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More talk about new media classes

Jun 6, ’06 12:28 PM

Steve Sloan has posted the second half of the Pizzacast, a discussion about a New Media class to be offered next semester in SJSU’s J-School.

I’m going to stand by my idea that this class should be a training ground for Online Editors going on to student media, in the way that the 133 Copy Editing & Design class trains the print editors.

That means students need to learn a drop of html and css (which playing with a blog template will help teach them), a bit of audio and video editing (which producing a podcast and video podcast will take care of), and some experience setting up and running a content management system.

That last part, of course, requires some content. My suggestions? A bit of integration with other classes in the department. Edit and post articles written by students in the 61, 132, and 134 journalism classes. Post video produced by broadcasting students. In later semesters, when there’s some sort of class that teaches coding and design for online news, post the Flash animations, slideshows, and graphics.

One more thing – keep the class open to public relations and advertising majors. They need these tools, too.

Pizzacasting for answers

May 24, ’06 8:11 AM

I had an interesting time last night at the Pizzacast session. It was a small group with a wide range of interests (journalism, public relations, computer science, theater, business, aggregators), and the conversation ranged wildly from the on-topic question of what to teach in the upcoming New Media class at SJSU’s j-school, to some pleasantly off-topic tangents about open source textbooks and the Future of Newspapers.

Steve Sloan recorded a podcast, which you can grab from his post. Not sure if this is part 1 of 2 or if he cut the pre- and post-pizza conversations into one file.

Andrew will probably have some webcam video or audio of his own up later today. (Note to self: Sit as far away from wide angle webcam lens as possible next time…)

Oh, and the bonus mystery guest, who read about the beer-and-pizza plan on Valleywag, was Gabe Rivera of Memeorandum. That was unexpected.

Anyway, the whole point was to discuss what and how to teach undergraduates about New Media, with the idea that they should come out of the course with some practical knowledge about blogging, podcasting, video podcasting, and related will-get-you-hired-if-you-know-how-to-do-it technologies.

Here’s a few takeaways, filtered through my own opinions:

  • Teaching some theory is okay, but just enough to get students excited about the practical things they’re learning. Let’s read this stuff online when possible; even better, let’s just read blogs on certain issues so that we’re reading current ideas, not stuff from three years ago.
  • The lab portion of the class should include blogging, podcasting, and video podcasting. Use a minimal amount of equipment and as much pre-fab content as possible, teach students how to use an open source (read: FREE) content management system like WordPress, Joomla, or Mambo.
  • The goal is to train online editors, not just online reporters. The class should logically follow 132 (Online Information Gathering) and 134 (Online Reporting) in the progression of courses. Students who have taken the class will be prepared to be the Online Editor for the Spartan Daily, Access magazine, or Update News. (Yeah, I know, Update doesn’t have a website. An Online Editor would fix that, eh?) These students would also have a big head start on creating online content for all three of those student media outlets.
  • Guest speaker suggestions: Robert Scoble, Shel Israel, Dan Gillmor, Shel Holtz (Prof. McCune – I think this is who you were thinking of), Jon Fortt and/or Mike Bazeley, Dai Sugano, Bruce Koon, and lots of other Silicon Valley online journalists or tech bloggers/podcasters. I think the speakers should always be tied to something practical in their area of expertise. Ask Scoble to demo an aggregator, ask Dai to talk about photo/audio slideshows, ask Fortt or Bazeley to talk about managing blogs and podcasts, ask a podcaster to demo whatever hardware and software he or she uses, etc.
  • Storytelling is key. Let students rework old stories (from 132 or 134?) for a new medium, then have them write new web-native stories. Teach them to have an eye for what makes a good story online.
  • Assign a blog/podcast/video podcast for weekly reading/listening/viewing for the whole class so there can be some collective discussion of a new media product.
  • Assign each student one blog to follow for the whole semester. Students need to consume the medium they want to work in, whether that’s print newspapers or online news or blogs or podcasts or video. There’s no understanding RSS or tags or hyperlinks without reading blogs in an aggregator on a regular basis, playing with the tools they become interested in. Students will probably notice things like Digg, Technorati, and Delicious before you get to them in class if they’re reading a few blogs.

I’m sure other folks will have more to say about this, and this was just a sort of brainstorming session. The folks who will be teaching this class need to hear more from students about what they already know and what they want to learn. How often does the faculty ask the students what they want out of a class? If you’ve got anything to contribute, you might want to start talkin’…

Geek pizza dinner tonight

May 23, ’06 2:33 PM

Just a reminder: There’s a geek dinner tonight for anyone and everyone interested in talking about the New Media (lab?) class being offered next semester at SJSU’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications. If you’re an undergrad or grad student planning on taking classes in the department next semester, stop by for a slice (and/or a beer) and share your ideas.

