Difference between revisions of "Student Journalism 2.0"

License(s)

CC BY

Main URL

http://learn.creativecommons.org/student-journalism-2-0

Resource URL

http://learn.creativecommons.org/student-journalism-2-0

Resource Feed

Unspecified Alex Kozak akozak@creativecommons.org

Affiliation

Creative Commons

Organization Type

nonprofit

Location

San Francisco, CA

Language

Unspecified

Tags

Open or Free Statement

yes

Project summary

This is a Creative Commons project. The Student Journalism 2.0 project will help high-school journalism students to both understand and apply the legal and technical solutions for harnessing the capabilities of the Internet for virtual collaboration, viral dissemination, and feedback loops that can inform, deepen, and extend the reach of their stories. The full proposal is located on the ccLearn site.

The project will consist of three components: content, tools, and the integration of both into Journalism practice. Content includes education on copyright, which encompasses Creative Commons, a (new) way of understanding copyright. Tools include both educational content about the tools, and introduction of the tools itself.

Background

Journalists and media organizations face a foundational crisis: the web challenges their traditional conceptions of what journalism is, and how it allows them generate revenue. The possibility of “citizen-bloggers”, open data, free publishing tools, and extremely low barriers to information access and dissemination allows anyone with the time and motivation to transform into an investigative reporter, publisher, advertising, and marketing department all at once. This is new competition to old media in areas that they had been dominant for hundreds of years (i.e. news, classifieds, investigative reporting, sports, etc.), and challenges the old model of top-down control of media.

In the past, media companies were limited by physical, “real-world” constraints on their business model. Locality has always been an important factor- newspapers, radio, and TV were only able to be directed at limited, usually local, audiences. Competition between media occurred at the local level (newspaper “turf wars”), which was enabled in part by a passive consumer base. And the physical limits of the medium itself also shaped the way they conducted business- there are only so many radio frequencies to broadcast on, you can only print and distribute so much paper, there are only so many channels on TV, and so on. Editorial control was important in creating a concise, deliverable product, but it left little room for a direct consumer voice. But on the web, there is no physical barrier to information. Location is almost irrelevant- no matter where you are, anyone can access your publications, blogs, tweets, articles, etc. And on the web, there is virtually no limit to the amount of information you can distribute.

"Old media” companies are struggling to re-conceive what their product is in this new space. There had always been some medium of communication that they could look at as their product- for the newspaper, it was the actual paper on which the news was printed. And as a result of this product model, newspaper readers were seen as passive consumers of the news, only subscribing to receive information about the world around them, filtered by an editorial process. Newspapers were delivered, not accessed. But with the development of the web, new consumer interactions with media have developed. The public doesn't want to just be passive receptors of information. Instead, they want to interact with, share, remix, and create content themselves. They want to be part of the process, or part of the end result. And this raises questions about where the value is in distributing news and media. Old media is struggling to understand and respond to these demands for new kinds of interactions with their media. Or to put it another way, they are trying to re-conceive their value.

In short, media companies have been trying to extend their old practices onto the web, but tend to force their old conceptions of media delivery and are becoming less and less relevant to a new types of consumption. Media companies could be taking advantage of the web and new technologies by encouraging new behaviors and interactions with their content.

Course Content

Copyright/Creative Commons

Books

• Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody

Handouts

• ccLearn Step by Step Guides - Applying Creative Commons Licenses to your Educational Resources
• Australia's CC Info Pack
• EFF: Teaching Copyright

Videos

Presentations

• CC and copyright
• Have contact at spot.us (community funded reporting, but isn't really a copyright-related presentation idea) -Alex

Journalism, generally

• UNESCO Model Curricula for journalism education

Tools

Try to incorporate open source software where possible.

• http://www.emergingedtech.com/2009/04/10-internet-technologies-that-educators-should-be-informed-about/

For Copyright/Creative Commons

• Creative Commons Licensing Portal for Educators
• Flickr (for article images)
• http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/04/30/30-creative-commons-sources/#comment-925251
• also see http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Content_Directories

For Publishing

• Wordpress
• Wikis
• Free blogging portals (i.e. blogger)

For Social Networks

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Social bookmarking/social feeds (digg, reddit, del.icio.us, stumbleupon)
• News Games

For Tracking/Metrics

• Google analytics
• Google alerts
• technorati?

Integrated Pedagogies

Stand-alone stuff

Presentations

All day items (special events)

Games

Integrated

Writing process

Publishing Process

Review/Evaluation/Feedback

Documenting Integration

• spearheaded by "experts"
  • interviews with students, surveys of students, teacher feedback at meetings, students log on and provide input
  • gathering data which is amenable to analysis - presume that somebody other than the person who gathered the data can use it
  • examples: look at Vital Signs and how they use student data from the field
  • messaging: qualitative is better than quantitative
• spearheaded by students
  • make recording process part of students' jobs---
  • examples: look at UMich chemistry student textbook - make it about the student contributions, students teaching each other, writing the textbook
  • make it a journalism project - students write articles about what they are doing, interview themselves
  • each class has CC leads that interface with ccLearn rep (Alex)