I’ve been working with a reporter for the last couple months to help him put together a set of multimedia projects to run with his centerpiece in today’s paper.
Here’s the proverbial fruits of our labor: two audio slideshows, a video, and a podcast, all complementing his print stories by taking us behind the numbers (standardized test scores in this case) and into classrooms and homes to find out what a local school (and a community) is doing to deal with the consequences of falling behind under No Child Left Behind.
No, there’s no big Flash interface with a green chalkboard background and a cool navigation scheme. Maybe next time. For now, I’ve been focusing on producing and editing the pieces, rather than wrapping them up in pretty trappings. That will come later…
I’m aware there are things you would have done differently, and I can guess what most of those are, and yet, I still would love some feedback on the project.
Comments
4 responses to “What I’ve been working on all week”
The work shows. It’s a nice package built around a good story. It sounds like the school was cooperative, too, which is always handy. I did something like this at my last paper, but without the multimedia, and it just isn’t the same.
I liked that it got past the rather tired debate on the law itself. Focusing on the brother and sister in the first slide show worked well, and having Spanish in the audio was a good call.
One thing (I think) I wanted: Numbers. I know, the point of the story was to get away from numbers, but NCLB has made education something of a quantitative business. Just a quick chart showing how many students are EL and such would have helped.
And one random cool thing: Midway through the first slide show, the teacher says she tells adults to imagine they’re in China and the difficulties entailed. “They’re in culture shock.” Exactly.
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