Despite the many academic responsibilities in DP2, I continued to lead Gecko Network this quarter and hope to be the leader for the rest of the semester as well. In case you don’t know, Gecko Network is a service group that serves the community with videography, photography and other technological solutions like websites and livestreams. This quarter has been quite an eventful one at school, and as a result quite a busy one at GeckoNet. Since my term as leader is slowly coming to an end, I have begun to give more opportunities to other members in the group in order to find a worthy successor to become the leader of GeckoNet.

Primary GeckoNet

Last year, I founded the primary arm of GeckoNet in order to cover the many events and activities that go on in the Primary School and address the large audience within the Primary community. I was happy to continue to lead this group and was quite excited to see a new batch of primary students, who were passionate about making great content about the primary school. We have continued to work towards a monthly Primary Gecko News cycle and have published one video(seen below) so far covering the events that took place in August and September and have already begun working on the next edition. Primary GeckoNet relies on having a leader, who is experienced with videography, and has the patience to manage and collaborate with a group of 5th graders, which is not always easy. In addition to continuing to produce Primary GeckoNews segments, one of my key goals for the next quarter is to find and train someone to take over the leadership role I hold in Primary GeckoNet, so that the group continues to thrive and serve the Primary school.

Secondary GeckoNet

We have been very busy in secondary GeckoNet as well, and we have welcomed quite a few talented new videographers and photographers into the group this year. Thus far we have covered four major events that took place during the quarter, including Founders Day, Welcome Back Picnic, Sports Day and the Climate Strike, and are working on producing recap videos for each of them. Furthermore, as usual we have gathered and produced content for the SAISA teams training for the the swimming and volleyball tournaments that are set to take place in October. The video montage of these SAISA teams will be presented to the rest of the school during the Pep Rally just before the teams travel for the tournaments. In addition to covering sports, this year we began working on creating some promotional content for the senior and primary productions that will take place close to the end of Q2. This promotional content will include two trailers as well some shorter promotional videos that will be released on a staggered basis during the weeks leading up to the productions. Another project we’re working on is a promotional video for the Housing and Habitat group’s HomeRun event that will take place in November. In addition to all this, we are continuing to work on our Gecko News segments as usual. This year, I put Aidan as the leader of this group because he anchored most of the news segments last year and is excited to make the news segments more engaging and exciting this year. Likewise, in all the other projects we are currently pursuing, I have created teams of 3-4 people including a group leader. I continue to provide the necessary guidance and support to these leaders, but have given them more creative freedom because I don’t have the time to micro manage all of these projects and produce high quality content. Furthermore, this management strategy allows me to evaluate the technical and leadership skills of all of the GeckoNet members, which will help me select a worthy successor to take over the reigns of leading GeckoNet.

Content Integration with the Yearbook

In addition to running the day to day operations of primary and secondary GeckoNet, I am quite excited to work with the Yearbook team this year in an effort to integrate GeckoNet’s video content with the Yearbook. I’m currently building a mobile app for both Android and iOS that will utilize Augmented Reality technology in order to augment the existing content on the Yearbook with GeckoNet videos. Essentially the app will allow users to see videos relevant to any page they scan using the app on the yearbook. Thus far, I have presented my idea to the Yearbook team and the GeckoNet team and they are very excited to see it in action. In GeckoNet, we have begun producing short 30-second videos that will be used for this app. I have begun the preliminary stages of building the app and hope to complete by the end of the first semester.

 

This quarter has been quite an eventful one for the GeckoNet group and for me as well as a leader. I hope to continue to work with the group to keep producing the usual content as well producing new and innovative content that we start this year. However, my primary goal for the next few months as leader is to identify a worthy successor who I can then train and guide over the course of the last semester I will be at school.