Innovation Campus and News (ICAN) is a club at Innovation Campus that produces short 3-4 minute videos containing schoolwide announcements and event recaps to broadcast to the school weekly.
It’s a huge part of Innovation Campus’s culture, ICAN advisor Sejee Kim said. There are a lot of students that all contribute to it, she added.
“It’s a very regular activity for a lot of kids on Thursdays to come together to film. They plan the scripts together. They take cameras and record school field trips, school events. It’s a huge part of our culture,” Kim said.
ICAN emerged out of a student desire to create and contribute something to the school, Kim said.
“The students noticed we didn’t have a set method of communication at this new campus, and so they wanted to create a way to communicate with each other, for student news and school news,” Kim said.
A lot of students can’t make it to school events, and they don’t really see the point of going to them, ICAN scriptwriter and Junior Long Nguyen said.
“Using ICAN as an outlet to show these events creates a relationship without even having people there – A relationship where everyone feels like they’re together and that kind of makes everyone excited,” Nguyen said.
It’s not just a news source, it’s a way to share and to build community, ICAN news anchor and Junior Noah Angel said. The members interact with all of Innovation Campus’s students in interviews or other activities, such as skits, he added.
“I think it’s built a lot of bonds within a lot of students who work on these videos for the school, and I think a lot of people enjoy watching them,” Angel said. “It helps people who don’t talk to a lot of people get known more.”
ICAN is a good way for students who can’t go to after-school events or fundraisers to still see what’s happening, Kim said.
“They get to see their classmates in a new light because people’s different personalities come out,” Kim said. “A lot of people who can’t typically attend events still contribute by being editors or being contributors in some way to ICAN.”
The mission at Innovation Campus is to encourage underrepresented populations to pursue STEAM and all kinds of technology-related fields, Kim said.
ICAN is “a really interesting, accessible way for students who don’t typically have a lot of technological or engineering experience to start dabbling with media creation, production, and those kinds of things,” Kim said.
Everyone should at least try it out and see if they can make a difference, Angel said.
“Anyone can do what Wayne (one of the anchors) is doing, what I do on that couch (where the anchor sits in the videos),” Angel said. “Anyone can do what Bryan’s (scriptwriter) doing. Anyone can help with the camera. It sounds so little, but altogether, it builds up to make so much behind the scenes,” he added.
Right now, ICAN does a lot of small announcements and quick recaps of small events that happen at Innovation Campus, Kim said.
“I think it would be nice if there were more connections to the main campus – maybe more people being featured in it, instead of it being mainly the anchor giving the news,” Kim said.
For the first year at Innovation Campus, it was mainly ICAN providing news and information to students, Kim said. With it being the second year and with more things being established, there are now morning announcements, she added.
“ICAN still remains the main way for students to hear about events and get announcements,” Kim said.
