for the student-run show at Nease last week, Sanders was very pleased.
"They did a great job," he said.
