Education Toolbox
September 13th, 2021 • Featured, Quill Archives, Digital Media Toolbox, Education Toolbox
SPJ Journalist’s Toolbox Tool of the Month: Tools in the classroom. Plus: Replacing “very”
With the school year underway, let’s explore how to implement Journalist’s Toolbox into a classroom rather than focus on a single tool this month. College professors and high school journalism teachers have used the site for more than 25 years, mainly for research purposes.
November 10th, 2016 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
On a warm summer night, I’m volunteering at the check-in desk at a community event. During a lull, I chat with a fellow volunteer. As often happens, the topic turns to work. After learning I’m a professor, he asks what I teach.
February 17th, 2016 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
Last fall, college journalists across the country reported about diversity issues on campus, sometimes involving classmates raising awareness of racism, discrimination and threats. These issues came to our campus at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., with an unprecedented action: The administration canceled classes for one day, concerned about threats on social media toward students of color.
December 15th, 2015 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
Educators use YouTube for education videos (think Kahn Academy), and media students and advisers are uploading broadcast videos to YouTube every day. Yet more educators — as a staff or individually — need to encourage students to use the medium as a means to gain valuable skills in journalism while they have fun.
October 22nd, 2015 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
In 2014, SPJ’s Journalism Education Committee conducted research into the state of high school journalism, and we uncovered several intriguing issues. Many programs are thriving, but others were troubling. Some lack support from local journalists and/or administrations, and nearly a third of all administrators conduct prior review of all publications.
August 17th, 2015 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
The Bible can serve as a rich resource for journalists, providing references ranging from “apple of your eye” (Psalm 17) to Zacchaeus (Luke 19). In some newsrooms and classrooms, though, biblical concepts can get lost in translation. Here are six potential pitfalls: 1.
April 3rd, 2015 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
When Colorado and Washington state began legal retail sales of marijuana in 2014, student newsrooms, like the one I advise at Colorado State University-Pueblo, were undoubtedly home to animated discussions about the implications legal pot have on advertising. Now that voters in Alaska, Oregon and Washington, D.C.,
February 3rd, 2015 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
When more than 6 feet of snow fell on and around Buffalo, N.Y., in November, television stations and news websites used aerial video for an immersive perspective of the storm. One particular flyover video from WKBW took viewers through a suburban winter wonderland where houses, cars and trees were buried under a dense blanket of snow.
December 9th, 2014 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
You must know how to do it all. It is a mantra that is sounded throughout journalism and mass communication programs across the country. Student journalists hear those words time and time again. Educators are constantly reminding their students to be skilled at working with audio, text, video and photography in order to be prepared and to be adept at working in a converged media environment.
October 22nd, 2014 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
Research show the people known as the millennial generation usually do not read news in print. Newspapers fall far, far behind social media, Comedy Central and other sources. The most recent Pew Research Center biennial news consumption survey shows that even with news available 24/7 through a variety of outlets, 29 percent of the millennial generation are “newsless” As journalism faculty, it’s frustrating in a reporting class to ask students what news they are reading and the answer comes back: “The news apps on my phones.
September 2nd, 2014 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
Whenever I hear the call for journalism schools to be like teaching hospitals, I can’t help but picture an editing professor bellowing to student reporters in scrubs, “We’re losing this story. Get me 20 CCs of active voice — stat!” Jokes aside, we’ve been hearing a lot lately about the teaching hospital model and other prescriptions for reforming journalism education.
June 20th, 2014 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
Detroit Free Press reporter Jim Schaefer is well known for winning a Pulitzer after uncovering the scandals of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. At the April SPJ Region 4 conference, Schaefer shared those reporting experiences and many others with a roomful of aspiring journalists.
April 9th, 2014 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
It’s a challenge for even some of the most seasoned TV reporters: having an authoritative yet approachable delivery as they “track” or narrate a story. Also hard: appearing at ease during the on-camera portion of the story, commonly known as the stand-up.
February 12th, 2014 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
During the last week of classes in the fall 2013 term, I told my students about five myths perpetuated within the School of Journalism & Broadcasting at Western Kentucky University and outside it. One of the myths was “multitasking,” more specifically that the current generation of students is a “multitasking generation” capable of deftly juggling multiple skills and tasks.
December 20th, 2013 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
The end of the year turns the attention of advisers and students to journalism contests — or at least it should. Veterans in advising, judging and winning share these eight contest tips: 1) GO FOR IT Michael Koretzky, contest coordinator and SPJ Region 3 director, said the biggest “do” is to enter the categories as a longshot.
October 16th, 2013 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
I found myself yelling “Amen, Brother!” and “You said it!” while reading Timothy McCarty’s “Education Toolbox” column on valuing student media (Quill, May/June 2013). I, too, receive dozens of requests from organizations offering “a great learning experience” by having students produce (usually free) videos for them.
