New Richmond High School’s new electronic media center opened this year.

New Richmond High School’s new electronic media center opened this year.
By Megan Alley
Sun staff

The start of the school year brought the soft opening of New Richmond High School’s new electronic media center, which will officially open within the next several weeks.

“We tried to develop a space that is user-friendly for class presentations, individual study time and can also act as a group space for brainstorming projects,” said Principal Mark Bailey, who was instrumental in making the project happen. “We have reclaimed the space that used to be the library, and developed it into a 21st century electronic media center.”

For the last five years, the room has served as the high school’s choir room. Prior to that, it was the high school’s more traditional library.

The choir will now practice on the schools’ auditorium stage, where they perform concerts.

The new center is equipped with laptop and desktop computers, a wireless network, Chromebooks and iPads available on loan, projection boards and three 65-inch plasma screens attached to the walls, which can be used to display presentations directly from laptops or personal devices, according to Bailey.

The center is also furnished with rolling desks, large and small tables and booths. Whiteboards are available for students to present brainstorming ideas, said Bailey.

The center also houses the school’s library.

“I think the ways that room could be used are limitless. It’s so flexible,” Bailey said.

“I will try to maintain state of the art equipment, because things are changing rapidly in the technology field, and our goal is to keep the center current for our students.”

The idea for the new center came about during an administrative team retreat in December 2014. The team discussed a multi-year vision for the high school, and set forth an initiative to collect feedback from current and past students on how the high school could be improved.

“We looked at the data and started to develop a vision, which entails a lot of different things other than the new media center,” Bailey said. “That became the driving force, and we made a presentation to the Board of Education in March, who shared the vision we had for preparing our students for college and careers.”

He added, “[The media center] was one of the major focuses of the presentation, and the board and superintendent were supportive in making this [center] a reality.”

The graduates who were surveyed said they didn’t feel they were trained in how to research journals and other resources electronically, so the center rose out of the necessity to prepare students for college and careers, Bailey said.

“In developing our center, we looked at other high schools in the state that have been proactive in creating a media center. One of my goals was to create something that students would encounter at the college level,” Bailey said. “I wanted to put tools in place to give our students a leg up in college, and prepare them to access that information.”

He added, “We want all of our students to graduate and become productive members of society.”

Bailey said the response from students has been very positive, and they’re very excited about the new space and eager to use it.

Bailey said he is considering holding a competition with students to let them name the new center.

“I’m very pleased that [Superintendent Adam] Bird and the board of education bought into the vision that we created for our students for preparing them for the 21st century. I know that support will continue,” Bailey said.

“We want to make sure that we’re creating lifelong learners, and anything that we can do to help them succeed, we want to put in place.”