Columbia Scholastic Press Association

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CSPA
Columbia University
Mail Code 5711
New York, NY 10027-6902

Phone: (212) 854-9400
Fax: (212) 854-9401

cspa@columbia.edu

CSPA is affiliated with the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in the City of New York.

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Summer Journalism Workshop - Class Description

Digital Media Boot Camp for Advisers

Every journalism adviser starts at a different place. Some have experience overseeing print publication staffs and need to know how to add or switch to an online platform. Some have dipped their toes into online journalism and want to take publications to the next level. Others are completely new to advising, as I was two years ago; they realize the future of journalism is probably going to be on the web but don’t know where and how to begin.

No matter where you are in your understanding of online media, this workshop can help provide you with the information you need to make good advising decisions, to create a successful publication and to guide your students in managing it.

This course is designed to answer questions, provide examples, teach new skills and be as individualized as possible.

Advisers will learn:

The benefits of publishing online versus print
How to manage deadlines in a 24-hour publishing world
Online staff organization
The critical differences in writing and reporting for the web
Tools for multimedia reporting
Options for displaying content online
Free or cheap digital resources you can use to edit and host photos and video
What every home page must have
How to use and set up social networking tools for the publication
How to get traffic to your site
How to stay ahead of your students (and when to let them lead)
What the top digital scholastic publications are doing that you can do too

Required:

Wi-Fi-enabled laptop w/basic video and photo editing software OR an iPad/iPad 2
Simple Digital Still and Video Cameras (or a smartphone with built-in video and still cameras, i.e. iPhone 4/Android)
Card reader
USB jump drive or SD memory card

Class Instructor

Melissa Wantz is the journalism adviser of The Foothill Dragon Press, the online news site at Foothill Technology High School in Ventura, CA. She started the journalism class in 2009 at Foothill, where she also teaches five sections of freshman and sophomore literature.

The Foothill Dragon Press (www.foothilldragonpress.org) has been honored at the national level this year with an NSPA All-American distinction and a Pacemaker. She is a 2009 ASNE Fellow and last summer taught journalism to teachers in Sierra Leone, West Africa.

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CSPA is an international student press association, founded in 1925, whose goal is to unite student journalists and faculty advisers at schools and colleges through educational conferences, idea exchanges, textbooks, critiques and award programs.