Showing My Class How to Blog

Hey, Class! Blogging is easy.

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!