The Big Thaw: Charting a New Future for Journalism by Tony Deifell – This report commissioned by the Media Consortium asks: “Can media producers adapt and lead, or will they disappear with journalism’s ice age?”

Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers – A group of journalism scholars look at how national newspapers in ten Western democracies approach content generated by the people once viewed as “the audience.”

Breaking Journalism Down: Work, Authority, and Networking Local News by C.W. Anderson – An analysis of Philadelphia’s news eco-system from 1997 to 2009. It isn’t published yet, but Anderson was kind enough to send me a draft.

Mediactive by Dan Gillmor – How to become a more active and informed media consumer and creator.

Radio: An Illustrated Guide by Jessica Abel and Ira Glass – From the folks at This American Life, a $5 comic book on how to make a radio show.

You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lenier – This best-selling book begins with the line: “It’s early in the twenty-first century, and that means that these words will mostly be read by nonpersons – automatons or numb mobs composed of people who are no longer acting as individuals.”

History of News by Mitchell Stephens – Because the original news platform was a drum.

Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality – I’m finally getting around to this “required reading” on multimedia.

Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide by Andy Bull – I’m checking out this college textbook and looking for new resources and approaches for the classroom.

The Bang Bang Club by Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva – I have to read the book before I see the movie.

Online Journalism I (Spring 2011)
-Download Online Journalism I syllabus (pdf)
-Link to Online Journalism I class blog with assignments, tutorials, schedule, student work, and lecture notes

Online Journalism 2 (Spring 2011)
-Download Online Journalism 2 syllabus (pdf)
-Link to the Online Journalism II class blog with assignments, tutorials, schedule, and lecture notes

The syllabus exchange works on a point system. For every resource submitted (i.e., syllabus, class exercise, assignment, handout, case study or rubric) a teacher can download two teaching materials. Everything is tagged and searchable by the professor’s name, school, type of course, and education level.

I signed up for a NewsU account and uploaded my syllabi for this semester. It took about 24 hours for NewsU to accept my submissions and award points to my account. Then I downloaded a few  interactive storytelling materials from professors at SMU, San Francisco State, and the Medill School of Journalism. Of course, many journalism professors have been informally sharing teaching materials online for years, but it is helpful to have a concentration of resources.

Here is a link to the syllabus exchange page -  https://www.newsu.org/tools/syllabus-exchange

But don’t use your points to download my materials. If you are interested, here is what I’m doing this fall semester at Rowan University.

Online Journalism I
-Online Journalism I syllabus (pdf)
-Link to Online Journalism I class blog with assignments, tutorials, schedule, student work and lecture notes

Online Journalism 2
-Online Journalism II syllabus (pdf)
-Link to the Online Journalism II class blog with assignments, tutorials, schedule and lecture notes

As I shift to my summer schedule, I wanted to take note of a few general lessons I’ve learned. Most of these are things I came to through trial-and-error, often with instruction from my students.

Lecturing is not the best way to teach that “news is a conversation”
Higher education and journalism are biased toward a “one-to-many” mode of communication; the web is not. In order to understand how journalism works in a digital age, a course on interactive news has to be participatory, conversational and collaborative. In my experience, this can also mean unpredictable and occasionally chaotic, but it is a lot more fun than lecturing everyday.

Follow smart people
My blog roll (see “Sites I Like and Use” on the sidebar) and my Twitter account are my key sources of information on what is happening in the profession and in teaching. If I don’t know something, I turn to those who do.

Don’t assume students are active web users
There is a difference between “passive” and “active” web users. Despite growing up with the Internet, some of my students navigate the web like they watch TV; they surf and consume. Or they only know how to participate within a defined structure like Facebook.

Don’t skimp on HTML and CSS
An assignment to build a simple web page can fill my email box with complaints. Then at the end of the semester, students say they want to learn more coding. So each semester, I give them more.

Raw audio interviews are gold
At the suggestion of veteran online journalism professor Mindy McAdams, I now require students turn in unedited audio recordings of interviews. They take a time to review, but they provide invaluable insight into a student’s interviewing and reporting techniques. I can hear the leading questions, the lack of a follow-up question, or the student reporter who does not allow the subject enough time to tell the real story. I can also tell if the student is interviewing a friend or relative.

Online tutorials are useful, but need follow-up
I use “how-to” online tutorials to free up class time and allow students to learn at their own pace. However, I’ve found that students will rush through them — or skip them entirely — unless they are followed up with some kind of review or assessment.

Experiment first, become an expert later
I used to spend a lot of time explaining a new piece of equipment or software before giving assignments. Now I cover a few basics and get students using it as soon as possible. I cover the more advanced techniques after they have some experience practicing.

The audience can be the best editor
I require that my students publish their work for an online audience (see a previous post It’s Not About the Blog). Despite the potential risks of this practice — like making mistakes in a public forum or having to endure spam and trolls — an online audience can provide a level of feedback that I cannot. Last semester, a student created an interactive map of all of the schools in his town. Eight minutes after it was published online, a reader contacted the student to say one school was missing.

