Keeping sight of the sites

Bad photo. Sorry. Lesson learned: One can't get a good photo S.O.B. (sitting on butt). Also, I mispelled Alan's name but it is now corrected.

Alan Weintraut offered much valuable information on technology. I found the presentation on Google Docs especially interesting. I'd heard people speaking about it but never knew what it was. Something valuable like this no doubt would be blocked by the school district. The other site that got quite a bit of discussion, WordPress, seems like it too would be a useful, productive tool. After all the talk I'm still not sure that it is.

Alan also discussed digital media of all types and sources of information for studying this topic. It was fascinating to find out everything available to us.

I really want to dig deeper into the how-tos of using technology effectively in newsgathering operations.

Other sites
If I may add to Alan's list from this morning:

--http://www.taje.org/ Texas Association of Journalism Educators, one of two Texas scholastic journalism organizations. The links in the blue bar on the left side are invaluable, a real font of knowledge. This is one you should check out. The TAJE also has a listserv, so you always have contact with like-minded people ready to offer suggestions and advice.

--http://www.uil.utexas.edu/academics/journalism/ilpc.html This is to a site called Interscholastic League Press Conference, a division of the governing body for academic and athletic competition (UIL). The ILPC is the other Texas scholastic journalism organization. Everybody belongs to both so there isn't really much rivalry between the two. Under "resources" is this really awesome list of PowerPoint presentations.

--Sites ending in .mil. For example http://www.defenselink.mil/ has military information of all types, plus news, photography, video and multimedia presentations prepared by service personnel. The individual services have similar sites. All material is available for use by news media outlets. As an example, here is the U.S. Air Force's site.

--Sites ending in .gov.

--Our own hsj.org has much of value. The lesson plans are really great, and there much else of value. I like to toot its horn. (Note: I have no financial or other interest in this organization.)

Perhaps others can add to Alan's list and to those I've listed above.

Mark Webber
Vidal M. Treviño School of Communications and Fine Arts
http://my.hsj.org/tx/laredo/vmt
Laredo, Texas