A fun school newspaper at Víkurskóli
Seven young people at Víkurskóli have been working on a school newspaper that is now live online. The content is varied and entertaining, and all of it has been written and designed by ninth- and tenth-grade students.
"What's New, Víkurskóli?" (Hvað er að frétta Víkurskóli?) is the name of a new elective course at the school. Seven young people enrolled, and their work has since come to life in the form of the website www.hvað.is. Björk Gunnbjörnsdóttir oversees the course, but the young people run the newspaper entirely on their own — from building the site to creating all of its content. The course will be offered again in the fall, and students finishing ninth grade are already eager to rejoin the project once summer break is over. In fact, enthusiasm runs so high that even though the semester's scheduled classes have wrapped up, the students plan to keep posting content all the way through the end-of-year school closing ceremony.
"Things moved slowly at first — there were a lot of decisions to make and the website had to be built from scratch. We tried out several platforms, and this may not be the final setup, but it proved to be a quick and practical way to get the project off the ground. They did all of it themselves and honestly know the site better than I do," says Björk. "It was a wonderful surprise just how enthusiastic they are — you really can't take that for granted."
Having fun with rumors
The young people divide up roles among themselves, covering areas such as editing, news writing, design, and advertising. The content covers a wide range, including school news, an album and film of the week, interviews, and the entertaining "gróusögur" — fun fake news the students dream up themselves. They also run surveys among their classmates, and their biggest surprise was discovering that Danish is the favorite subject at Víkurskóli. That makes the finding all the more amusing, given that one of the fake news items was about Danish being dropped from the curriculum — with students supposedly showing up to school in high spirits as a result.
We strongly encourage you to visit the paper's page — who knows, you might just be looking at tomorrow's journalists, designers, or authors. We also had a great time browsing the newspaper's TikTok account, hvaderadfrettablad.
A video featuring the young people talking about this fun and ambitious project is available on Reykjavík City's social media channels!
- What's New, Víkurskóli? Víkurskóli school newspaper.
- Reykjavík City's Facebook page.