I've participated in Internet journalism and social media since 1994. I'm interested in web and mobile technology in the higher education classroom. My work involves integrating new technologies into digital journalism workflows and helping create the media and connect audiences in the 21st Century. I am an unabashed romantic and optimist. Let's converse. You can contact me at mo dot krochmal at gmail dot com.
One day, much of the world will access the Internet through their telephone. Already, the mobile phone is becoming an important tool in news gathering.
I wanted my young class of student journalists to learn that their phones could be a useful conduit for reportage, and that was the key and a point I drove home in lectures and in a memo I sent to the first class participating in the project. It was also backed up by a great comment from a reader, who happens to be a mobile journalism professional.
The setup was simple. Each student established an account on Tumblr.com. The microblogging service is simple to use and has lots of goodies for mobile applications – such as Dial2do, which allows you to essentailly turn a voice message into text, as well as an e-mail address that you put into your contacts toautomatically post to the tumblr.
The students had a variety of mobile phones, ranging from flip phones to iPhones. But, with the new applications, the students could see that each phone was capable of multiformat functions. Some could send pictures and video, some could tweet via text. Their job was to do as well as they could with what they had at hand.
The students were asked to practice using their devices to post to Tumblr prior to the exercise.
The exercise was conducted on the campus. Each student selected a spot they were to report from during the first 45 minutes of the class -- parking lots, the gym, the dorms, the student center, public safety. They were given the freedom to do as they saw fit and to post to their tumblrs. Then they were asked to return to the class.
I also set up a class tumblr (journalismtools.tumblr.com) where I could aggregate the individual postings into one site, selecting a theme that displayed more than one element at a time. While the students were out, I was on my desktop, reblogging their posts into the aggregate site. Tumblr lets you invite other tumblrs into the site and then repost their work.
Some came back and had to find alternate methods of posting video as the files were too large for their onboard systems. Some had to repost from home, after finding their USB cords to do the transfer from the phone to PC to Tumblr. Many found it useful to post their videos to YouTube and then embed them on their tumblrs.
The final portion of the assignment was textual. The students had to caption each of their postings and then create a meta article that described what they did and linked to the elements they posted.
Will post student comment on the exercise after the completion of the second class project on Monday.
This week, I introduced a new learning module for mobile journalism for my young students in my Journalism Tools class. The goal is for the students to understand that any telephone can be a tool that goes beyond voice and allows the students to put into practice their journalism skills in writing, shooting, speaking to the camera and submitting text.
The students will cover the campus live during the class period on Friday afternoon. Each one has taken a spot on the campus – ranging from the hair salon in the student center, to the dorms, the wellness center, the gym -- and will report what is occurring in that spot at the moment they are there by using their telephone and its native capabilities. They will send the content to a Tumblr website, which we will then aggregate into a linear article of links that they will review on returning to class.
The students have practiced using their phones’ capabilities by shooting pictures and videos, recording audio that is automatically posted, and sending text messages.
We will see how this works at the end of the week.
At the end of the day on Monday, as I was looking over my social-media stream, I came to the realization that I had streamed almost seven hours of content throughout the day.
I streamed the three classes I teach and initiated a two-way real-time stream with a student who wasn't able to attend the class. As usual, I streamed the class on my channel on Ustream.tv, pointing my webcam at the whiteboard at the front of the class with a projector showing my computer's desktop and the websites I use during my hour and a half lectures with students in online journalism and journalism tools.
The student, at home in New England, set up her own Ustream.tv channel and used her web cam to stream from her home. I opened her channel on the desktop and turned on the audio so we could hear her and then we went about the class. I end classes by asking the students to write a 1-minute paper on what they learned best in the class and her evaluation of the experience was positive.
I've instituted live streaming of my class this semester as part of the university's efforts to move forward despite the concerns of the H1N1 virus on campuses across the country. So, even though students might not be able to physically attend class, they have had the option of viewing the proceedings via live stream and several have.
So, I streamed some 6 hours of class. After class, the student editors of NassauNewsLive.com, my hyperlocal community journalism project, held their weekly news meeting and, as has been the case for the last few weeks, I set up my laptop and webcam and streamed the meeting to the web for a half hour, announcing it via Twitter.
At the end of the day, I took my usual commute home on the Long Island Railroad. When I got to Manhattan at Penn Station, I saw placards being waved and realized the top of the Democratic ticket for today's election in Nassau County was working the commuters going home at 6 p.m. I pulled out my Nokia N97 mobile phone, and brought up the Qik.com application for live streaming video and did quick interviews with three of the candidates. They were gracious in accepting this new form of reporting, I'd have to say.
