The audio slide show – a multimedia piece that combines audio and still photos – is a standard format in most newsrooms and journalism classrooms. And Soundslides, a program created by Joe Weiss, is the standard program used to create them.

Soundslides is so easy to use that it does not require hours of step-by-step tutorials. However, after a few semesters of teaching audio slide shows, I have collected a list of resources that I have found helpful for introducing and troubleshooting the process for beginners.

Examples of Inspiring Audio Slide Shows

For examples of great audio slide shows, I often turn to Interactive Narratives, a clearinghouse for the best of online visual storytelling. The audio slide show can also be a powerful way to profile individuals. For examples of audio slide show profiles, I like the New York Times series One in 8 Million and the Los Angeles Times series pop.u.LA.tion.

When Is an Audio Slide Show the Best Format for a Story?

NewsUniversity has an online course called Five Steps to Multimedia Storytelling. It aims to teach which stories are more suitable for multimedia.

To understand the power – and limits – of an audio slide show, read a Poynter interview with Sounslides creator Joe Weiss. He discusses the potential and some common pitfalls of the format.

Also on the BBC’s College of Journalism blog, Kevin Marsh ponders the question: “Why would you choose a slide show when you could use video?”

How to Use Soundslides

The Soundslides user manual is the place to begin when teaching or trying the program for the first time.

Jeremy Rues has created a nice step-by-step Soundslides tutorial for the Knight Digital Media Center.

Here is a PowerPoint presentation I use to introduce audio slide shows and SoundSlides in the classroom.

Also I’ve created a screencast video on how to embed a Soundslides slide show on a self-hosted WordPress blog. This is one of the most common questions I get from students, especially after my class has ended and they are doing their own independent projects.

Tips for Creating a Better Audio Slide Show

To avoid common mistakes, read the post How to Make Your Audio Slide Shows Better by Colin Mulvany.

Mark Luckie lists Five Common Photo Slide Show Mistakes.

Mindy McAdams has two great blog posts on the subject: Tell a Good Story with Images and Sound and Do’s and Don’ts for Slide Shows.

Soundslides Tools

On the Soundslides forum, you can read through questions and issues others have encountered and post your own questions. (I posted a message about a bug last week, and I received a reply within a few hours.)

Soundslides Embed Utility – This tool allows you to post your published slide shows to a blog, or embed them in other pages.

Soundslides Video Converter – This tool converts audio slide shows into an mp4 video file. That way they can placed on sites like YouTube and Vimeo, embedded on free WordPress.com blogs, or viewable on an iPod.

These are “working drafts.” I will lay down more scripted audio tracks later and add elements that I may have missed.

I welcome responses or suggestions for future screen casts.

How to Convert Audio Files Using Switch

Garage Band Basics for Journalists

Other recommended resources for teaching audio:
Telling Stories with Sound (NewsU)
Audio 101: A quick and dirty guide to recording your story (Common Language Project)
Buy an audio recorder and learn to use it (Mindy McAdams)
Start editing audio (Mindy McAdams)
Gathering Audio by Brian Storm (MediaStorm)
How to Use Garage Band (Knight Digital Media Center)
How to Use Audacity (Knight Digital Media Center)

Each student selects a topic or beat to cover for the semester and creates a blog dedicated to that subject. Then students report, write, photograph, gather audio, shoot and edit video for Web, and create interactive maps and timelines. All the student work is public, and the authors must cultivate an audience.

I like using the blog format for a number of reasons:

• It’s a free (or relatively inexpensive) way to create an online publication.
• Blogs can serve as an open-source reporter’s notebook – a place to try things, develop sources, and advance a story.
• It’s a hands-on way to learn about things like  HTML, CSS, feeds, linking, traffic, search engine optimization, and copyright and fair use.
• Students are required to generate ideas, write frequently, and learn to edit their own work.
• It allows for experimentation with multimedia and a chance to explore which elements can or should be used to tell a particular story.
• Students often have their work picked up by other publications or noticed by other reporters and editors.
• When students finish the semester, they have an online publication for internships and job applications. From my own experience, I know that an editor can tell a lot more about an applicant from 15 weeks of covering a single topic than from a stack of clips from the school newspaper.

