Is Twitter Relevant?

A friend of mine signed up for Twitter this week after hearing me go on about it. Her first response, so far, is that she doesn't get it. I understand; that was my first response, too. What relevance could Twitter have in my life beyond "I'm on line at Starbucks; anyone want to meet me here?"

But as so many of us experienced during the Mumbai attacks, Twitter can suddenly and surprisingly become very relevant--even more so than TV--during times of crisis or significant news events. The immediacy and intimacy of the medium are striking. In fact, I found myself primarily tracking Mumbai on Twitter, and I now follow at least two of the Indians that covered the attacks so well, including the NYTimes-discussed Arun Shanbhag.

Now, days after the Mumbai attacks, I find myself combing through the Mumbai Twitter posts, and I've noticed I've logged onto my own Twitter account more than previously. But the experience lacks the satisfaction (if I can call it that during so horrible an event) it had when I was following Mumbai events. I'm seeking something more. And I'm not finding it.

So, what I've discovered--though this may change later--is that while Twitter is a significant tool for major events, as far as tracking regular life, well, meet me at Starbucks and we'll talk about it.

Using Sprout

I've just assigned my advanced newswriting students their multimedia project. Rich Cameron shared with us his Sproutbuilder assignment and I've modified it slightly to better suit my particular course. I'm looking forward to seeing what the students do with it, but I'm also welcoming a second opportunity to play around with it myself. Lately, I've been much more focused on Twitter to the expense of other tools, including our wiki site.

All A-Tweeter at the 2008 JACC NorCal Conference

The JACC NorCal 2008 conference that I helped plan took place this past weekend at San Jose State University. Since our cool speakers, Cindy McCune and Steve Sloan, were going to hit the audience hard with all the new technology that are predictors of where journalism might venture (already is), I wanted to experiment with having several JACC reporters tweet the conference.

It turned out great. Transcripts of the feed are now posted on our JACC site. Reading them really made me aware of how useful this tool is.

Twitter This

Today, I offered my writing and reporting students this extra credit opportunity: Live tweet the presidential debates this Friday. So far, two students have signed on with Twitter, and I sense others will do it too.

On this same note, the newspaper staff has decided to turn a camera on the newsroom tonight and will post it later on The Skyline View web site. Jokingly, I said that since that was the case, I was going to live tweet (is that an oxymoron?) from the newsroom floor today. And I started too.

But you see, this is my first time using Twitter. I signed up during the Democratic Convention to be able to more closely follow Slate's coverage--but it was only today that I started posting and following others. The interesting thing is, though, that once you follow someone else, it seems they will, in turn, follow you. I am not a Facebook or MySpace user (yet). So, this was very unexpected.

And now, I feel so exposed. This is interesting territory for me, this line between the private, public, and extreme public realms. I'm used to having my web page (which I am now, by the way, having problems with) and this blog. But Twitter feels more personal, more immediate.

Posting a Live Link

For some reason, when I was demonstrating to a few students how to create a live link in your blog entry, not all of the icons above showed up. If that happens to you, I'm not sure yet how to fix that problem. But if the above icons are showing, then this little video will make sense:

By the way, I made this "movie" with SnagIt. Pretty cool stuff, except that the quality is not great here; it's not even legible. When I have more time, I may investigate that further.

Getting Your Chops

There is nothing better than teaching a new class the second time around. The new semester has started, and this experiment of teaching two levels of Writing and Reporting for the Media in the same room at the same time feels a lot more successful to me this time. (Thankfully, I had advanced students last semester that I've known for a long time and who were very forgiving. . .) The challenge of teaching a new class has been heightened by having a wide range of journalism skills and exposure among the two levels.

That being said, I can see this working. The advanced students, while learning a new skill set, are also reviewing their basic skills and mentoring--in a sense--the other students. And I'm absolutely confident that the multimedia exposure both classes are getting--setting up their blogs, signing up for the class wiki--is key.

So, yeah, I'm excited about this!

Blogging live from class!

I am blogging live from my class.

Testing SnagIt

Now I'd like to test out software we just received for the paper--SnagIt. I have used this minimally on my own, but I'd like to see if I can post it here. If I can post an interactive map, say, here, then the paper perhaps can, too.

bgcolor="false" quality="high"
width="250" height="125"
TYPE="application/x-shockwave-flash"
pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer/">


So, that evidentally did not work!
Can I paste it as an image?

Just One Step Ahead of My Students

Make that half a step. Or maybe one step behind. Whatever it is, I seem to be learning right alongside my students. I've just given them an assignment to build a Sprout, so naturally, that means I have to try my own. I just did one, but am now having difficulty posting it on my school Web page. But perhaps I can post it here:

Yay--that worked. So, I re-assert: One step ahead.

Video Blog

My Jour 121 are underway with their themed blogs, and the next assignment they have due--this Friday--is to video an interview with someone and post it to their blog. The interview has to be related to the blog's overall theme. One way they might to this is by linking their video to YouTube. So far, the stumbling block for me posting a test movie is that I don't have the right format on any of my videos. As I've said before, none of this is easy. I seem to be having a steep learning curve.

Okay, maybe this will work. I'm trying something with a test "film" I'll call Dirty Desk, using Google Pages.

It works but sends viewers to view the test movie in a separate Windows Player window.

The best thing is to upload it directly to YouTube and embed it here.

Action

The semester is underway and, as promised, I added blogs to the required assignments for my newswriting classes. They seem to have embraced the technology very easily, and they've already posted not only a blurb introducing themselves, but also a profile of a classmate. I'm feeling pretty good about it.

And the newspaper staff has already broken one story online on the tragic death of one of our students, as well as posted a narrated slideshow of the MLK march in S.F.

Giving it a Whirl

One of the first assignments my students will tackle this semester is a spin on the classmate interview that I've previously had them do. This time, they will post it to their blogs and (hopefully) to our wiki site. This time, I'll ask them to post a picture of their classmate as well. I've posted my picture here as an trial run in doing this task.

Teaching the Teacher

A new semester is just about upon me, and I've got my work cut out! Essentially, I've reformatted my newswriting class to better match what my students now must know. The first thing to go was the title; it's now called Writing and Reporting for the Media. This semester, my goal is that they learn not just the basics of newswriting and reporting, but how to translate some of that to reporting for electronic and new media. Of course, they'll blog. And this will transform some of the assignments I've given in the past. For one, I've always given them a taste of publishing by having them doing a story on a classmate, compiled by me into a newsletter for the class. This semester, they'll post these to a wiki site or a blog--haven't decided yet. So, you see, I'll have my work cut out every step of the way--but I think it'll be fun.