I coached them beforehand to say their names and to discuss why going Tuesday's vote was important. I asked them to wait for the red light on my phone to come on and then pause a second before beginning. The interviews were about 30 seconds long and, for the most part, were not too self serving.
I had introduced myself as a professor of journalism at Hofstra and a part of NassauNewsLive. I choose not to do a hard-hitting interview but rather just let them talk, without my presence being too much of an interuption. I was somewhere in between the role of a journalist and an educator and was leaning more to the side of educator. I wanted my students to see what is possible with mobile devices, and the luck of happening into a news situation.
I shot the videos and then rushed out of Penn Station after I tweeted that I was going live. It was a cold night out and the Qik application and my phone were not happily working together as I walked up 7th Avenue trying to send the videos. The 3G network was fading in and out and I was getting about 320kbps bandwith to upload some 2MBs of video. It took about an hour in the cold to upload to the networks and the standing titles reflected my previous shoots -- from the Halloween parade on Saturday night.
Still, the videos went online and I continued my walk uptown to 59th Street where I would catch my subway home. I stopped by Times Square where the Yankees scored their first run and I was able to hear the rousing cheer from the New Yorkers there as well as the tourists.
I was tempted to stick around and live stream if the Yankees won, but it was too cold for that. So, I went home after a burrito dinner at a small Mexican stand on 9th Avenue.
I didn't realize how much I had sent until later, and it just was a moment of realization of how much live streaming video has become a part of my normal days.
Sometimes, it is hard to blog. I try to blog more than every two weeks here, but things get in the way.
So, I think I will try to do more longer-form postings via video. It's something I experimented with this summer as I took a 2,500-mile road trip. I did not have the time to do formal writing postings, but I was able to do quick 1- or 2-minute videos, holding up my telephone and looking into the camera. It's one way of sharing, but it's still very early in this to get more than a couple of dozen views on my streams.
Still, the postings I do with live stream are archived on my YouTube channel, and shared on Facebook as well as linked on Twitter. It's all part of the developing ecosphere of today's democratized communications and social-media sharing.
What I want to improve is on the conversation surrounding the postings I do.
Chris Brogan (wearing gray suit) Trust is not a new thing. The book is not new but we fell away from [the things the book talks about]. [People started to slip into old habits] It was ok to annoy customers and relationships didn't matter. [Then,] we stopped liking being treated as numbers and wanted to be cared about.
I am a blogger [People ask] what do you complain about? Seems like bloggers are all about [complaints] It's rage against the machine
Example:
United Breaks Guitars A $3,000 guitar was ruined while owner watched
More views for the airline [over 5 million] than anyone else -- he should be the chief marketing officer
Facing your disgruntled customer Detroit [2 car makers] went into bankruptcy because of arrogance We the people matter [I see] Gen Y in the crowd. They are more demanding and get the trust [This has] little to do with soc med and a lot to do with relationships Moving the needles Relationships matter Not views, not hits But sustainable relationships Think of yourselves as farmers and stewards of relationships Charlie Green
Trust is personal and a paradox: I trust my dog with my life but not my ham sandwich
Strategy competiive Competition is kkilling the economy -- it is here but a fact of life They think of the customers are competitors Do unto others before they do unto you Companies duty is to serve society Profit not an objective but a sideways outcome Trust in people not in company Julien Smith Trust is a system We gather people and figure out that you can trust people a certain amount. Not complicated Media has changed Newspaper how impact way we are seen and how we impact
social media What signals am I sending? Body language
Trust and interaction is asystem We haven't figured out what social media is doing We are making mistakes so we can end up in a new model of behavior and trust
If there is no email for days, a company might be considered negligent
Different things mean different to people
Social tools you will be creating tighter bonds with people You don't want to be the guy in the back of the bar by himself.
Risk the things we have to get something great for ourselves David Maister English accent Trust works be trustworthy and trusting The evidence is clear [if you do that] the good things of life will come your way
They aren't that many people that are trustworthy Be humble, trust in other people. It helps to have curiosity about other people
Wife stated to teach me how to behave at dinner parties You can't be good as a guest unless you are interested in other people Being good trustworty or worthy of trust The world is full of people I thought that I could get by on brain talent and skills Mid 30s had to get anoth human to trust me with her life Relationship skills Takes for many of us a lot of hard work A skill to be actually interested Trustworthy is a lifelong journey [Robin Fray Cary of Social Media Today was the host] Chris Measure relationships by yield over time and drive awareness down Don't dredge the ocean Charlie Measurement at a cetain level the measure changes when you measure it Trust equation monitor self orientation Companies for incentive The less selfish you are the more we will pay Treat customers well because it is the right thing to do Julie Tech will transfor the ways we interact with and who we can interact with Cluetrain the Internet represents the ultimate breaking down of heirarchies Transform the way we interact.
