The inspiration for this topic comes from my fascination with the question itself–what IS content?  Can it be defined?  Is it an abstract concept?  Who are the creators?  Who are the consumers?  How are they consuming?

Also, I found this presentation on storytelling from @JESS3 co-founder and @Forbes contributor Leslie Bradshaw to be extremely motivating for new media enthusiasts like myself with a journalism background.

I caution students that they cannot cultivate ideas unless they are actively consuming “good stuff.”  Where do we find this nutritional intake of information?  In the spirit of Maria Popova’s “rabbit holes” — if you love the topic of information architecture and discovery on the Internet, her post Introducing The Curator’s Code: A Standard for Honoring Attribution of Discovery Across the Web might be of interest to you.

“PB” = Personal Branding and “Jterm” = the January 2012 term for undergraduates.  PB&J = well, you get it.

This link shows you some of our class assignments.  You can meet our 2012 student blogger/tweeters here.  We’ve got 12 days at three hours each to build our online brands.  Our focus includes mastering social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn, blogging our passions via WordPress, and delivering knockout presentations using Slideshare and Prezi.

We always welcome guest speakers.  This year, we’re looking forward to Nick Gilham from A Branded You and Derek Mabie of Evolve Digital Labs.  If we are cool enough, David Armano might even Skype with us.

#PBandJterm Trends On #STL Twitter; Photo Credit: @JenSwish and @MattSwaringim

The students revved up the cool factor for sure today – making #PBandJterm the top trending topic for a time in St. Louis.  Way to go students!

It’s not about teaching skills, it’s about what students can do with them.

Teaching in communications and journalism programs can be stressful.  As an educator, you’re never quite sure your students are graduating with precisely the skill sets they need to meet the ever-evolving changing market demand.  As a result, many programs are filled with “skills” type courses which attempt to remedy the problem.  Often, programs end up with countless hours of individualized skills courses and not enough academic, project-based scenarios courses that enable problem solving.

In a panel called, The Future of Journalism,  moderator, NPR and University of Maryland Adjunct Professor Jamie McIntyre said plainly that it’s one thing to teach a student a skill, it’s another to have them show you what they can do with it.  How wonderful that students know various software programs (ones that can often be self-taught online)–but what can they DO with them?  What can they create of value for themselves and their community?  Where does the real learning and dot-connecting take place?  You get the idea.  I’ll be asking myself these questions about courses I teach and reevaluating.

Look at things outside of journalism for inspiration.

Innovative Storytelling Panel at Journalism Interactive Conference, Mark Luckie at Podium

The morning panel on Innovative Storytelling earns the award for being my favorite panel of the entire conference.  I left with opened eyes.  UC Berkeley Assistant Professor Richard Koci Hernandez lit up the room with this energy and ideas.  No trouble staying awake here.  When I could keep up, I took copious notes.  One theme didn’t need much jotting down for me because it resonated as truthful.  Hernandez explained that in order to find creative solutions to journalism issues, we have to look outside of the typical spheres of information.

He urges students to find something that inspires them, and then think of how they can apply it to journalism.  Was it a new game they played?  A moving tribute to Johnny Cash?  Whatever it is, is inconsequential.  It’s what they do with it that matters.  This, he believes, is what stimulates innovation.  As educators, we get caught up in training students to fit into newsrooms the way we remember them, not to “think outside the box” (hate that phrase but it’s an apt one here) about what jazzes them to make things better.

Data visualization is part of the news gathering process.