Allow students to pursue a passion
I often ask students to report on subjects that they are passionate about. Some students respond, “I don’t have any passions.” I tell them to use my class as an excuse to find that new passion.  Then, over the course of the semester, I urge students to cover the topic as a “beat,” developing story ideas, cultivating sources, and digging deeper into the subject. It is satisfying to watch a student turn a hobby into an area of expertise. And reporters in the field routinely seek out students who have built up an online portfolio of work on a specific subject and quote them as sources.

Push beyond “write what you know”
While I allow students to write about things that interest them, I also require students to go places and cover subjects that do not interest them. I have found that it is essential to give very specific requirements (i.e. no quotes from anyone 17-25 years old) to get students to move out of their comfort zones.

Expect resistance to convergence
I have instituted convergence projects which require my online journalism students to work alongside broadcast journalism and photojournalism students. I underestimated how intensely students can identify with their particular specializations and can resent having to work with “those TV people.”

Storytelling is hard work
I can teach someone to edit an audio clip, crop a photo or compress a video. Or they can Google it and teach themselves. Teaching students to recognize, report and tell a compelling story is a real challenge, but that seems like a central goal of journalism education.

Students don’t remember PowerPoint presentations
I have now been teaching long enough to get an occasional “thank you” e-mail or note from a former student. While they often mention the content of my courses and how it helped in grad school or on the job, it is clear that interactions and conversations outside of the classroom are as meaningful — and often more significant — than the information I try to convey in the classroom.

—

I read through my course evaluations from last semester and in addition to comments like “he’s long-winded, but nice enough,” a number of students gave high marks to the free Web tutorials I assigned in my online journalism classes. I was pleasantly surprised because I wasn’t sure how to measure their usefulness, and I had to create graded assignments to make the student actually do them.

But overall, students said they found the tutorials helpful, liked that they could learn at their own pace, and returned to them over and over again.

I found out about many of these tutorials from Mindy McAdams, who has written a great series of posts called a Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency on her blog. NewsU and the Knight Digital Media Center are also great resources.

So below is a list of tutorials I’ve used in my courses. They are all free and all aimed at beginners.

Any you would suggest?

Also this fall, I plan to create a series of video tutorials for my students and will post them here.

STORYTELLING
Five Steps of Multimedia Storytelling (NewsU)
Ira Glass of This American Life on the building blocks of good storytelling (25 minutes of YouTube videos)
Part 1: On the basics
Part 2: On finding a great story
Part 3: On taste
Part 4: On common pitfalls

DIPITY TIMELINE
How to Make a Timeline Using Dipity (Berkey-Gerard)

GOOGLE MAPS
11 Exercises to Learn How to Make a Google Map (Berkey-Gerard)

Google Map Video Tours:
Getting Started
Add a Place
Google Street View
Create a Map
Add Third Party Content
Create a Google Map profile

HTML and CSS
Beginner HTML Tutorial (HTML Dog)
Beginner CSS Tutorial (HTML Dog)

PHOTOGRAPHY
Language of the Image (NewsU)
Photoshop How-To for Online Photos (Mindy McAdams)

AUDIO
Telling Stories with Sound (NewsU)
Gathering Audio by Brian Storm (MediaStorm)
How to convert .wma, .wmv, or .mp3 files using Switch (Berkey-Gerard)
How to Use Garage Band (Knight Digital Media Center)
How to Use Audacity (Knight Digital Media Center)

SOUND SLIDES
Photoshop How To for Sound Slides (Mindy McAdams)
How to Use the Sound Slides (Knight Digital Media Center)

VIDEO
How to Use iMovie (Knight Digital Media Center)

MULTIMEDIA COLLAGE
How to Make a Multimedia Collage Using VuVox (VuVox)

What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis

Planet Google by Randall Stross

Open Source Democracy by Douglas Rushkoff

SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save the World by Charlie Beckett

My name is Mark Berkey-Gerard. I am a college journalism teacher. I teach online and multimedia journalism courses at Rowan University in Southern New Jersey.  I spend a lot of my day teaching students how to do “techie” things.

But my real passion – and my real challenge – is helping students become better storytellers and helping them learn how to use technology to create forums for authentic interaction and conversation.

So I’ve created this blog to:
•    Flesh out my own ideas about journalism, new media, and education.
•    Offer resources (links, articles, books, people, tutorials, workshops).
•    Open up my teaching approach to my students.
•    Invite others – journalists, teachers, students, and anyone who cares – to offer their own insights and ideas.

The title of the blog is inspired by the writings of educator James Carey, who thought of journalism as a kind of collective campfire storytelling. “Conversation not only forms opinions, it forms memory,” Carey wrote. “We remember best the things that we say, the things the we say in response to someone else with whom we are engaged. Talk is the surest guide to remembering and knowing what we think.”

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