David Most sucessful orgs don't acheive sucessful metrics It about having the guts to stick to an ideology through thick and thin
Argue young we take business personally Do you live that way and counsel people in the best way You have to believe the bs you believe in Failure Perfection and excellence demands screwing up
Julien -- fear of makin that call when u are late Make more reliable and credible
Charlie Type 2 error is the risk of doing nothing Type 1 iusk We gave been risk-mitigation paralyzed
Chris What really happens Richard Branson has screwed up Ge kills everything they are not good at That is not a great model but they are a multiple billion company
Unconditional guarantee Don't have to convince your spouse that you are perfect but convince that you are trying hard Price to trust
Julien Intimacy is a general human to human thing Not quantifiable Rather work with something Choice everybody has that makes a big different
David Price isnt by scarcity -- you charge for it Trust gets you into the considered set I don't believe you are the only trusted in the field -- you need to have something else Chris Making flying a utility No one falls in love with an airline Jetblue twiter and socked Morgan Johnson doing a great job but not intrinsic to the rest of the organization Three strat You have to pick 1 Customer intimacy Operational Charlie Have to have all three Trust relos are more critical to the low end trust your suppliers Cars didn't All biz need to use trust strategies David We are smart we are brilliant can't we get along by being the best? Halo effect Statistically valuabe statistics is zero Actual data is very scarce Do u believe it or dont you What do you believe in? Chris Stop collaborate and listen : the words of vanilla ice Trust reduces friction and cost Hard shells around us red hat got a billion out of free Sent from my iPod
I like the idea of making "easy video" a part of the reporters' tool kit.
At Hofstra, our student-run hyperlocal publication, NassauNewsLive.com, features video with almost every article. Students carry a Flip camcorder and gather video as they are in the field. I invite you to take a look at their articles.The students, once in the field, can do a linear report with interviews one after another, or they can create an edited package on an extended deadline. They file a text piece with links and photos, and later add a video embed to their packages on either Blip.tv or YouTube. Nothing more than 2 minutes long.It's not HD, but the new Flip HD video quality is excellent. We are waiting for the Flip cams to come with an audio jack for an external microphone.
Live Streaming
The students also stream a newscast on Livestream.com on a weekly basis. The format is a basic person-talking-to-the-camera with queued up videos. The streamcast has the possiblity for being extended to remote -- contingent on bandwidth availability. Currently, I have a pay-as-you-go card from Virgin that gives about an hour's worth of 3G connectivity for $20.
I'm also experimenting with mobile live streaming with Qik, using my Nokia N97 phone, with the hope of transferring my learning to the newsroom. I have come to prefer the mobile video as it is more immediate, requires no editing and can be archived.
In five years, all of this stuff is likely going to be HD with better bandwidth -- all available from the mobile device.And, it's cheap enough to do on an academic department's budget and the students are able to integrate it into their field-reporting work relatively easily.
Recently, two innovative proposals for projects involving journalism in higher education grabbed headlines -- largely because of the million-dollar fundings attached to them.
The University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, KQED -- and possibly, The New York Times -- are organizing a venture to create the Bay Area News Project, a local news operation fueled by $5 million in support from the Hellman family foundation. Set to launch in 2010, the organization will seek to provide more local news coverage in the San Francisco Bay area and create a collaborative effort with the J school and the news organizations, according to the San Jose Business Journal, and others.
The University of North Carolina in early October received a $3.5 million bequest from alumnus Reese Felts to fund a 24-hour newsroom for the curriculum and as a laboratory for researching new methods in journalism and news, according to Editor & Publisher, the trade publication.
"Every journalism school in the country is talking about creating multimedia projects and converging technologies. But none, to my knowledge, has created an environment that challenges current models and tests the results," Jean Folkerts, dean of the journalism school, said in a statement, according to WRAL.
I would beg to differ with you, Dean Folkerts. My students at Hofstra have that, and have had that for almost two years. It's called the NewsHub.