September 5th, 2013 • Education Toolbox, Narrative Writing Toolbox
Education Toolbox
Just when curriculums started getting their arms around multimedia storytelling — a slow and sometimes painful journey — a new bully showed up in the schoolyard: data. Not that the idea of telling compelling stories using data is new. It’s not.
June 6th, 2013 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
21st-century skills. Project-based learning. Problem solving. Writing for a real audience. Authentic use of technology. Media literacy. Critical thinking. Cooperative learning. Multi-disciplinary learning. Most likely you’ve heard these education buzz phrases, but would you recognize them in action? If you observed most high school student media production classes, you would.
April 10th, 2013 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
Many journalism teachers say the linchpin of their program is the coaching of critical thinking skills. Some high school teachers say the teaching of critical thinking can help save their program in the face of budget cuts. But how does one teach thinking?
February 7th, 2013 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
Truth remains the journalistic trump card, and accuracy is the foundation for truth. So my teaching involves trying to get students to value truth and accuracy. During the past few weeks, several truth and accuracy threads have cropped up for me.
December 5th, 2012 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
Edit a story or create a Storify? Enforce AP style or craft an SEO headline? Attend SPJ or head to ONA? Copy editors in today’s digital newsrooms face tough choices, as do copy-editing teachers and students. It can be a struggle to infuse online skills into curricula geared for print or even broadcast journalism.
October 3rd, 2012 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
I’ve learned through the years that thoroughbreds for the most part run to form. If you study a horse’s past performances in the horse gambler’s bible, the Daily Racing Form, odds are the horse will produce similar results. But horse players often face the dreaded maiden race — an affair for non-winners in which starters have a minimal number of starts or none at all.
August 7th, 2012 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
The Center for Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University recently produced its 2011 Scholastic Journalism Census. More than 1,000 public high schools from every state and Washington, D.C., responded to the survey. (Read the full survey report). Four primary conclusions emerged: • There is still a strong media presence in America’s public schools.
June 21st, 2012 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
Thomas Edison once said, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” I spent last fall living this adage, and I couldn’t be prouder. In June 2011, I was in Amman, Jordan, participating in a UNESCO-sponsored workshop on updating journalism curricula across Iraqi universities.
April 5th, 2012 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
Journalists who leave the newsroom for the classroom sometimes discover it’s not their own college classroom — or even their mother’s. “In my day …” and “When I was your age …” don’t cut it with today’s millennial generation. Getting plugged in to today’s students means, literally, plugging in — to Facebook, Twitter and texts.
February 6th, 2012 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
The Texas panhandle is close to establishing its very own SPJ chapter. When I arrived as a faculty member at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas, one of my primary goals was to establish an SPJ chapter on campus. I soon learned that not only is there no student SPJ chapter in the panhandle, there’s no professional chapter, either.
December 2nd, 2011 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
If you looked at JournalismJobs.com on Aug. 25, you would have seen that in the reporters category for newspapers/wires, 59 out of first 100 jobs called for skills beyond traditional writing and editing. The list of skills employers wanted included a willingness to work in multiple platforms, including audio, video and print; multimedia experience; an understanding of Web analytics; and a high digital IQ.
October 4th, 2011 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
Holly Hall pulled together a great panel at the August Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication confab in St. Louis that addressed an increasingly important element of teaching journalism: how and when to use social media for newsgathering. The panel took on chunks of the topic that I’ll call LEP: Legal, Ethical and Professional considerations.
August 4th, 2011 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
Most of my Mass Comm 101 students at Virginia Commonwealth University were in elementary school when security forces in Eritrea, in the Horn of Africa, arrested Dawit Isaac, a reporter for the country’s largest newspaper, in September 2001. For half of the students’ lives, Isaac has been imprisoned without charges.
June 1st, 2011 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
A reporter should take three things to every story: a pen, a notebook and a heart. It’s impossible to tell the story of humanity without the heart tool. When a father drove 100 miles to Shepherd University and shot to death his two sons in their dormitory parking lot before turning the gun on himself, I had two questions for the editor of the campus newspaper: Do you know about this, and how are you doing?
April 4th, 2011 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
The news about a Feb. 22 call to the governor of Wisconsin from the Buffalo Beast website in which an editor posed as a politically conservative billionaire supporter provided an opportunity for some discussion in my Press Law & Ethics class.
February 2nd, 2011 • Quill Archives, Education Toolbox
Education Toolbox
It sounded like a good idea at the time. A former colleague who teaches at a local university asked you to give a guest lecture. You agreed, thinking, “This will be fun. They are just college kids, after all. I’ve been working for as long as some of them have been alive.
