M.A.D. was created in response to a growing need for the school be be able to communicate with its community. Traditional media: newsletters, radio announcements, email etc. are becoming increasingly unimportant in people's personal lives. Our students, staff, families, alumni and other members of our community predominantly consume media through their smart devices and are used to seeking information themselves through the internet. We have recognised this and are trying to use these new mediums in the ways that our audience is used to.

M.A.D. is a student led elective class that creates media for Riccarton High School and its various groups. We focus on giving our students a real-world media creation experience with the payoff being their work published on the school's public media channels. Because the work students produce is real and will be public the learning that happens during the process is incredibly authentic and powerful. So much so that often students need to be told to work less or turn work down!

Riccarton High has had students creating media for the school for some years now. Originally this was a small group of very committed students working in their own time but as the quality of the work was always high the demand increased both from student run groups and the school itself. This created such a demand that when Riccarton introduced elective classes for year 12 students it was a logical step to give more time to this work.

Our Team for 2022!