Brookline High School digital photography teacher Leon Kestenbaum tells his students that the key elements of vision, awareness and craftsmanship will always be vital to their art.

 

But having a brand-new television studio and computer lab doesn’t hurt, either.

“Everything is new and faster,” said Wyatt Levin, one of the many students now using BATV’s new facility to work with digital photography. “I like manipulating photos, and prefer this to working in the darkroom.”

 

Since teachers first began using the educational wing of BATV’s new $1.9 million studio last September, Brookline High has expanded classes once hampered by the school’s limited technology and brought several new programs online. The school now offers television production and comic book drawing, and officials would like to see a broadcast journalism course soon.

 

“The addition of BATV for our use has given the visual arts program a tremendous boost,” said Alicia Mitchell, the K-12 coordinator of Visual Arts. “The spaces are designed to use and teach technology with state-of-the-art equipment.”

 

“We’ve been able to expand the digital photography class because we now have 32 computers, whereas we only had five before and could only produce black-and-white photography,” she added.

 

In one of Kestenbaum’s classes last week, students uploaded images from a selective photo shoot and worked on refining the images. As in other classes, the students’ computers are connected to the teacher’s, which feeds into three large monitors above their desks and allows students to present and share their work while Kestenbaum critiques it.

 

Students also have access to printing capacity to match the new technology. A printer in the BATV studio allows them to use rolled paper instead of sheets, creates images as large as 18 feet by 24 feet, and provides better quality and fine detail for their work.

Lynne Cohen, who co-teaches the television production class with BATV educational consultant Krissie Jankowski, said the greatest benefits for her as an instructor is that she has access to the state-of-the art equipment, and is working with people who use this kind of technology as their life’s work.

 

In addition to Jankowski, technical coordinator Josh Fleetwood of BATV helps the Brookline High School teachers with using the studio’s equipment.

 

Josh Stone, a student in the animation class, worked last week on a short movie that parodies James Bond movies, touching up the film based on critiques he had received from teacher Eric Latimer and other students in the class.

 

“I love doing this,” Stone said. “It’s good to have a server where we can save our work and are not as dependent on flashdrives.”

 

Working in the BATV studio is better, Stone said, because it’s easier to run the computers and have access to his and other students’ work.

 

Junior Maia Perel said when she compares the animation class to a Flash animation class she took before, she is aware of how the more sophisticated equipment helps her.

“There were clusters of computers around the room, and our teacher walked around looking at our work,” she said. “Now, with the monitors, our teacher can see what we’re doing, so there’s more discipline.”

 

The new studio already has teachers dreaming up new programs for the high school.

“Our goal is to have this program grow,” said Mitchell. “We would like a broadcast journalism class through which we can develop a staff of kids who could put together a television class on anything that is going on at Brookline High School.”

 

The staff is laying out the program so that students will be able to follow a pathway,” she said. “They understand what they can do, how to manipulate video, and have the knowledge of how you make something look any way you want it to with the right technology.”