Ball State to unveil new curriculum in the fall
A conversation with Professor Jennifer George-Palilonis about innovation at Ball State University as it prepares to roll out a new curriculum this fall, one which emphasizes what Jennifer describes as “collaborative classrooms”.
Mario: Can you tell us more about the changes coming up at Ball State?
Prof. George-Palilonis:
This fall, the Ball State Journalism and Telecommunications departments will begin to roll out a completely revamped curriculum for all news students. That includes: News-Editorial, Journalism Graphics, Photojournalism, Magazine, and Broadcast News. The new curriculum is very different from any previous course designs both in content and in structure. Students will take a number of courses in six core categories: News Foundations, Newsgathering, Multimedia, Current Issues, Storytelling and Audience Analysis.
Students from the five sequences listed above will take these courses in highly collaborative classrooms in which cross-platform storytelling is at every assignment, every lecture, every class meeting. Then, students in individual sequences will also take courses specific to their own crafts. For example, journalism graphics students will still have a substantial course load focused on news design and graphics reporting. But, even those courses will always focus on cross platform storytelling. In fact, we even ditched the name “newspaper design” for “news design” so that we could explore designing news content for a cross platform approach in a single course.
Mario: Can you mention specific aspects of the program that will benefit students?
Prof. George-Palilonis:
The core categories will also include opportunities for courses in media immersion. In these courses, students will engage in advanced special topics courses that could address any number of issues and even take them to other cities, states or even countries to engage in those projects.
In essence, the new curriculum strives to maintain the foundational concepts important to any type of journalism as well as infuse more collaborative, interdisciplinary efforts among students, immersive learning opportunities, special topics courses that can be designed on the fly to respond to changes in the industry, and multimedia storytelling skills and concepts.
Those interested in more information about the program at Ball State University, may read a recent interview conducted with Prof. Palilonis by Sara Quinn, of the Poynter Institute: Here’s the link:
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=47&aid=160412
The tragedy of Air France flight 447
Interactive map offers rich information
Interactive map offers rich information
Interactive graphic from www.lemonde.fr
Good example from www.lemonde.fr of using the online edition for doing what it can do best: to allow for an interactive graphic that offers information at different levels: route of the ill fated flight as it departed from Rio on the way to Paris; information about the specific aircraft involved in the crash and the factors that may have contributed to the accident; and a pie chart with a breakdown of the nationalities of passengers on board.
At LeFigaro: gallery of photos
Scenes at the Rio de Janeiro and Paris airports captured thru a variety of photos.
Le Figaro used its online edition for a gallery of photos capturing scenes at both the Rio de Janeiro and Paris airports. This is, again, when the online edition can go beyond the one or two photos, to capture a series of images that help tell the story in more detail.
Liberation: print edition cover
Definitely street sales appeal on this Page One from the French daily Liberation, banking on the abstract headline: The mysteries of Rio-Paris.
TheMarioBlog: first year anniversary coming
Time has gone very fast, and we will celebrate the first anniversary of this blog June 17. To that effect, I would like to hear from you, who honor me with your daily visits, and find out what you like about this blog, and ways to make it better. That is our aim. It has been a year of experimentation for someone new to the platform. Several of you have asked me to re-post some special entries, and I will be happy to do so. Others would like follow ups for stories which I covered. Let me hear from you. You can post your comments here or email me directly at mario@garcia-media.com.
Waiting to hear from you.
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TheMarioBlog posting #277