I haven’t done a links post in so long I think people have aged since then. Sorry, but all you yearbook teachers out there understand – this is the crazy season. Lots of deadlines from now until we finish. The walking dead are yearbook teachers without enough coffee – real zombies. So here are some links…
1 – This one is super cool, data – journalism – education – interactive all rolled into one. The interactive map of ROI on education. Just check it out, my school district was actually lime green.
2 – The terrific Bob Kaplitz blog has a graphic with the four levels of story-telling. Very useful, I’m going to share it with my broadcast journalism kids. Maybe we can move past level 2.
4 - The Daily Grind has a response from the trenches to President Obama’s remarks in the SOTU about education. Worth reading.
5 - This is funny, and yet true in its own way. Follows the baffle ‘em with BS theory.
6 – Some of us are old enough to remember black screens with green letters and punch cards. Our smart phones and iPads are nearly proof that we live in the future. Ars Technica has a lengthy, but good article about the evolution of computer screens.
7 – Thanks to PetaPixel – this is really cool. They found someone who still shoots old fashioned Ambrosetypes (similar to Daguerrotypes).
9 – OK, I’ve never heard of useit.com before, but I’ve heard of nearly all the ideas in this article before. They just packaged it all together in one spot. They restate what I’ve heard of people who read on the web and what is known about scanning. This is why journalists must get back to basics on the inverted pyramid and headline writing.
12 – We have to stop forcing boys (and some girls) into the box of the “good student.” I learned so much from my own son and two former students from my broadcast journalism class. All of these students are the get up and go kind of people. They can’t stand to be sitting down – unless they are playing a video game, musical instrument, etc. They have to be active. We can’t keep forcing passive learning on them.
13 – I still think this kind of photo-retouching is wrong. People used to smoke – everyone knows that. I don’t think Churchill will make a kid want to take up the cigar.
14 – My students do this all the time…
Stop Printing
15 – These kids from Quebec have no idea what a record player is for, or an 8-track. How long until iPods are obsolete?
16 – Maybe if more journalists acted like this, there’d be more readers/viewers/visitors – see Overheard in the Newsroom.
I think I may post again tomorrow. Getting sleepy – still got lots of links in the hopper.
The days until break are getting short and the work is getting long. I can only hope we can get 40 pages in before next Monday. We’ll see. Maybe chilling out today with some cool links will help…
1 – I do believe that we learn more from failure than from success, but it doesn’t mean that I want to see only failure in my classroom or in my own life. But these tips can help you appreciate letting others fail on their own terms sometimes.
3 – I am not a fan of the former Vice President Al Gore, but I do think that there might be some value in this project he has started with the likes of the Mythbusters and the founder of FIRST Robotics. A discussion of how to make school relevant to students. I think it is one of the two foundational R’s of school – Relationships and Relevancy. Those must come before Rigor or you are setting students up for failure.
There are three more parts to this video, but part 1 is fairly boring – parts 2, 3 & 4 are good.
4 – This graphic is an interesting look into the evolution of the basic typefaces. If you are a type geek like me, then you will like it.
5 – The Newsosaur has a useful post for teaching journalists about the past and about objectivity. He says it never existed and we shouldn’t try anymore, but instead publicize out bias. I like it. I once saw a video of Walter Cronkite sitting in the back seat of a fighter-bomber in Vietnam. He was trilled by the speed, aerobatics and even the bombing run. He was supposed to be an objective observer, not a jingoistic voyeur. Even he admitted it years later.
6 – Students often feel bored in school – some of this goes back to Relevance. Some of it goes to the rote methodology of memorizing facts, working problems and writing pages of text only to be read by the teacher. Real projects that have real world application bring both rigor and relevance. But our current Race To The Bottom has so much mandated boredom, I’m surprised any kid survives.
8 – The dPs had a most in-depth post on the Rule of Phi, this is a modification of the old rule of thirds. The rule of thirds works well on a more squarish rectangle, but when you are shooting video for widescreen, the Rule of Phi is better.
9 – True in high school or college.
In High School Too...
10 – Tamron Lenses has another in their series of videos for better shooting – sports.
I know it seems like I haven’t had a links post in a long time. And that is because I haven’t. I haven’t had a free Saturday since school started. Every week has been a blur, football games, pep rallies, family events and more. So, here are the much awaited links.