At Hofstra, we received approximately $400,000 from the administration in funding for the creation of the NewsHub back in 2006. It was planned in 2006 and opened in December 2007. The NewsHub is a modern glass-walled facility that used to be part of radio station WRHU and some classrooms. Located in an L-shaped corner of Dempster Hall, the newsroom holds 20 computers, Avid editing stations, Macs as well as a wall full of monitors and equipment for broadcast.
During the opening ceremonies with the NewsHub, we immediately got busy innovating. In October, 2007, the school purchased 35 Flipcams and three webcams and I pushed my students hard to learn how to use them well, and we adopted Microsoft’s MovieMaker software to do the non-linear editing – it’s bundled free on PC’s. Students flip-video-ed interviews and another set of students mobile live streamed, using Hofstra’s WiFi and my university-issued Mac iBook and my old TRV-900 Sony video camera configured as a webcam with a Firewire plug. We were also among the first adopters of CoverItLive.com and we live blogged the proceedings using that.
In Fall 2008, we covered the presidential debate at Hofstra, creating a live fact-check team of more than a dozen students and two journalism professors during the debate. During the day, we posted articles continuously and students flip-cammed events on the campus and we even experimented with a live stream from the debate hall as well as our efforts on CoverItLive and Livestream. The debate coverage was all voluntary as school was shut down for the day.
Then came the election and again with student volunteers, we ran a live operation during the day with video, feeds and into the evening when a student got the chance to write the story of Obama’s victory. To learn more, watch this video here.
Last February, we debuted NassauNewsLive.com, a student-run, hyperlocal, multimedia online publication, covering the underserved minoirty-majority communities surrounding Hofstra University.
The key to this was the installation of a Joomla-based content-management system. We tried WordPress, but quickly ditched it as it didn't allow us the ability to play stories to the front as well as the inside, and Django was just too high a hurdle for our journalist tech skills to overcome. We installed and set up Joomla in just a matter of days and have been tweaking it since. We debuted a new look and feel earlier this Fall.
My partner in this has been Tim Robertson, a graduate student in journalism who I had the pleasure to teach in two undergraduate courses – Online Journalism JRNL 80 and Photojournalism JRNL 41. Tim has been a driving force in the technology and operation of NassauNewsLive. He serves as managing editor, mentor, organizer, reporter and editor. We are about NNL business sometimes 24-7. Tim serves as a volunteer and gets no compensation other than world-class experience. He will graduate in May with an incredible resume and a highly competitive, forward-looking skillset and a knack for innovation and problem solving, not to mention an alacrity with technology.
I too am a volunteer. Part of my job title is coordinator for the NewsHub and I accrue release time for coordinating the newsroom -- while handling a full slate of three classes a semester as well as managing student's off-campus internships, independent studies and other faculty responsibilities.
The school has been supportive by providing $500 grants to student editors.
But, NassauNewsLive is something that has really taken off. It is separate from the curriculum and is entirely student-run. I serve as adviser and I chart the site's path based on my research into new technologies and schemes to deploy them to journalists, but the editorial decisions are made by the students who participate freely because of their journalistic ambitions.
There are approximately eight student editors who manage our coverage and staff the NewsHub, from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. M-F.
The NewsHub operation is separate from NassauNewsLive and is attached to the curriculum. Students in some classes are required to work at least an hour a week in the NewsHub. Our young students who are entering the major are first required to work on the assignment desk. They troll the wires looking for events that are worthy of coverage and learn news value as well as research skills. They enter events into a homemade calendar that then serves as the news budget for NNL. They learn how to work in an organization and how to operate in real-time news cycles.
Students can turn their NewsHub hours into bylines but that is not guaranteed, and it is up to the student editors to decide what is worthy for publication. Student reporters attend city council meetings, town boards, board of education meetings and cover events. They go to sports events and live tweet, video and photograph as part of their duties. They are on deadline. They pitch themselves for stories and get approval.
This semester, we have added a new position to the masthead, the position of community manager. Lisa DiCarlucci spent the summer researching community managers in journalism and is in charge of social media and community for the site. She is busy with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and has presented peer seminars for students interested in this part of journalism and is assembling a staff to pursue new initiatives in this area. Already, on student’s archived video report – shot on a Flipcam -- has received over 15,000 views on YouTube.
Besides ever improving journalism education, our goals for this semester include increasing social media integration into the NNL operation and the addition of new and innovative methods of mobile media (based on my summer research), or even just streaming the editors' meeting on Mondays.
As we do our work, we have data and instant feedback on new technologies from our community.
We are also feeling the benefits of the service that our journalism provides to our communities, if not in comments, but in traffic. We are working to encourage interactivity and citizen involvement. We are also going to debut a revamped Livestream newscast and on-demand video service from our weekly reporting.
