Sunday, June 12, 2011

On The Media provides resources for teaching the media

We used to call the course Journalism but because it was a high concentration of writing we changed the name of the class to Writing for the Media. At Coker, I get to teach this course about every year and a half and we probably would like to get it in more often but so far that is the schedule.

The Writing for the Media (journalism) course is coming this Fall and we have a good number of students signed up. I like to teach this course in a computer room so that we can do some actual writing during some of the class periods. In addition, it helps with being able to do see news up close and personal in a fairly real-time situation.

In this age of everyone a journalist one of the major lessons of this semester is that journalism is about reporting and reporting is about verification. That is not an easy lesson in this age of instant global access. "On The Media" is a radio program that takes an in-depth, weekly look at issues in the media. I find it provides a lot of interesting reporting on the media and will often use ideas and reports to illustrate some issues the students should understand better. This morning there was an excellent piece on ">dead bodies that weren't that should provide a vivid example of why we need verification sooner rather than later in news stories. I am planning to use it early in the semester and thought it might be of interest now, because it is timely (one of the elements of news.)

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Early taste of college at Coker Connection

Just happened to stop by Student Affairs this afternoon and Lisa had the Coker Connection as one of her major activities. Coker Connection is a short period in the summer time when new first-year students get a quick preview of the campus and people in their class. As a faculty http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifvolunteer I get to lead a short class where we will be discussing the movie The Social Network. Looking forward to meeting some of the members of the new class.