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.