Student newsrooms are stuck in the past. I’m going on my third year in a college media environment, and I understand how hard it is to break away from tradition. We get locked in a routine with advisers who only teach one system and a cycle of monotonous traditionalism is born and forever maintained.
It doesn’t have to be that way though, which is why CoPress decided to make a series of educational videos with inspirational ideas for innovation. Called “A Case for Innovation,” our series focuses on topics from creating a web centric newsroom to generating revenue online. I’ve embedded the videos below and encourage you to take them back to your newsrooms as a starting point for discussion.
I’ve probably over-emphasized the fact that these videos are a starting point only. We don’t have all the answers to innovation. But we can get you thinking, and from there, we want to see what you’re capable of. Hopefully, you come back with even better ideas that you can in return share with the rest of the community.
In a nearly split vote, about 8,800 California Faculty Association (CFA) members decided to cut their own wages by 10 percent this week.
The California State University (CSU) and the CFA finalized agreements Wednesday on two-day per month faculty furloughs — non-work days without compensation – in the vote that passed by 54 percent.
The CSU will save about half of the $584 million budget deficit through the furloughs. Of that total, Cal Poly will save approximately $16 million .
As a Cal Poly lecturer of 12 years, Sherrie Amido had to decide between the possibility of her job being cut or everyone’s salary being reduced.
“I couldn’t imagine myself standing up in front of the classroom and letting my students ask me why I couldn’t take a 10 percent pay cut, when they may have a 30 percent tuition increase,” she said. Continue Reading →
Looking into Laura Weiss’s piercing blue eyes, you’d never guess that she’s blind.
Although she sometimes returns the gaze — a habit she picked up from the first 30 years of her life when she still had vision — all Weiss can see now are faint blurs in her peripheral vision.
It’s this characteristic that places Weiss, a social sciences junior, among the 71 students at Cal Poly categorized as “disabilities students” who rely on compliance with theAmericans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to receive an education.
The law was passed in 1998 and outlaws discrimination against people with disabilities. Recent revisions involving electronic compatibility have forced the California State University to adopt a system-wide goal of achieving full ADA compliance for all digital information by 2012. Continue Reading →
I don’t know much about the class or the professor, but I’ve embedded the syllabus from 2007 below. I don’t imagine it’s changed much, if at all. (Disclosure: I’m enrolled in this course for fall quarter, which starts in two weeks. )
A few ideas I have for how he can use social media in his class:
Social bookmarking
From the syllabus:
Students will choose a particular country whose media/news they will monitor at least twice a week. Students are expected to bring to each class session an article they have downloaded from the media of the country they have chosen.
That system is antiquated.
Instead, students should be bookmarking those articles along with their personal commentary using Publish2 or Delicious. Not only does it save us paper in bad financial times, but it makes more sense as a way of organizing and keeping track of content (tags, anyone?).
Instead of going around and reading off our printed-out articles, the professor could open our Publish2 group on the projector at the start of each class and pull up each student’s article as it comes up in discussion.
Twitter/blogs to gauge hot topics
From the syllabus:
The article should be recent and not older than 2-4 days. It is up to the students to choose the articles they feel are the most the important for the people of that country.
Just because we’re in the United States doesn’t mean we should have to make guesses about hot topics in foreign countries. Twitter, blogs, Digg — and now, even searchable Facebook updates — can give us a very realistic idea of topics people care about in certain places at given times.
By using search.twitter.com, you can filter results by city using filters like near:Kabul to see tweets from Afghanistan’s capitol. Sites like GeoFollow have a similar feature with a translation option.
RSS and Google Alerts
If we’re expected to follow world news for ten weeks from specific countries, we need to become deeply consumed in their affairs. On the first day, every student should be required to sign up for Google Alerts and subscribe to RSS feeds in Google Reader for media from their assigned countries.
According to student critiques of Professor Havandjian on PolyRatings (and stories I’ve heard from classmates), he spends the first 15 minutes of class writing notes up on the board. Students should use that time to catch up on their RSS feeds (assuming the class is held in one of the journalism labs) instead of sitting around waiting for class to start.
Reaching out to individuals over social media
From the syllabus:
There will be a number of written assignments based on those handouts where students will deploy critical analysis to dissect material they have researched to supplement the handouts.
In any other journalism class, an analysis would mean talking to people who are directly impacted by widespread news issues. In a global communications class, the same thing is possible thanks to Twitter direct messages and Facebook messages. I’m sure people are willing to Skype or IM about issues in their country. Although this doesn’t have to be a requirement for the class (because of privacy/security/safety issues), for anyone who really wants to leverage their resources to have a true, accurate analysis of global issues, why not? (I know I will!)
Do you have better ideas for how social media can be used in a class like this? If so, share ‘em in the comments.
While checking e-mail on my stroll to work this morning, I stopped dead in my tracks. Twice.
The first gasp of disbelief was after reading an e-mail from ostensibly one of the most “old-school” journalism professors at Cal Poly requesting the help of yours truly to integrate social networking into his curriculum. The second was from another very traditional professor who is willing to pay me $15/hour to produce videos to supplement her lectures.
In the same morning, two professors showed interest in breaking away from tradition. What’s going on here? Is there some kind of revolution underway? Are they finally starting to understand?
Before the budget crunch hit California, professors saw no direct impact of being stuck in their ways. Their students were the ones feeling the hit with job losses after college. Now, it’s a little different. Here at Cal Poly, our multimedia professor was recently put on tenure track and we brought a second multimedia professor on board — that’s right, a new professor during a hiring freeze and faculty cuts. That means we’re getting serious about change. And professors are probably realizing that if they don’t catch up, they’ll be replaced by a younger, more tech-savvy generation.
So, while a few videos and knowledge of social media won’t save journalism, at least it’s a step forward. I’ll let you know how it goes.
While checking e-mail on my stroll to work this morning, I stopped dead in my tracks. Twice.