1 – I like the fact that the new Twitter web site design uses the Golden Ratio.
2 – This is just an absolutely incredible photo. I am always telling my students that they have to find a new way to look at the same old thing. And who hasn’t seen the space shuttle being pulled out to a launch? But, have you seen it this way?
Space Shuttle New Way
3 – This took a lot of guts. The valedictorian of this school chose to criticize the quality of the education she received, even though nearly everyone would agree she got the very best.
4 – Here is a list of web sites all web designers should be looking into.
Here in most of Texas, we are about mid-way through the summer. And for many of us, summer will end early because of back to work tasks that can’t wait – like getting all the computers hooked up and running, taking football/band/cheerleader pictures and meeting with the new yearbook rep. All things we yearbook teachers do off-the-clock and unpaid. No one has any idea how many hours of unpaid work go into being a yearbook teacher. Our stipends don’t even come close. We work from before the year starts until long after it ends and get a stipend that pales in comparison to the lowliest coach. But, enough about that. On to the links:
1 – Here is a collection of sad graphics about the decline of the news industry – focusing on the last three years called A Quick Primer on the US News Industry.
2 – Thanks to the Principal’s Page Blog2 for this photo – it really brings to life the computing revolution: size, price and power ready to take anywhere. I really miss my old Bondi Blue iMac. But I love my new iMac even more. We retired our last bubble iMac from the lab this year – it was 8 years old and still going as a printer server.
4 – OK, yes clip art is so, like the ’90s. But sometimes you really need a good piece of clip art for a powerpoint presentation. Here is a royalty free clip art site for teachers. As always, check the guidelines before reproducing anything.
5 – I’m incensed about the BP oil spill in the gulf. As of this week, tar balls have been sighted on Galveston beaches. Just like the Louisiana gulf coast, East Texas gulf coast was hit by hurricanes Rita, Katrina and Ike. Many coastal towns live on tourist dollars in the summer months to feed them all year long. Others from shrimping and fishing. The last thing these towns need is the oil disaster that BP has unleashed upon us all. The whole gulf coast is feeling it, but BP and the White House keep lowballing the problem and trying to keep journalist from seeing the real devastation. I hope brave photogs and video crews keep thwarting the rent-a-cops and Coast Guard to publish photos that keep the disaster fresh in our minds.
6 – Here is where our industry is heading, as ad dollars keep shrinking and publications close, those few that remain will be more beholden to the ad money they still get. This is especially true for trade publications – those magazines that cover a single industry, or group of related industries. A reporter for Motorcyclist Magazine was allegedly fired because he did a story critical of a major sponsor – a helmet maker. Who will be watching the watchers?
7 – This confirms something I’ve know for a while, minorities use the mobile web (smart phones/laptops/netbooks) more than Anglos. I suspect it is because phones and netbooks are cheaper than a traditional desktop or high-end laptop and provide the user the mobility to seek out wifi at places like McDonalds, the public library, schools, Starbucks, etc. That is a powerful combination for those who don’t own a home (rent) or have a need to be mobile due to their work (truck drivers, construction workers, seasonal laborers, etc.). I think this is an important finding for those who wish to market to minority groups (yearbook). You have to go where the customers are – online via mobile.
11 – If you create a web site, then you should validate the code. This helps to make sure that your page is compliant with all web standards – All Web Design Info has a list of several sites to do just that.
14 – And we wonder why journalists are held in such low regard and no one wants to pay for our work? It is no wonder when well-respected publications keep violating the most basic of ethical standards – don’t modify photos.
Economist modifies photo of Obama
15 – Want to use a popular song in a YouTube video, but you don’t want to pay an arm and a leg for the rights. Now you can – Rumblefish is a service that is supposed to sell the musical rights to video creators who want to post to YouTube. The rights are usually between $2-25 for a song and are only good for YouTube. Try it out and let me know how it went.
16 – What makes a great teacher? No one thing, maybe these 12 things each contribute to being a great teacher – I think number 5 and 6 are pretty important.
Last week our principal of only three years dropped a bomb on us via email – he resigned. We now have a caretaker administrator to finish out the school year and no word on how or when they will search for/pick a new principal. I’ve written off and on about the need to keep good lines of communication open with your principal. But starting the dialog can be difficult and I’ve not often looked forward to the opening conversations with a new principal. It’s sometimes difficult to discover just what makes each one tick. What is important to them? How can you be a part of helping them with their goals, so that they might be more inclined to help you with yours? I guess we’re in for four months of a roller coaster ride until school starts in the fall.
