Evolving the Curriculum

I start teaching a journalism class again in a few weeks and I’ve been putting together a mental list of how it’s going to be different from the way I did it last spring. It’s no secret that I think Web logs and the act of journalism are a natural fit, but I’m even more of an evangelist for teaching journalism with Web logs. That I’ve been doing now for over two years. It’s getting time to start seriously thinking about some changes I’m hoping to implement this quarter:

More emphasis on RSS as an information gathering tool–they’re all going to get Bloglines accounts on Day 1, and I’m going to get them in the habit of checking them on a regular basis. I’m also going to spend some time teaching how to find feeds for their beat topics (i.e. Feedster, Blogstreet, and the Google News Search.) I’m thinking of doing an entrance survey of their news reading and collecting habits to get some sense of how aggregation might affect that.

I’m going to have them do digital recordings of some of their interviews and post selected excerpts into their Web logs with reflection. If I get real ambitious, maybe we’ll do some video too.

I want to set up a wiki collaborative piece that smaller groups contribute to. I’m thinking I’ll have five different groups working five major issues at a individual wiki sites for each where they post links to source material, collect research, and draft an article. I’m planning to ask them to do some “real interviews” for those stories as well.

More use of Trackback as a way to keep all of their work in the same space. One of the minor issues I had in the past is not having all of a student’s work in the same place. If he or she left comments somewhere, I sometimes missed them. This way, they post the feedback on their own site, and the person receiving the feedback can just click through the Trackback links to see it.

More thinking in their Web logs instead of just reporting and drafting. I’m going to encourage them to become real bloggers, that is link to and comment upon information relevant to their topics. I’ll use a bunch of folks on my blogroll as models.

Involving parents more. Some of the most positive feedback I’ve gotten is from parents who keep track of homweork through the Web log distribution lists. Of course, I’ll turn them on the RSS.

More reflective writing; I’m more and more convinced that Web log as eportfolio is an excellent application. I really want them to select their own best practices at the end of the quarter.
—–