Details here…

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SJSU JMC Geek Dinner next Tuesday

May 18, ’06 11:58 AM

Steve Sloan, Cynthia McCune, and other folks will all be getting together at Tony Soprano’s Pizzeria this Tuesday at 6pm to talk about plans for JOUR 163, a course on producing new media for the web that will be offered next semester in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at SJSU.

pizza

Steve says he’ll be recording the conversation and podcasting it, so bring your best radio voice and your ideas about what J-Schools should be teaching students about blogs, podcasting, video podcasts, content management systems, Google Maps mashups, Flash, audio slideshows, infographics, databases, etc., [YOUR IDEA HERE], etc….

I’ll be there.

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How to cover the President

Apr 24, ’06 9:29 AM

No, I didn’t cover the Bush-in-San-Jose event, but J-School photobloggerjournalist Daniel Esch was one of the Spartan Daily staff at Cisco last Friday with the Commander-in-Chief.
Check out what Daniel has to say about covering W, Arnold, and friends.

SJSU blogger shout out time

Apr 16, ’06 8:17 AM

There are a bunch of bloggers these days in the SJSU journalism program, and although I don’t regularly point out the ones who aren’t writing about media much, I do catch plenty of what they write in the feed vacuum known as my aggregator.

So without further preamble…

Andrew the “Soapbox Prophet” hasn’t posted since before Spring Break, but you can find his webcam videos at Google Video, including recent talks by Salam Pax and Terence Smith.

It looks like Mark is toying around with a WordPress.com blog, which is what I would recommend all nascent bloggers do at this point, especially if you don’t want to start mucking about with HTML and CSS code in Blogger. Be sure to follow the trail of links to Mark’s other writing (fiction?), especially the piece about escaping a Bangalore call center job.

Laura has been posting occassionally this semester at her J-Life blog. She’s doing most of her writing for that newsprint-based publication in the JMC building, so we’ll cut her some slack for not writing enough new stuff here.

Fling93 — yet another photographer with a blog — writes in so many places I lose track of what I’ve seen and what I haven’t, but if you’re brave enough, drop by and check out what he’s got to say about school, technology, and fish.

There’s a few more regular SJSU-media-bloggers in the sidebar to the right, but you knew that already.

I’m sure I’ve missed plenty of folks here, so drop a comment with your URL and I’ll check it out!

Talking points for a visit to Journalism 132

Apr 12, ’06 11:30 AM

[I'm sitting in on Prof. Greene's information gathering classes this morning...]

Hi everyone. I’m supposed to be providing some constructive criticism on your blog posts, but the odds are pretty good that I’ll be going off on a tangent or three, so here are links to a few things I figure I’ll be rambling on about:

Blog search:

  • Technorati: This site has been around long enough to get verbed, as in, “Hey Steve, why don’t you Technorati that post on Scoble’s blog to find out how many people linked to it.” Use this to find out who is writing about a given topic, and subscribe to feeds of your searches.
  • Google Blogsearch: Less bells and whistles than Technorati, but it’s quick and clear.

Online reference:

  • Let’s just stop using Dictionary.com right now. Forget about it. Pretend it doesn’t exist. The first place you should be looking for a word is your AP Stylebook, and the second place is Merriam-Webster. This isn’t my opinion, it’s AP Style. Depending on which news organization you work for, the rules might be different, but for now, just get used to typing www.webster.com. If you use the Firefox browser (You’re not still using IE6, are you?), you can just add Merriam Webster to the list of search engines in that little box in the top-right corner of the page.
  • Wikipedia rocks. Yeah, yeah, I know, you’re thinking “How can we trust these random dudes sitting in front of their computers who knows where?” I’m not asking you to use Wikipedia to figure out what’s going on in the West Bank or to find the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, but if you need to find out in a hurry how old Bill Frist is, you’re in luck. In other words, Wikipedia is generally safe to use for facts, but not for opinion or analysis. For that, you’ll want to find someone quotable, and you’ll want to talk to them.

Other things I might have mentioned…

The Soapbox Prophet

Mar 23, ’06 9:02 PM

I just subscribed to this SJSU J-Schooler’s blog yesterday, then I spot him at the Salam Pax talk today, blogging it and shooting it with a webcam. Keep it up — we need more print students blogging here.

The Soapbox Prophet

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Let’s just pretend this makes any sense to you

Mar 3, ’06 2:32 PM

The word “meme,” familiar to me as more of a piece of postmodern philosophy vocabulary than a LiveJournal-esque passing around of an idea, has reared its long E twice in two weeks.

First there was the ill-conceived Safire column on Blargon (and my rant about it), and now this.

I usually don’t participate in this sort of thing, but hey, in the interest of fostering some sort of blogger community within the few hundred square feet of the Daily newsroom, here goes:

FOUR THINGS

Four shows I enjoy:

Four movies I can watch over and over:

Four jobs I’ve held:

Four places I’ve vacationed:

Four cool toys:

  • etch-a-sketch
  • nerf football
  • Simpsons chess set
  • old casio keyboard

Four websites I visit daily (not counting all the time I spend in my aggregator):

Okay kids, that’s as far as I’m going to get.  Next time, let’s do this on MySpace…

Oh, wait, I’m supposed to “tag” four people with this thing…

Forget it.  This must be why I’m so lucky – because I never forward chain letters.