School Mag Camp boots away writing woes

SMK Damansara Utama team takes first prize

There was a buzz of excitement and chatter as editorial teams from 28 secondary schools gathered to learn about writing and production of their school magazines (yearbooks).

Held April 23, 2011 at Lakeside, the annual Taylor’s School Mag Boot Camp was organised for the fourth time by the School of Communication and Enrolment and Admission Services, and had 104 students participating along with their teacher-advisors.

The Boot Camp aimed to help secondary students with the production of their school magazines, newsletters and yearbooks.

Sessions on news and feature writing as well as layout and design were conducted by School of Communication lecturers, and a mock press conference was held, featuring Disney’s Waktu Rehat cast member Nicholas Cheng.

There was also a competition among the teams for Best Story Idea, a detailed plan on a topic of their choice for publishing in their school magazine.

Woon Wu Chyi, Shonia Nayar, Jane Ooi and Pathvinder Sachdev of SMK Damansara Utama took first place with their story idea, ‘Appearance vs. Personality’, addressing the various personalities people associated with appearances.

“It was truly an unexpected win,” Sachdev said, with his team taking home prizes worth RM800 in total.

SMK Pusat Bandar Puchong 1 and REAL International School took second and third place and each student received prizes worth RM160 and RM120 respectively.

Chen Chit Sing, one of the second-prize winners, felt the camp really prepared students to write and publish good school magazines.

“The Boot Camp really gave details and information on what to do and what not to do for our yearbook. It’s really going to help minimise our errors,” he said.

Chandrasekaran Veeraiah, Taylor’s lecturer and part of the organising committee, felt the camp was successful.

“The response from the students was very good. Their competition entries showed they had learnt from the sessions today,” he said.

Some videos on yearbook publication were also aired towards the end of the day, giving the students a few laughs and different suggestions and ideas they could use.

“The Boot Camp really gave us a new way to look at things,” Nayar said.

(By Michelle Chun)