Journalists’ Toolkit: A new class
This year I have the opportunity to teach two brand-new classes, Journalists’ Toolkit 1 and 2. I developed these classes in the hope that one day soon, our College of Journalism and Communications can start a professional master’s in journalism. (Right now we have a budget problem, thanks to the state legislature, so the plan is on hold.)
The complete syllabus is online. You’ll find that most of the assigned readings are also online.
Attention: The course is NOT taught online! At this time, the course is open only to on-campus students enrolled in our master’s program. I’m fully aware that hundreds of journalists would love to get a master’s degree online, but we just do not have the person-hours required to administer and grade online work for this type of course (at this time).
The idea behind this class (and the follow-up, Journalists’ Toolkit 2) is that students will learn to use some of the common tools of today’s cross-platform reporting through assignments based in regular reporting practice. The primary tools in the first class are audio, audio slideshows and blogs. In the second class, the focus will be on video and other motion visuals.
I know that some of you may be looking for database tools in this class, but you won’t find much of that here. Reason: If we get the chance to launch our professional master’s in journalism program, there will be a required class in “precision journalism” (as conceived by the great Phil Meyer). I hope that Journalists’ Toolkit 2 can tap into what the students will learn there.
As always, I’m making pretty much all my course materials open to everyone. So if you find anything in the syllabus you want to use, go ahead. (Just be sure to credit others for their work, e.g. with a byline and/or a link.)
I would be delighted to get comments on and criticisms of the syllabus.
I want to take this class … how long’s the commute from Athens?
August 27, 2007 at 8:31 amHa ha … Mark, I only wish you were here to teach the photo parts. Thank heaven for the Kobré book!
(a) Suggest stuff, please. (b) Poach all you want.
August 27, 2007 at 8:47 amHey Mindy — just curious — why is the blogging portion of the course limited to students creating their own blog, posting about course work, and commenting on classmates’ posts?
Seems to me they might get more useful experience if, in addition to this, they’re required to find and comment on relevant existing blogs, to learn how to be part of the public conversation?
Also, why not require that they learn how to set up a feed reader, subscribe to feeds, and set up search feeds? I’ve blogged on E-Media Tidbits and Contentious about why these are cornerstone online skills for journalists. Google Reader is free, flexible, and easy.
Just curious,
- Amy Gahran
August 27, 2007 at 9:48 amGood questions, Amy. In my undergrad “reporting for online” class, the students are required to keep more of a beat blog. It takes a looong time to grade those puppies! And if you don’t grade them frequently, the students don’t keep them up.
This class is going to learn to use Google Reader and set up RSS feeds. See Week 3 and Week 12.
The idea behind blogging about what they learn is, it’s a way to let me assess what they get out of the class. With undergrads, I do this with frequent quizzes and critique assignments. With grad students, I like to see how much work they will put into thinking about what the reading or the lesson was about.
August 27, 2007 at 10:00 amAmy and Mindy:
Amy: Thank you for a video of yours I stumbled upon with basic Google Reader information. I knew the basics, EXCEPT the joy of the “subscribe” button to drag on to browser toolbar. Will save tons of time.
Mindy: Deb Aikat at UNC seems to be requiring both setting up a blog and reading some others in Jomc713 this semester. Sample syllabus here:
August 27, 2007 at 10:19 amhttp://www.jomc.unc.edu/images/TCOM/jomc-713.pdf
I suspect some fellow students already have done basic blog setup from other classes or work. And I suspect the setting up of a blogroll will morph into the setting up of an RSS list. We’ll see. I’ll definitely need RSS to keep up. I need caffeine already to juggle class and the day job.
We have 20 people in the online class.
Hi Mindy,
This course looks great. I’ll be showing the details to my own journalism lecturers as an example of how it SHOULD be done.
I’m most interested in what you do with the blogging units. On my course (which is pretty large), only a handful of students blog. And even some of those are just ‘I went out, I did this at the weekend’ type things.
Can I suggest you pencil-in an event that could be liveblogged by students? I’m on work exp. with Press Gazette (UK) at the moment, and a colleague joined up with music mag NME to see how they reported on the Reading Festival (as in Reading the place, not reading a book!) using blogs and so forth. What a great way to introduce students to the excitement of blogging, I thought.
Anyway, keep us up to date on how the course progresses!
Dave
August 28, 2007 at 5:51 amThanks for the feedback, Dave. The live-blogging assignment would be great. I have to think about how I could do that … and I think not all of my students have laptops.
August 28, 2007 at 8:33 am[...] McAdams will be teaching two brand-new classes this year, Journalism Toolkit 1 & 2. For more on this, including a look at her online syllabus, [...]
August 28, 2007 at 10:30 amMindy — Blogging just ain’t what it used to be
it can mean a whole lot of things.
Re live blogging, you could choose a blogging tool (Like Typepad) that offers a mobile blogging interface. That way they could blog from their cell phones.
You can also use Flickr, YouTube, and Blip.tv into several popular blogging tools — or use them directly for live photo/video blogging
Check out the liveblogging potential (or just regular blogging potential) for Facebook too.
And, of course, you can use Jaiku and Twitter for liveblogging too. That’s a little clunky, but workable. I’ve done it.
- Amy
August 28, 2007 at 10:34 amYou’re right, the technologies are abundant. I’m noodling two other factors: (1) Exactly what do I require (pick one event? Offer several? Let them pitch?); and (2) How would I grade it? Maybe just pass/fail. But one must work these things out in advance!
August 28, 2007 at 10:40 amI say mix it up. How about you have one compulsory event. Make it challenging. A conference maybe — something that students wouldn’t know a huge deal about. So, the task would be to research the event, cover it, and then look back retrospectively.
Then invite students to blog their own events. This could be a gig, or a football match, or anything really…the possibilities really are endless.
Graded on quality of coverage, use of different mediums… things like that. A problem I see at this point is checking if it has actually been liveblogged. A student could always just do it once they are home and then backdate it all!
August 28, 2007 at 12:17 pm[...] trackback If you want to get an idea of skills journalists should be learning, check out Mindy McAdams’ new course at Florida, Journalists’ [...]
August 28, 2007 at 12:42 pmActually, I think it’s less important whether, for beginners, the event coverage is live or just soon after. (except if you’re using Twitter or Jaiku, then live makes more sense).
Why not make the event blogging extra credit. Set out a few parameters and make it either pass (you get the credit) or fail (no credit, but no harm done).
- Amy Gahran
August 28, 2007 at 2:17 pm[...] If I were a journalism student, I’d be drooling over Mindy McAdams’ new class that teaches students how to produce multimedia and online stories. [...]
August 29, 2007 at 12:59 pm