Bigfork students make contribution to the Crown Guitar Festival
While most of Bigfork High School’s students sat in class the first week of September, three students put what they’ve learned to the test at the Crown of the Continent Guitar Festival.
The Guitar Festival organizers wanted to give its participants a flash drive filled with photos and video of their week in Bigfork, so the organizers decided to enlist the help of Mike Roberts and some of his students from Bigfork High School. Roberts teaches media classes at the high school and middle school. His students produce photos and videos, and put together a video yearbook, chronicling the school’s events.
Putting together 95 flash drives of memories from the Guitar Festival in Bigfork presented a challenge. “We were constantly bringing more and more imagery to the lab,” Mike Roessmann, who worked with the students and the festival, said.
During the festival, for at least 8 hours a day, often more, students Riley Hoveland, Rueben Hubbard and Adam Jordt, along with Bigfork graduate David Meyer worked to sort and compile images and video for the 95 students.
“It was quite ambitious but it was quite successful,” Roessmann said. “It was amazing what they did. We literally couldn’t have done it if they hadn’t been committed to the task at hand.”
At Wednesday’s board meeting the Crown of the Continent Guitar Foundation, organizers recognized the students’ work with a $1,000 donation to the school, earmarked for Roberts programs.
“I can’t say enough about the maturity and professionalism that these students provided,” Roessmann wrote in a letter read to the Bigfork School board. “It gives me hope that the educational process is still working, and the youth of Bigfork High School are growing and developing in a most desirable way.”
After the first night of the project, Hoveland went home and compiled a spreadsheet to make it easier to track the Crown Guitar participants who had not yet been photographed for the facial recognition software, Roessmann said.
“This isn’t something anyone asked her to do, she just brought her organization and her skill set to the table.”
Hubbard provided custom aspects to slide shows, and Jordt used his strong photo and video editing skills to make short work of everything that came his way, Roessmann said.
“I would also like to commend Mike Roberts for his tireless and consistent commitment to this project,” Roessmann wrote. “He was always able to come up with solutions to problems, and inevitably his hand-print is firmly in place on the make-up of our work flow as well as the flash drive development. He is a committed and dedicated teacher who shares not only his knowledge but also his equipment, his very expensive equipment.
“I watched Mike Roberts never hesitate to take time for a teaching moment. When we had problems, when we needed input, or Mike recognized something worthy of clarification, he stopped the proceedings, gathered the students, and gave them a clear and direct outline of what the next step was going to be. This is in a nutshell is what teaching is all about.”