Bud’s thinking about getting his kids involved with YourHub this fall, the community news portal for Denver’s Rocky Mountain News. It’s a great idea, and it of course makes me yearn for the classroom once again. There’s just so much I could be doing with my journalism kids: blogs, rss, social research, wikis, Skype interviews, podcasts, photo stories at Flickr, all published to a dynamic online newspaper space of our own design. (Out here in the hinterlands of New Jersey, there isn’t a YourHub to work with yet…) My goodness how things have changed in just the past couple of years.
Last week I sat down with blogger/journalism teacher Tom McHale to talk about the class and our school newspaper and what we might be able to do. What struck me is how many more opportunities there are now to do regular, ongoing journalism, stuff that’s not relegated to the paper copy that comes out every two weeks. In fact, the newspaper site may be one of the biggest draws into our community. We talked about adding video editorials, regular audiocasts, photo montages…there are so many ways that students could contribute. And it’s really all about being able to read and write different types of texts. I can’t imagine how much fun it would be to teach that class again…
Interesting that you bring up YourHub. Living in Denver, I have access to the paper copy from my area, as well as regional sections online. I was thinking the exact same thing about student writing and journalism, with YourHub as a potential platform.
In addition, this is also a tool for sharing positive stories about our school as well. We now have a method for sharing those good things (and there are many!) that are happening.
I really enjoyed your first podcast. It would be wonderful if you could make this a regular event.
Is it possible for you to present educational Web projects where teachers and student use content to create a dialog and not just to access or present information? It would be interesting to know what pitfalls or progress such projects face(d).
Thanks.