When I began teaching several years ago, I was one of only a few instructors in my journalism department to use blogs for student work; today, many do.  Some students now complain that they have to maintain three or four blogs at the same time.

At the end of each semester, I ask myself: Is blogging outdated? Should I move on to another platform?

A recent report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which found that blogging has dropped among teens and young adults while simultaneously rising among older adults, raised these questions for me again.

I regularly remind my students that the class is not about blogging. It isn’t about the technology, software, or equipment. All of those things will be outdated in a few years.  I hope they take away lessons in reporting, writing, editing, fact checking, producing, informing, sharing, storytelling, and connecting with an audience.

I’d abandon blogs if I found another way to create that same experience in an introductory online journalism course. Much of the traffic on the Web has moved away from blogs to social networking sites. But I’ve yet to see a social networking experience that allows for all of the elements listed above.

I welcome suggestions.

Multimedia Standards, a University of Miami class project on multimedia journalism standards

John Temple blogs the MediaStorm Methodology Workshop (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5) and post-workshop reflection Ten steps news organizations should take to embrace a multimedia future.

Archived Chat: How Do You Involve Students in Multimedia Rather Than Just Teach It? (Poynter)

How to Use Digital Story Telling in the Classroom (Edutopia)

Video Tutorials from University of Oklahoma’s Journalism School
-Tutorials for Adobe products (Photoshop, InDesign, Flash, Illustrator, etc)
-Tutorials for Multimedia Journalism course
-Tutorials for Interactive Multimedia Design course

Handout on Multimedia Storytelling from Steve Buttry, Gazette Communications

Also Mark Luckie of 10000words.net has a book called “The Digital Journalist’s Handbook” due out in September.

A friend recommended I read a book called  The Little Book of Contemplative Photography by  Howard Zehr, a professor and documentary photographer who contends that the words and metaphors of photography – “taking a picture,” “shooting,” “aiming” – are predominately aggressive and predatory, but also inaccurate.

Zehr writes:

This metaphor of taking an image does not accurately reflect the photographic process itself. When we photograph, we do not actually reach out and take anything. A camera is basically a dark box with a receptor (film or digital sensor) on one side and a small opening on the other… When we do photography, we receive an image that is reflected from the subject. Instead of photography as taking, then we can envision it as receiving. Instead of a trophy that is hunted, an image is a gift.

Zehr goes on to suggest new ways of talking about photography. He sees:

• Image as received vs. image taken
• Image as ours vs. image as mine
• Subject as co-creator, collaborator vs. subject as an object
• Photography as revelation vs. photography as expose.

I found the idea compelling, but wondered if it could be translated to other forms of journalism.

For one, Zehr’s photography is deeply connected to his religious, philosophical, and personal beliefs. He is an advocate for restorative justice, a way of approaching crime that emphasizes repairing the harm done to the whole community, not just punishing the offender. This is evident in his portraits of  victims of crimes, as well as photographs of men and women serving life sentences in prison.

Many journalists, I thought, might be suspicious of such a value-laden approach and suspicious of the language shift as well.

A few days later I stumbled upon a Web site called Journalism That Matters founded by group of news editors who hope to save the industry by rethinking traditional newsroom culture, approaches, and metaphors.

Journalism That Matters argues that the news process should be defined as:

• Conversation rather than a lecture
• Many-to-many rather than one-to-many
• Community connector rather than a central authority
• Relationship-centric rather than knowledge-centric.

I find both of these vocab-lessons valuable in thinking about how journalism might be re-imagined.

In both of these paradigms, journalism education might be less about teaching students how to gather and distribute information and more about helping students engage with the people and communities they are covering.