In at least two panels Saturday, speakers urged journalists to be knowledgable about computer programming.  I’m going to admit, for a long time, I tuned out when I heard “programming” and “journalism” in the same sentence because this mountain seems insurmountable. It’s hard to wrap my head around.  Also, I wondered if all the talk is a passing fad.  After today, I don’t wonder anymore.  I get it now.  Here’s why…

The first thing I learned in the Innovative Storytelling panel from Shazna Nessa, Director of AP Interactive, was to change the way I thought about programming and data visualization.  Compiling a bunch of data and saying look how cool this info graphic is, is fine, but at the heart of this process is where you find stories.  She urged the audience not to think of data visualization as an afterthought.  It’s where we look for patterns, see connections and find stories.  There is power in this.  We are living in a time now where large amounts of raw data surround us.  What will we do with it?  Who will organize it?  What will we discover when we write the programs that read the data and arrange it visually, creating usable pieces of information from a previously overwhelming amorphous mass of information?  See where this goes?

In afternoon panel on Computational Journalism, Medill Professor Rich Gordon discussed the concept of students being “bilingual” in journalism and programming.  Even if they’ll never truly get paid to write programs, if they understand how they’re made, this is a good thing, fellow panelist Matt Waite echoed.  This knowledge means they’ll be able to better function in a changing news environment and problem solve.

“But, I’m not good with computers.”

A myth exists that students in our classrooms are fearlessly tech-savvy.  Well, if you’ve ever asked a student to do something software or Web-based, you’ll find out very quickly this is not true, with a few exceptions of course.  While Millennials are excellent consumers of media, many freeze up and throw in the towel if they are unable to immediately figure something out.  “I’m not good with computers,” they’ll say.  This is something Matt Waite lamented about during the afternoon panel on Computational Journalism.  Waite added that students aren’t alone.  Many educators echo the same sentiment of failure when it comes to technology.  “It’s the new I’m not good at math line, and we’ve got to put  a stop to it,” Waite urged.

When I hear either of these statements about not being good with computers or with math, what I’m really hearing from students is, “I’m not good at problem solving.”  Understood.  Problem solving is hard sometimes.  If an answer does immediately appear, keep trying.  Often, that’s where you’ll learn something.  We should encourage ourselves and our students to troubleshoot and to “fail” on this path.  We should discourage the cop out lines about math and computers.  Make it “uncool” to say those things.

With multimedia, avoid creating a cat toy.

What makes a story compelling?  Is it multimedia elements in a “package” online what makes something sing?  Starting out thinking “multimedia” with journalism often results in throwing every element into an online story just because we can.  Add video!  Let’s make a slide show!  Look, it moves!  Richard Koci Hernandez compared this over-zealousness to creating a cat toy, thereby illustrating the silliness of this thinking.  He said innovative storytelling can involve a single photograph–if it makes you feel something–it’s innovative.  We don’t need to get caught up in formulaic add everything because we can mentality of online journalism.

Change your syllabus.

For fellow faculty teaching in journalism and communications, distinguished panelists throughout this conference want you and I and everyone else to change our syllabi every semester.  Yep.  Every single semester.  Thanks to our changing media landscape, we encounter so many new issues and concepts that standing still seems preposterous.

For conference resources, including video of each panel, visit www.journalisminteractive.com.

The future of the social media editor is uncertain.

In the morning panel, Social Media: Best Practices in Journalism, The New York Times’ social media editor Liz Heron told the audience her current role may be merely a transitional one.  In other words, she’s kind of a shepard right now guarding the online reaches of the flock, but at some point–she used the measurement of five years–the flock will be trained in the ways of social media and this integration renders her current role irrelevant.  (All shepard and sheep references my own.)  It was fellow panelist Jim Long of NBC News who compared social media editors in the future to “telephone consultants” of the past, saying, they wouldn’t make much sense.  A popular Tweet from @Donica raised a valid question about this prediction. Are we integrating social media training into our courses and preparing future journalists for this role?  Hmmm…something to ponder.

Weave, don’t separate multimedia elements in journalism curriculum.

This idea isn’t a new one, but it’s not being adopted quick enough in many schools for Amy Webb of WebbMedia.  Several journalism and communications programs keep new media–or dare I use that dreadful word convergence–courses separate from the other traditional media courses.  Amy reiterated the value of layering fundamental reporting courses with concepts such as data mining, facial recognition tools, usernames, transparency and deep web search, to name a few.  In addition to writing good headlines, she stresses we must also teach students about meta data and keywords.  Otherwise, who will find their stories?  (Even my new media head spun a little).  Most of us shake our heads in agreement with curriculum integration, however, it’s going to be a while before we’re all there.

