Alteon.io, the award-winning cloud-based platform for media collaboration and storage, is announcing a new six-month pilot program that will bring cutting-edge creative technology into grade-school classrooms across Hawai‘i.
This initiative provides select students from fourth to 12th grade with access to Alteon.io, a cloud SaaS platform for professional content creators, which recently won the 2023 Product of the Year and TVTech Best of Show awards at the acclaimed National Association of Broadcasters convention. Alteon empowers creators with tools to help them collaborate remotely, consolidate complex workflows and organize projects in an intuitive, searchable way. Beginning March 2024, select students in Hawai‘i will be able to participate in an exploratory pilot, at no cost to students or their schools, as part of Alteon’s stated mission to support educational institutions across the country.
With teachers already stretched thin inside and beyond the classroom, Alteon can immediately alleviate key stress points of teaching students how to create content in the digital age. Educators will no longer have to carry around students’ projects on external drives (which can get easily lost or stolen), or risk their students wiping each others’ data off of shared computers. Designed for non-tech-savvy users to be able to pick up and use immediately, Alteon offers every student and educator individual accounts to store and work on their own media files with absolute transparency in a secure cloud environment. Shared projects allow students to collaborate freely using several intuitive tools, have conversations on media files and integrate with popular editing platforms. This pilot is optimized for Final Cut Pro creative workflows, making it a seamless option for the many schools that already use Apple devices.
Alteon team members will be on-the-ground in Hawai‘i to provide mentorship, technical assistance and immediate support in setting up and maintaining this program through regular check-ins with educators. They will also sit down with student ambassadors to listen to feedback and adjust the pilot as necessary.
Once onboarded, students can begin uploading their media files to Alteon’s secure cloud storage platform, either via Alteon’s high-speed desktop uploader application, a web browser, or their own iPhone via the Alteon app. By joining and creating projects, students can easily see all their footage and working files in one place for easier group collaboration, organizing their media files with searchable meta tags. All files housed in Alteon are kept under strict security and encryption standards, in addition to requiring two-factor authentication for all users. Time-stamped, color-coded comments let educators provide targeted feedback to students for absolute clarity, while transparent file metadata confirms each file’s provenance, including the owner and date of creation.
When projects are ready for editing, students can use Alteon’s workflow extension for Final Cut Pro to edit footage housed in the cloud, avoiding the risk of confusion by making it unnecessary to download and reupload multiple files manually.
The program will directly assist students creating content for their school media programs, in addition to those producing work for HIKI NŌ, a student-made TV broadcast that airs to a global audience via PBS Hawai‘i, helping equip them with the tools necessary to achieve personal, academic and professional success. Six selected schools will appoint an educator to identify local students who will most benefit from the pilot.
“We are incredibly excited about this pilot and the opportunity to help students learn and thrive in a real-world setting,” said Matt Cimaglia, co-founder and CEO of Alteon. “This pilot is especially important to me, as I made a personal connection to Hawai‘i during my years as a student journalist. Bringing Alteon into classrooms in Hawai‘i, and helping students tell inspiring stories, will transform how they learn and create in the digital age. Our goal is to empower the next generation of storytellers and innovators, equipping them with the skills and best-in-class technology they need to thrive in the future.”
This move comes less than a year after Alteon sponsored the Student Television Network Convention in Long Beach, Cali., which provided more than 2,500 students and educators free access to the platform in their classrooms and unveiled special educational pricing for schools. Cimaglia gave a keynote address in which he shared his own inspiring story of being introduced to broadcasting as an elementary school student in Florida, and how he credits his teachers with helping provide him with the opportunities and encouragement that led to him spending more than 20 years in the production industry.
“It is inspiring to see how Alteon is working to support students and providing them with valuable resources to tell stories,” said Sheri Stilson, the executive director of the Student Television Network. “Alteon is innovative and passionate about education, which is why we are honored to call them a partner.”
For educators and school staff elsewhere in the United States, who believe their schools could benefit from bringing Alteon into their own classrooms, can email [email protected].