Just Fun: Jack Black Is Acceptable

Jack Black and VH1 have created some fun, but not entirely safe for school (NSFS) how to videos for their new show Acceptable.tv. Check them out here http://acceptable.tv/tutorials – with a little editing, they might be usable in the classroom. But they are fun.
Mr. C

Preparing Journalists: For How Long?

As a teacher of high school journalists, I wonder, just what are we preparing these kids for anyway? I’ve been a teacher of journalism for 12 years, and I worked at a PBS station on a college campus for 2 1/2 years before that. So, for nearly 15 years I’ve been preparing kids [...]

10 Great Journalism Movies For Summer

Support my site – buy these movies from the TeachJ Jouralism Store
Want to refresh your batteries this summer – go rent some DVDs. I personally like Blockbuster online, but Netflix works good too. Just click and they show up in the mailbox. Here’s some great movies to get excited about journalism [...]

Found A Great Video, But Your School Has A Terrible Internet

My school has both the slowest T-1 connection ever known and a cranky IT director who refuses to unblock useful sites because they don’t want any streaming video to slow down our already slow servers.
So that means if I want to use a video clip from the internet at school, I have to download it [...]

41 Mini Photoshop Lessons: Downloads

Here’s a great resource for photography teachers, Photoshop Wednesday – a video podcast by John Chambers, a great Photoshop teacher.  The lessons are in Photoshop CS, but I know they translate well into PS 7.0 and CS2 as well.  Each lesson covers one of the main Photoshop tools.  You can download it here:
http://www.blubrry.com/programs/510/one-minute-tip-photoshop-wednesday-ipod-videocast/
or go to [...]

Tackle TED Talks With Seth Godin

Seth is an advertising guru who understands that the world has changed from media driven products to user driven ones. His TED Talk is one of the better ones, but there are lots of gems there. The TED talk site is http://www.ted.com/talks or you can download them at Apple’s iTunes site. Go [...]

Good Writers Read: 10 Magazines For The Classroom

All journalists should be good writers and the best way to become a better writer is to be a better reader. Every journalism classroom should have six to ten decent magazines available for students (and the teacher) to read. Here’s a few that I suggest:
1. Wired – Almost all media is high tech [...]

Time To Pack Up: 10 To Do’s Before Summer

If you are like me, then you are solely, 100 percent responsible for the equipment in your journalism or media room. So, take some time and pack up right. Here are some to do’s before you leave for a well deserved summer rest.
1. Update the system software. If you are on [...]

Who Says Surfing Is Just Wasting Time?

I’m always coming across new stuff about DV (digital video) on the net by accident. Usually just surfing or from some of the sites on my blog. Here are some new DV tutorials and ideas I found this morning.
http://video.thedvshow.com
They have a huge tutorial archive that you can add to with your own stuff!
“http://www.expertvillage.com/interviews/mini-dv-camcorders.htm“
Paige [...]

Money Money Money – 10 Great Fund Raising Ideas

Unfortunately almost all high school media advisers have to raise money through fund raising – and we hate it. Most of us were raised in the editorial/creative departments of our college and professional newspapers, radio, TV, magazines, etc. We were not in the ad department and we really never wanted to be.
So, now [...]