My goals for the institute

First of all, it's so exciting to be part of a select group of journalism educators in this most prestigious program! I can hardly wait to get started.

For my part, I'm now only partially equipping students for their futures. While they are familiar with writing and photography, I lack the skills to teach students how to produce audio and video stories they will need to prepare as they prepare to take their places in the media.

So, I'm looking forward to learning the skills journalism practitioners already need to succeed in this new era. I've been studying converging media on my own for some time, and what I would need to bring the school's print journalism program into the "modern" (for lack of a better word) era.

One site I really enjoy is the San Francisco Chronicle http://www.sfchron.com/with its mixture of news, digital photography and slide shows, blogs and video and audio files. Also, this story of an October event gave me the impetus to think seriously of my program’s future: http://my.hsj.org/Schools/Newspaper/tabid/100/view/frontpage/editionid/21644/articleid/250043/Default.aspx)


For me, fully preparing students would mean acquiring the skills (and what software is needed) to teach them how to create video and audio stories, and upgrading skills using digital photo editing software. I also look forward to boosting my reporting and writing skills and learning how to take full advantage of what our newspaper’s Web site http://my.hsj.org/tx/laredo/vmt offers. While the institute syllabus has no mention of audio, hopefully something can be squeezed in.

I also look forward to seeing how you all, my colleagues, do things, what challenges you face and how you succeed, your personal goals as journalism educators and those you set for your programs, and should luggage weight allow, maybe even the treat of trading copies of our papers.

Afterwards, I look forward to comparing what we will soon do at the institute to what one of my students will have done in her summer program at Princeton University (http://www.princeton.edu/sjp/) and what my daughter has and will learn as part of her electronic media degree she is working towards.

I'll begin planning for next fall after I turn in the lesson plan for the institute. Then, we'll see what the future will bring.