Teachers at North Allegheny Senior High School usually don't have to look very far to track down missing students.

Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Bob Tozier, sitting at left, and Jim Reinhard, team up to teach a mulitimedia class at North Allegheny Senior High School in McCandless. Click photo for larger image. Listen In North Allegheny's Bob Tozier talks about teaching with partner Jim Reinhard and about the positive aspects of combining music and art classes. Jim Reinhard discusses what students can learn in the class.

The search often ends in the multimedia arts lab.

"We have to kick kids out at the end of the day," said Bob Tozier, one of the multimedia arts teachers at North Allegheny. "They'd stay here through the night if we let them.

"It's a good problem to have."

The multimedia arts class combines the worlds of computers, art and music to give students an aesthetic, interactive experience while fulfilling an elective credit.

Mr. Tozier and his teaching partner, Jim Reinhard, take students with variable levels of familiarity with technology and the arts and shepherd them through time-intensive projects involving multiple media, from inception to completion.

"We've had kids that were literally computer-phobic," Mr. Reinhard said. "They wanted to do the end product and they realized they'd have to deal with this monster they were so afraid of in other contexts. We're able to make that not such a painful experience for them."

Mr. Reinhard and David Berlin, Mr. Tozier's predecessor, started the program in the mid '90s with the idea of using burgeoning computer technology to enhance art and music projects.

Mr. Reinhard said the class began as a "pilot project" with 15 students and a couple of hand-me-down Macintosh computers.

Today, it's one of the school's most popular courses, with more than 70 students every semester and a computer lab with 30 machines, each with a piano keyboard plug-in.

"You really tap a lot of different interest areas, which attracts a lot of our kids," principal Larry Butterini said. "And once kids take the course and realize how much they like it, word of mouth gets out."

Mr. Tozier and Mr. Reinhard also head the music and art departments at the school, respectively. Mr. Tozier, 36, completed both his bachelor's and master's degrees at Duquesne University, and Mr. Reinhard, 56, earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Dayton and master's at the University of Pittsburgh.

Both have an active interest in technology and what implications it has for their primary fields.

"I call them computer geniuses," Dr. Butterini said.

Mr. Tozier, a North Allegheny graduate, was hired when Dr. Berlin retired before the 1998 school year.

Mr. Reinhard was on the selection committee and had the final say in hiring.

"He came off as an enthusiastic personality," Mr. Reinhard said. "Bob's a geek. So I can back off a little bit on (the technological aspect) and devote more of my attention to the art part.

"It was definitely the right choice."

The class is split up into separate units on programs like Photoshop and Flash. Each unit lasts a little over a week, and the course culminates in a final project at the end of the semester that incorporates aspects from all of the units.

Mr. Tozier said it's more effective to teach just enough for the students to get started for each section, then address individual concerns as they come up.

"They're really helpful," said senior Katie Mock . "The only problem is that everyone needs help."

Senior Greg Pollock thought he had lost his final project. It had just vanished from his computer after he was done working on it.

But Mr. Tozier was able to go into school's server, find it and salvage it intact.

"They're really the best I could ask for," Greg said.

The class is open to all students at the senior high school, with seniors getting the first choice and juniors filling in any empty spots.

Mr. Tozier said that some students take the class multiple times, even enrolling for all four semesters of their time at the school, which houses only juniors and seniors.

Mike Caporizzo a freshman music major with a concentration in sound recording at Ithaca College, took the course twice during high school.

"I thought I wanted to be an art major until I really discovered this was out there," Mr. Caporizzo said.

Dr. Butterini said the class has a positive effect on some students who might be having trouble in school.

"(A student) gets in there and those guys motivate him," he said. "He tastes success. After two weeks, you don't have to make the kids work. They're invested."

The two teachers also encourage their students to pursue creative outlets outside the classroom.

Mr. Tozier said they try to involve the class in a "large project" whenever they can.

There most recent one was a show last spring called "Bodiography." The show blended music, visuals and dance and was student-run.

"Oftentimes new media technology gets hijacked by the lowest common denominator of popular culture," Mr. Reinhard said. "Part of this is trying to claim these new media for the arts."