Teaching Journalism

A legendary j-educator slams what's happening in j-schools these days

Sep 14, 2010 - Posted by Mary McGuire

Technology is taking over the curriculum at too many j-schools and the results are "disastrous," accorinding to a well-known journalism educator and the author of the widely-used News Reporting and Writing, now in it's 12th edition.

Melvin Mencher says instruction in basic reporting and writing, journalism history and ethics is being squeezed by the growing number of tech-related courses, in a story published at About.com:Journalism.

"How you can have a curriculum that's limited to 30 hours and stuff it with things like how to make a video and or create a blog?" he says in a phone interview. "What the hell does that have to do with the basics of reporting?"

Mencher wonders why more journalism faculty don't resist the shift and suggests that too many of them have spent too much time earning PhDs and too little time in newsrooms.

Ryerson students go mobile, thanks to Motorola and Telus

Sep 14, 2010 - Posted by Mary McGuire

A Ryerson journalism instructor is teaching his students how to be mobile journalists with a little help from Motorola and Telus.

Last year, Wayne MacPhail found the students in his class had a mix of different devices. This year, however, they will now be able to use the same devices to post audio, video, images and text to the web.

In this piece on The Next Web, Tris Hussey also describes how the students will do their reporting from local coffee shops.

How to conquer j-students' fear of technology

Sep 14, 2010 - Posted by Dana Lacey

It's easy to assume the younger generation understands technology - but when it comes to multimedia storytelling, a lot of students admit they're computer illiterate. Jen Lee Reeves offers tips for teaching technology to Luddites.

Textbook for potential j-students

Sep 14, 2010 - Posted by Dana Lacey

Peter Steven’s new book, The News, uses current case studies to explore the state of online news, international and investigative coverage and Canadian news production in the wake of the economic meltdown, ideal for high school students considering J-school Lisa Bruni writes.

Media management program for executives

Sep 02, 2010 - Posted by Dana Lacey

The Canadian Journalism Foundation and Rotman School of Management has revamped their Media Management Executive Education program, registration ends Sept. 30...

How to teach social media in J-school

Aug 31, 2010 - Posted by Dana Lacey

Social media is so new, it's easy to claim you're an expert on the subject. But some journalism professors are finding ways to teach the new medium as part of the curriculum....

J-school to close at one U.S. university

Aug 27, 2010 - Posted by Mary McGuire

The University of Colorado at Boulder is planning to shut down its traditional journalism and mass communication programs.

In a statement on its website, the university says it wants to consider, instead, a new interdisciplinary academic program of information and communication technology and has set up an exploratory committee to help it do that.

What you missed at AEJMC 2010

Aug 25, 2010 - Posted by Dana Lacey

Didn't make it to the annual Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in Denver? Christina Mueller reports on what today's j-education leaders are saying...

Replacing textbooks with an iPad

Aug 24, 2010 - Posted by Mary McGuire

It's easy enough to imagine downloading texts to read them on an iPad. But imagine being able to download single chapters, rather than full texts. Imagine interacting with the content through quizzes and other feature or highlighting text for others to see and sharing comments on passages with classmates.
Those are some of the things promised by a new textbook application for the iPad that some universities in the U.S. began using this week.

Banning laptops in media classes without being a Luddite

Aug 23, 2010 - Posted by Mary McGuire

A new media journalism professor in the U.S. has decided to ban laptops in some of his media classes.
Jeremy Littau says he loves technology, but the evidence is building that student test scores improve in classes where laptops are banned. He is also concerned about what he calls "the halo effect."

"When a student has a laptop open, invariably the cone of people next to and behind that student get caught up watching as well. The movie playing or the Facebook page on the screen can be a huge distraction to both those students and to me."

He outlines his new "soft ban" on his blog. Other J-profs may find his thoughtful arguments and approach worth following.