Budding broadcasters are providing an insider’s look at life at Oak Harbor High School. If plans go through, residents will soon be able to view the students’ work on cable television.

Students in the Media Communications class took their digital cameras and ventured throughout the 1,600-student high school to interview classmates and teachers about topics ranging from nutrition in school to why guys wear hats.

Teacher Chris Douthitt said the students develop story ideas that are interesting to them but can be presented in an understandable way to the greater community.

“We’re really trying to take on the role of broadcast journalists from their point of view,” Douthitt said. He wants his students to go beyond student interviews by researching their topics, finding experts to interview and putting together strong visuals.

There are 18 students producing stories this year. During a recent visit to the class, students were busy conducting interviews during lunch time and editing their projects on computer.

Senior Christi Wans is producing a piece about Oak Harbor High School’s music program — which is something students may see but don’t know many details about.

“All of the people don’t know what happens,” Wans said. Her three-minute story focuses on interviews with students and the band director.

Courtney Wise is producing a story about the school’s sports medicine program.

“I used to be in the class and found it interesting,” Wise said.

While Wise used a prior class as an inspiration for her project, two students used a simple observation for the basis of their project.

Michelle Malick and Porsche Christian wanted to know why so many guys at school wear hats. After numerous student interviews, Malick and Christian found guys had a practical reason for wearing hats.

“Most guys wear them because they don’t have hair to keep their heads warm,” Malick said.

Other student projects included a comparison between Oak Harbor High School and its namesake in northwest Ohio; the popularity of Converse sneakers in France; a first-hand account on the attraction to skateboarding; and the series of bomb threats that plagued the high school earlier in the year.

Students have been working on their projects since the beginning of the semester. Douthitt said he is still fine-tuning the class. Next year, the broadcast journalism class will extend through the whole school year.

He said the class had to start when the semester began because it was filled with new students. That will change next year when it becomes Broadcast Communications.

One student was looking forward to the hands-on instruction the class offers.

“I’ll just get more of a feel for video and expand what I can do,” said freshman Patrick Quinn about the class to be offered next year.

The community will have an easy way to view student work. Douthitt said school officials are setting up cable access. The student produced stories will be put onto DVDs and then broadcast on a yet-to-be-determined channel.

Bruce Roberts, school district information services director, said the cable programming stems from the franchise agreement between the city and Comcast. Under the agreement, Comcast agreed to provide two cable channels — one for the school district and one for the city.

“It will be another information outlet from the school district to the community,” Roberts said. He said he’ll know the school district’s channel in about four weeks.

Cable broadcasting is the latest development for the video production program at Oak Harbor High School.

Cynthia Shelton, vocational and technical director, said the program originally started four years ago when Douthitt didn’t have a classroom to teach in. He had to bring his equipment to whatever classroom he taught in.

“We called it a class-on-a-cart,” Shelton said. From the cart, the video-production program grew to include a Macintosh lab, digital cameras, television production lab and a broadcast room that was once a conference center.

Shelton said the need for video production classes stemmed from student interest. Each year money from the vocational technical education budget was allocated to purchase equipment and expand the program.