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Learn about transforming journalism education to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving field. Explore challenges, solutions, multimedia tools, and practical approaches to teaching new skills.
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Transforming The Journalism Curriculum Presentation by Mindy McAdams University of Florida 2008
What we do well now • Teach students how to report and understand the professional norms of the field • Train them in a specialization (e.g., such as photojournalism, print editing, on-camera reporting for TV)
What we don’t do well now • Teach them how to survive and thrive in the field that journalism is becoming
Our challenges • Our current department structures are not designed to support cross-platform journalism • Our faculty are often not well-versed in multiple platforms, new technologies • Our students might resist, saying “I only want to …” • Our schools lack equipment and facilities, e.g., software, updated labs
Possible solutions • Hire one versatile faculty member and set up “convergence” courses • Doesn’t this encourage the same silo mentalities among both students and educators? • Does this prepare the students to “think different”?
If we wantto train studentsto think different, then we’ve got to do it ourselves.
These reasons don’t cut it • “We don’t know how” • “We don’t have equipment” • “We don’t know what they’re doing in these newsrooms”
Video • Example from the Toronto Star • Example from the San Jose Mercury News • Example from The Spokesman-Review • And some blogs to keep you well informed …
Five things you can do now • Assign articles by or about Adrian Holovaty • Study EveryBlock • Discuss any New York Times data project • Assign a project to be built with Atlas • Use exercises from NICAR to teach Excel
“The way I see it, there are three basic tasks that journalists do:1. Gathering information. 2. Distilling information. 3. Presenting information. ‘Doing journalism through computer programming’ is just a different way of accomplishing these goals. Namely, the technique favors automation wherever possible.”
Two issues • Visual skills for all students—not just the photojournalism students • Composition • Rationales • Ethics • Editing and formatting photo files for online
Audio is easy and cheap • Microphone handling • Interview techniques • Digital editing (Audacity is free) • Save file as MP3 • Use a free audio player to embed the MP3 directly on a Web page
Why teach HTML and CSS? • Dreamweaver is not necessarily as useful as HTML and (at least some) CSS • Facebook / MySpace will not help them in a journalism job • It’s a leg up
Ways to introduce HTML and CSS • One solution: Use blogs (covered in a later session) • Require students to build a simple Web page by hand with HTML • Headings • Links • Images
Pssst! My own secret • I have usually learned technology that I teach in class less than one week before the first time I taught it! • You don’t need to be an expert; you just need to know a little more than the parts you will teach!
In conclusion • We all need to start now • We are all behind—but we can catch up!
Transforming The Journalism Curriculum Presentation by Mindy McAdams University of Florida
