Class Act
If you want to revive your enthusiasm for the future of
journalism, spend an hour in a college J-class.
Not only have I met some really brilliant students online through
social networking and SPJ, the occasional invite to speak to a class by prof
friends renews my faith. The students
are engaged. They asked good
questions. They at least fake not
falling asleep really well.
Of course, prepping for the class and actually worrying over
whether I will really interest them enhances my respect for journalism teachers
such as Mindy McAdams, Andy Dickinson, Mark Hamilton, Charles Davis
and Randy
Brown, who asks me to come speak to his classes a couple of times a
year. These folks do this every day,
and God love ‘em for it.
I told the students I would post the links we talked about
in class on this blog, so they could continue to explore the changing face of
journalism.
The new stuff
As I said in class, there are plenty of tutorials on the web
to help people learn how to do it all.
All it takes is time. Here are
some helpful links to learning and cool tools:
The BCC offers some great tips on audio and video
Make your slideshows with Sound
Slides. And learn how to use it -
easy.
Don’t want to spend the money on that program, no matter how inexpensive? Then make
your slideshows
with the free MovieMaker already on your computer.
Learn
to gather and edit audio
Explore Google Earth
and Google
Maps
Examples
We we also looked at both national
examples and what we’re doing locally:
Flight
Delays - Las Vegas Sun
Crime Map -
Kansas.com
Kansas
Democrat Caucus - Kansas.com
Hidden
Poor - Chicago Tribune
WSU
Shiftspace
Video &
Map Mashup
I’ve got to thank Ryan
Sholin and Andy Dickinson for help with some of these links. And Andy’s link to the video/map mashup was
a hit. Nothing holds
attention like a sports car racing through a metropolitan
area.