To date (Oct. 5), we have had 20,600 visits from 93 countries and every state while serving up over 54,000 page views through Oct. 5. Our biggest day was May 14 with 922 visitors and 1,900 pageviews, according to Google analytics.
And, at what cost have we done this?
Well, there are no salaries. All of this has been done on volunteer time. I bought the URL and a year’s worth of hosting service for $100. We run on open-source Joomla and we extensively employ free software and services.
We think we have a model that allows for innovation and the management of over 100 student journalists to participate and we think this is transferable to many of the approximately 475 higher education institutions offering journalism/communications studies as well as smaller organizations.
What I could do with $8.5 million. Wow, I can't even think of it. We have done so much thus far with so little -- other than passion.
What would a university class be like if it were not always a face-to-face experience?
With the threat of an outbreak of H1N1 influenza, I've had to consider how I would deliver my classes if I, or a large number of students, were unable to be present in the classroom.
I had a chance to talk to Newsday health journalist Delthia Ricks about this in an article [http://bit.ly/F8slv] published on August 31.
Now, going into the third week of my classes, I've started to implement a system that might possibly allow students to be able to share information and view the class from a distance on a real-time basis.
How to do it
The first step I took during my Journalism 10 classes (Journalism Tools) was to get the students logged into a Google documents spreadsheet. This is by far my favorite Google application for collaboration. When students are signed in, they have a chat space available and each student's presence is color-coded, so you can read who is whom by their e-mail addresses when you hover over their colored cell on the sheet. You have to learn the student's name and associate it with the alphabet soup e-mail addresses they choose or are assigned by the university.
The students first added me as a contact on Gmail, which allows them to be able to instant message me during my virtual office hours at night. We tested the system by having each student then share their preferred e-mail addressses with me through the IM boxes.I cut-and-pasted the data into the "share" function of the application and then distributed it through Google's messaging service.
The system worked.
The next step was to have the students perform various tasks on the spreadsheet from their computers. I asked them to go to the first column and type in their names. This allowed them to see how they were tracked by the colors. They all typed their names in the column, and then went back and re-typed them with last name, then first name. I then showed them how to sort a list alphabetically with spreadsheet. I also demonstrated how a spreadsheet performs mathematicaly functions by using the =sum(2+2) formula and then clicking and dragging to get a +2 addition on each row of a column.
The purpose of this demonstration was to show the students how to do the collaborative work without "stomping" over someone else's information. This is still a tricky part of the process as there is a certain amount of latency over the Internet that lags performances.
Free Tools
Still, with this enabled, we have a free shared whiteboard that can also handle mathematical operations and can be viewed from a distance over the web.
For journalistic organizations, this system can be used for organizing informal collaborations as the sheet is private and only viewable by those who are invited to participate.
Previously, I have tried this system and the only advice I would offer is to have a telephone on hand in case you need to call the student for any troubleshooting.
In my next posting, I'll talk about how to enable real-time live streaming of a class using free services, a webcam and a laptop.
[Saturday, Sept. 12 update-->>>> All of my social media 9/11 sharing from 9/10-9/12 Read it here]
On this Labor Day holiday, I think about the people who went to work on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, and never came back home. I was in New York City that morning, two miles north of Ground Zero. I heard the first plane go over my apartment, and I saw the second one hit, and swear that I felt the flames where I was standing on 15th Street and 6th Avenue. I remember hearing what seemed like every person in my vicinity draw in their breath and moan when the flames erupted from the tower. I saw both towers go down. I saw the people walking north up the street covered in white dust. I watched the newscasts that day and the next day, I was down at Ground Zero as a Salvation Army volunteer. I worked for two days there and left on Friday when the president was going to be there. I wanted nothing to do with that commotion.
I remember walking up an empty Broadway below the 14th Street barricades, the empty triage facilities outside St. Vincent's Hospital, unused because either people escaped, or they didn't. I remember how tender New Yorkers were with each other in the days that followed and remembered the funerals, one after another. The flyovers of helicopters for a fire-fighter's service, or the hollyhock seeds given out for at the funeral of a victim at St. Bart's.
I stop what I'm doing a number of times during the anniversary mornings. I reflect and say a prayer.
This year, I think I would like to choose a victim and tweet and Facebook about them in memory on 9/11. I've started looking at lists and trying to find one person's story that appeals to me. I'm thinking that I want to select someone who was 51 years old, but there were so many of that age. I read that a majority of the victims were from the 10021 area code in the city -- the upper east side.
