PINEVILLE — Students at a local school are exploring a new program this fall that is on the cutting edge of the state curriculum. The Bell County High School is now offering a class based on film editing software called “Final Cut Pro” and will allow students to write, film, edit their own films in class.

“It gives students a chance to create videos shoot video footage and then edit it together and make it look professional,” said Eddie Hensley, who is teaching the class, at the Bell County Board of Education meeting Monday night. “Which is something we haven’t been able to do at high school before. We’ve made videos before, but it always looked pretty amateur.”

Hensley said that the 26-member class, which is composed mostly of seniors , is utilizing roughly $60,000 in grant money from Kentucky’s Data Seam Initiative. Half of the money went to the iMac computers in the classroom and the other half for the Final Cut Pro software.

“There’s a significant amount of money that’s been made available there that will allow us to offer that program,” said Hensley.

Hensley attended an intense four-day training program to learn how to teach the course.

Superintendent George Thompson praised the new course.

There are very few high schools in the state who offer the class … ” said Thompson. “ I think we’re very fortunate to be able to offer that in Bell County High School.”

Thompson said the students could do videos on the district and then post them on the web.

Hensley said the course will challenge the students in different content areas.

“There’s a lot of creative writing that goes into creating scripts … ” he said. “There are so many academic applications for this video editing class. It’s important for our students who need to learn to communicate effectively in writing.”

Stephen Woodward is a Staff Writer for the Daily News. He may be contacted at swoodward@middlesborodailynews.com.