Now for the cool links:
1 – Teachers are at the end of the line and they just aren’t going to take it anymore! (Thanks to the Principal’s Page blog)
2 – Need to learn basic masking in Photoshop? Nicolesy will show you how.
3 – Daniel Pink is on to something with motivation 2.0, he identifies the problem – old carrot and stick motivation doesn’t work in a web 2.0 world. But he doesn’t say how to set up the right conditions for new motivation to work.
7 – If you are like me, you don’t throw away a camera until it dies. But when is the right time to let go of an old DSLR? Find out how many photos you’ve shot (actuations) – the Digital Photography School can help show you how.
8 – How many times has this happened to your Student TV News show? Too many I’ll bet.
Last night was Prom. Yesterday was insanity day. We had our seniors out most of the day to get ready for Prom. Some of the sophomores were at a Field Day, the Ballet Folklorico dance team was performing somewhere, there were AP Tests, and we were getting ready to prep for Yearbook Day! Too much craziness for one day. So, after another 16-hour day, it was time to sleep. Now, it is time for cool links!
1 – As a yearbook advisor, I’m always on the lookout for a way to sell more yearbooks. I think I may have found an advantage. According to businesspundit.com, women make 70 percent of consumer purchases. That is not a typo – 70 percent. So, even though they are about 52 percent of your student body, the girls or the moms will make the decision to buy most of your yearbooks. This may explain why girls dominate yearbook staffs. Yearbooks are a consumer purchase. They’re just more into it.
Women Make 70 Percent of Consumer Purchases
2 – If you teach video production or broadcast journalism, then you know how difficult it can be to get cutaways or b-roll. Then you’ve got to watch this video. (mildly not safe for school)
6 – With Youtube changing from FLV to HTML5 on their site, I need a new way to download Youtube videos to use in class. I prefer to use the Google Chrome browser, but you will need to download Firefox for this one, the Easy YouTube Video Downloader. It works pretty good and lets you choose several formats to save your videos in.
7 – Dateline: Silver Age is an homage to both the “Silver” Age of Comics and to the many journalists who have had to pen a headline in a newspaper. I love the site, it is so much fun.
Police Baffled By Newspaper Headlines
8 – When you are creating a web site, you need that site to run in a lot of places. I’m not talking about Denver and Boston, but Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Explorer. And you need it to run on mobile devices too. Noupe.com has a terrific list of sites that can help you optimize your web site for every type of browser and platform.
9 – I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but the SnapFactory Blog has some great tutorials, called Digital Photography 1-on-1. They are for beginning and intermediate photographers. They are available on their Youtube channel too.
10 – Want a simple way to develop grid-based web design systems? Webdesignledger has everything you need – tons of links for grid based web design tools. And who doesn’t like to design on a grid?
Here in Texas, we have a journalism convention hosted by the state sports and academics authority (UIL) every spring in Austin on the campus of that Orange and White University. (My sister is an Aggie, so I’m not allowed to say the name of the university in question.) The trip is nearly always fun, entertaining and we learn something too. I attended some great sessions put on by some great speakers from near and far. One of the best parts of the trip is seeing other staff’s t-shirts. My favorite this year was West Orange. Their shirts said “That’s What She Said.” on the front and “You can tell me, I’m a reporter.” on the back. It has taken me an entire week to recover from the lost sleep and insane amount of fun my students and I had on the trip. So, now a long overdue Cool Links episode.
3 – This next link also came from the workshop, from a professor at the University of Nebraska, Scott Winter. I really enjoyed this video about a native American girl, literally fighting to get off the reservation.
4 – The incomparable Bob Kaplitz Blog has another gold nugget – this one shows why viewers hate boring, out of focus video.
5 – I’m not a big fan of script fonts in school publications. Usually they are either overused or used in ways that harm readability. But Web Design Ledger has a super group of 20 that are modern and useful.
6 – The Google CEO says newspapers will make money again – online. They just need to hang on and get through these lean times. I tend to agree with him, but I also understand that the dynamics of the web mean that most newspapers will be smaller, and more focused on local or niche content.