Move beyond Google, and encourage students to conduct deep Web searches.

This tidbit is also pulled from Amy Webb’s above referenced keynote.  She shared a number of new tools, apps and gadgets that can make what we do as journalists more efficient, especially when it comes to deep Web searches.  At least twice during conference day one, speakers rallied for educators to encourage students to move beyond the typical Google search for reasons you probably know by now.  The examples Amy gave for enhanced searching involved up and coming resources like Helioid, Greplin, Spokeo and Knodes.  Each is fascinating in its own right, and intended to help us sort through the glut of random stuff online to find what we’re really looking for.  You can see the value there for budding journalists (and academics!).

If you’re concerned about online identity and privacy now…just WAIT, it gets worse.

Still pulling from Amy’s talk, now onto something rather creepy.  She predicted the future of Web search centers around facial recognition.  Yeah, you know, the thingy Facebook does when it automatically tags photos of you and your friends.  Well, meet something called PittPatt, now the property of Google. (!!) Forgive me for not remembering the EXACT details of how this goes, but Amy said something like this: thanks to PittPatt, if I have access to your Facebook page, I can predict your social security number with a scary amount of accuracy–give or take a small margin of error.  Once again–I wish I had more specifics to share with you here, but my mind is still trying to wrap around this concept.  Privacy?  What privacy?  To make us all stop holding our breath, Amy added we might be able to “digitally camouflage” ourselves from facial recognition mining bots online by using a program called CV Dazzle.  Whoa.

The next Gutenberg is sitting in our classes, and encouraging “disruption” may coax out his (her!) greatness.

Day one’s evening keynoter, Jeff Jarvis, spoke to the crowd about the buzz topic of our field right now, entrepreneurial journalism.  As you may know, early adopter journalism programs are now beginning to offer courses with this title.  Students research, develop and pitch and idea for something journalism-related that is also sustainable.  Since “nonprofit is only a tax status,” Jarvis requires students to pursue for-profit models in his course.  He argues journalists can’t ignore the business side of survival.  Adding, courses in entrepreneurial journalism often culminate with real pitches for money, which are excellent ways to encourage “revolutionary ideas” like that of Gutenberg’s printing press.

Jarvis cited research about the information model referred to as the Gutenberg Parenthesis.  This study, influenced his latest book, as well as thoughts about this younger generation.  Our information isn’t contained anymore.  How, it’s organized and used for society rests in the hands of the students in our classrooms.  He says as educators, we must challenge them to teach us something, therefore shaping the world with breakthroughs not seen since 1472.

Excellent first day at Journalism Interactive!  Here’s my take on day two.

For conference resources, including video of each panel, visit www.journalisminteractive.com.

Flickr Photo Courtesy: Lel4nd

Summer is an excellent time to assess, reflect and focus on classroom successes and failures from the previous year.  It’s the last chance to hit the reset button before the fall semester begins.  This summer, I find a consistent theme around me as I take a deep breath between school years.  Whether the topic is on the radio, in a book I’m reading or on the agenda at a non-profit board retreat — it seems everyone is talking about a shift in classroom learning.

Based on what I’ve gathered so far, here are the central arguments from folks like Seth Godin and others studying curriculum trends:

1. Our current education system prepares students for a life spent “following directions”.  This is great for “factory” life, not so great for society’s innovation (not to mention a person’s overall happiness).

2. The traditional way of “broadcast-style” teaching doesn’t resonate with the current crop of students who have 24/7 access to any information they could ever want or need.  Collaboration and problem-solving are two imperative elements that must be fused into the curriculum.

So, where do we go from here?  I’m not sure I have the answers either, but I’ll certainly keep searching.  It’s something worth pondering in preparation for the fall semester.