I'll write more in this spot as I go through the week and invite you to join me on Twitter and Facebook Friday. Pick someone and tell their story.
I believe that as long as a person's name gets said, they are not forgotten.
Petrarch, Francisco Petraca, a man of intellect from the Tuscan province of Arezzo -- clambered to the 6,000-foot peak of Mount Ventoux in Provence, France, in late April in 1336. There, surrounded by views of the snowcapped Alps, the Rhone River, and the blue of the Bay of Marseilles, the 31-year-old pulled St. Augustine's Confessions from his pocket to read and later said that his climb was an allegory for an aspiration toward a better life, the Wikipedia entry says.
So, while surrounded by the natural wonders few men had climbed to see, Petrarch, instead turned inward, in the letter he later wrote describing the trip. This all might be so much self-serving noble folderol, but never the less, he penned an account that lived long past his death in 1374.
So, what does Petrarch have to do with journalism? Well, when he came down off that mountain, some say that marked the start of the so-called Renaissance in Western civilization. He is now acclaimed as the Father of Humanism and the person whom some say was the first to call the Middle Ages the Dark Ages.
Building the Medium
I think today's college-student journalists are heading into a Renaissance in journalism. I think today's 20-year-olds have the unique opportunity to re-invent this medium. It is their opportunity and I have planned a semester that I believe will give them a solid grounding in the fundamentals of journalism and facility with a set of tools that will support the telling of journalistically significant stories about the people and the issues of the towns around Hofstra University. They need to provide the enthusiasm, the work ethic, the curiosity and the drive to be able to claim the title of medium inventor.
____
I am teaching two classes. I teach upper classmen one section of Journalism 80 and underclassmen the two sections of Journalism 10 (Journalism Tools). I have now met each of my classes. I'm evaluating them already as I'm sure they are evaluating the class and me.
They will find me to be energetic and passionate about journalism.
Job Market
I can not tell any of the students what the job they will qualify for, or what it will look like, or even what it might be called. I can guarantee them that this job will require them to be able to: research, report, write, edit, produce and interact with publics and at a high level of accuracy and efficency. They will be well served by a mistrust of goverment, a sense of justice and an ethical compass on the magnetic north of the truth.
This week, we introduced ourselves. The Journalism 10 students worked on a group exercise interviewing each other, gathering information in a deadline situation. They also filled out a survey on the technology tools they come into the program with. They got a taste of deadline, we discussed ethics with examples.
They found Petrarch when given these three words to search for: renaissance, begin, ventoux.
They also discussed today's interesting correction [http://tr.im/xVoE] in the Daily News, again with just a three-word key word clue. And hour and 25 minutes went by in a blink. We will return next week for another shortened session starting Wednesday.
Technical Inventory Survey
Three quarters of the class said they use PC's and 47 percent of those are laptops. The 10 Macs owners all have laptops. The Blackberry is the most popular of the smart mobile phones the student have with 4 students claiming one, vs. 2 with iPhones. Students owned a variety of instruments ranging from "cheap flips" to Sidekicks and Razrs. A total of 56 percent of the students said they had unlimited text and data plans for their phones while 39 percent had text-only plans. A total of 34 out of 36 students had a Facebook account while 18 used YouTube, 9 used MySpace, 8 are on Twitter, 2 on Flickr and 2 on LinkedIn. A total of 8 students said they had either a Tumblr, Blogger or Wordpress account.
Journalism 10 is the newest class in the Hofstra University journalism curriculum. The class gives students just beginning in the journalism major a survey of tools to help them more easily report in multiplatform multimedia formats.
As part of the first day of class, I administer a survey to the students to gauge their technology facility.
The following information is from the first day of class and the first of two JRNL10 classes that I teach. More data will be available on Friday.
This class, composed of 19 students, is PC driven. A total of 42 percent of the students own a PC-based laptop (8) and 32 percent (6) have a desktop. A total of 5 own an Apple laptop.
Blackberries are this classes mobile tool of choice with 4 students carrying this tool. Cheap flip and slide followed with 3 and 2, respectively. A total of 11 students said they had unlimited data plans on their mobile, while 6 had text only. Only 2 had no text, no data plans.
T-mobile is the carrier chosen by 4, Verizon by 3, and AT&T by 2.
A total of 18 students reported participating on Facebook, followed by YouTube (7), and MySpace (5), Twitter (3) and LinkedIn (2).
Out of the 19 students, only 4 came in with a website or a blog.
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