7 – Winning the war of the scrum is more a job for rugby players than photographers, unless you’re a paparazzo. Fun Tuna has a collection of images that illustrate the daily grind of those who hunt stars for a living.
Photog Scrum
8 – Here’s a blog I added to my RSS reader recently – Local News Queen.
9 – This is the biggest problem with news organizations getting smaller. Too big to fail, also often means too big to sue. Few would willing take on the lawyers at the New York Times. But I doubt many would hesitate to take on a blogger, especially one who makes their bread and butter in a small market. The Newsosaur agrees and the comments on this article are even more engaging.
10 – While I teach in a 1:1 classroom (I have a workstation for every student), I don’t teach in a 1:1 school. I wish I did. I think that students from Title I schools need more than their peers. They need computers in every grade PK-12. But sadly, I see three of the five insights from the Always Learning blog as roadblocks in going 1:1 in a Title I school.
1. Involve All The Stakeholders: Most Title I schools have little or no involvement from parents. Many parents work, some have two jobs. Others have language barriers. Many feel uncomfortable in schools due to their own level of education. It is a recipe for limited parental involvement.
2. School Leadership Must Take An Active Role: School administrators in a Title I school have more problems on their plate than solutions. They have limited time and resources. They are not likely to initiate an expensive program like a 1:1 initiative when they have so many more pressing issues. And mandated testing only exacerbates these problems.
4. Project Based Learning Is Where It’s At: State mandated minimum skills tests take up so much time, effort, staffing and funding at Title I schools, that PBL is not going to be an option unless we change the metrics. We can’t swim against the stream, when we’ve got to deal with the realities of passing a test that is difficult for students with issues that face most Title I schools.
11 – Jeff Jarvis reboxes his iPad. The journalism professor was an early advocate of the device, but now says it is not going to benefit him as a content creator. That’s too bad, because I think that if the iPad had a web cam and a microphone input, it would be a great journalism device.
13 – Journalists are too focused on using ads to make money on the web according to Adam Westbrook. I’m sure this is true, but as I’ve said before on this blog, journalists – especially in America – were told for three generations or more that it was unethical to get your hands dirty with the money making side of the business. News should be clean and keep out of the sales dept. Most journalists have little or no idea how to monetize anything. And it may take an entire generation before that changes.
15 – Is CNN dead? The New York Times thinks that the once great news network (remember the voice of James Earl Jones: This is CNN?) may be on the way out. It’s death hastened by FOX News and MSNBC’s race to opinion based “reporting.”
16 – Several states including California are attempting to make unpaid internships illegal. I want to salute them for that. I remember a number of journalism students that I knew who could not find paying internships. They were forced to work for free, and so did the bare minimum number of hours needed to complete their credit. It didn’t serve them well and was a horrible way to “pay their dues” in the industry.
17 – Pxleyes blog has a fun post with 45 more Photoshop Disasters, some you’ve seen and some you haven’t – some safe for school, but not all. Some are just creepy.
Creepy Photoshop Disasters
I think that’s going to do it for this week. I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Our last day is the first week of June.
This Saturday my district had an official work day. Now, I know my teacher pals out in California are wondering how crazy I am to complain, since they have furlough days. It seems weird, but true. We have 10 days a year of staff development. My district decided that two of these days would be on Saturdays prior to state testing weeks. Lucky for me, I got time to work on planning, grading, ete. I took that time to check yearbook pages. It took up nearly all of the day, plus I checked equipment that was turned in and put away (some poorly). It was actually a productive day. Now the links:
1 – This is a fun read. A Newsweek magazine writer in 1995 wrote a screed against the internet - mostly about how it was going to fail to bring us online shopping, telecommuting, online ticketing and reservations and how it would fail to replace newspapers, want ads, travel agents or retail stores. Fun.
5 – As a kid, I loved School House Rock. The videos helped me learn the Preamble to the Constitution and what the heck an Adverb was or a Conjunction. I’m working with my yearbook staff on AP Style and Grammar and some need a refresher on the parts of speech, but I want to make it fun for them, so here are some of the best Grammar Rocks episodes. I highly recommend purchasing it – possibly from Amazon.com
His second video this week was one about constructing a video for storytelling. Great tips.
7 – As someone who is always trying to find a better way to motivate students to do a good job, I find this Dan Pink TED Talk to be both interesting and depressing. He shows us how extrinsic motivation is not working, but doesn’t really show us how to use intrinsic motivation to replace it. I do plan on reading his book Drive soon.
8 – It seems like the Paparazzi have always been with us, at least as long as photography has – here’s a photo from 1932 to show how it was done then.
There seems to be a lot of What The Heck? (WTH) kind of thinking going on in schools today. Maybe it’s all the pressure from high stakes testing, maybe it’s all the economic cutbacks, or maybe it’s just plain dumb. But there have been stories about spying on kids, cranking up the pressure on teachers about testing, and changing their shirts in the yearbook. OK, on to the links.
1 – Let’s start off with the WTH #1. Why would a yearbook adviser want to get mixed up in a FREE SPEECH debate? Shouldn’t a journalist be on the side of freedom of expression? Especially when it is not disrupting school? J-School profs all over America are sighing and face palming.
2 – If you don’t already read Bob Kaplitz’s blog, then you should. He has the best tips for MMJ’s (multimedia journalists). Like this one about using cell/web access and two laptops to shoot video while driving. (Safely we hope.)
This second video is about how MMJ’s can add spice to their writing by writing to the video.
3 – This article was just too interesting to pass up. The mathematical equation responsible for blockbuster movies. Apparently there is a way to determine if you can keep an audiences attention based on the length of the cuts in a movie. Very interesting.
4 – The “Google” Newsroom is an interesting idea. I think it is the future of journalism. We have to rethink how we staff a newsroom and how the media products we put together are created, staffed and edited. We even have to decide which medium a story should be told in – because there won’t be video, photo, writing and online in the future. There will only be one newsroom for all of it.
5 – From looking forward to looking back at the last 20 years of Photoshop from MacLife magazine. A great retrospective, including toolbars and splash screens.
6 – The Edit Foundry has a great video over at his YouTube page about using simple transitions with your stories. Great video.
9 – Tamron Lenses has posted Episode 5 for Beginners Exposure and Metering.
10 – Why can’t we all just get along? I mean, can’t there just be one format to rule them all in photos, video, etc. I guess not. And there are new formats all the time. My favorite conversion site is Zamzar.com, but the Format Factory seems to also be a good backup. Here is another translator – just for PDF files to Word files. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks promising.
12 – The iPad was recently announced by Apple, and many in the print community see it as the savior that they need and that the music industry didn’t see with the iPod. But the Daily Beast thinks the iPad could actually kill newspapers, not save them.
13 – WTH #2: If you haven’t already heard the story about the administrators spying on students at home via their school issued laptop cameras, then here it is a great big WTH.
Well, I hope your yearbook deadlines, newspaper and broadcast deadlines are going well. Good luck.
We just got our whole shipment of brand new iMacs in at school. They are pretty, but setting them up is a full time job. We have 22 new machines and they have to be updated and install Final Cut Express on them first. In the next couple of weeks we should be getting Adobe CS4 products. That means more time installing and then setting up the student login account. Finally we can then switch out all the Mac Minis. The new machines are so fast and have incredible, huge screens. So far, the only downside is the wireless mouse and keyboard. This will mean checking them out each period. Lost instruction time. But the cool factor is going to be worth it. Now, on to the links.
1 – If you teach newspaper or journalism, then you know how difficult it is to get students to write opinion pieces well. Here’s a great presentation to teach the way to do it right.
2 – Ever had another department want you to shoot their event, edit it, create videos for them and make DVDs too. And of course they want you to do it all for free. That’s a lot of wear and tear on the equipment. I’m not against creating video or any other media for any department, but if it is not news – then we need to charge for our services. But how much? I used the FreelanceSwitch Hourly Rate Calculator and it actually gave me a realistic result – $50/hour. Try it out yourself.
3 – Yearbooks, newspapers, graphic design and video makers all need fonts that are royalty freed. Here are a couple of sites that offer fonts that you can use. Dafont.com and Font Squirrel offer contemporary font looks for all your needs.
10 – The Bob Kaplitz blog is always full of great example videos, both of the what to do variety and the what not to to type.
11 – The Oatmeal comic blog is funny, crazy and a grammarian. This month it is the semicolon that takes center stage. Great fun for kids – and they might learn something too.
12 – Tamron lenses has their episode 2 in their DSLR series about focus modes.
Well, I’m going to watch the ‘semi-’pro Bowl now. Have a great week.
