Nowadays, journalism education faces multiple challenges in making sure students are learning basic news gathering and reporting skills but also adept with various digital technologies and platforms. Students entering newsrooms now are expected to know how to write a story, take digital photos, capture audio, make multimedia packages, create infographics, and know code to make apps or websites. Another skill and technology that can be added to the mix is sensor journalism. How do you get started as an journalism educator in teaching this subject? Read more for tips and techniques here in this recent EducationShift piece I wrote on how to teach sensor journalism in the classroom.

It’s that time of the year! The Online News Association Conference kicks off in Los Angeles later this week. If you are a journalism educator attending ONA15 this week, here are my picks of panels not to miss that will allow you to stay ahead of the curve on the latest and greatest in online journalism:  (more…)

Wearable technology devices and their use in everyday life is growing from tracking your heartbeat to how many steps you take in a day. So, how might this technology be used in the classroom? PBS Education Shift published today the latest findings from a study I conducted in spring 2014 on the perceptions of wearable tech by young adults and their thoughts on its use in the classroom setting. See the full article here on EducationShift for an overview of the study
and to read the full study, you can download the paper (PDF) on Slideshare.

As the fall semester gets underway, campus newspaper staffs also kick into gear. If you are a college newspaper advisor or editor, knowing how to cover certain crises and disasters that can occur on a college campus can be a challenge as well as a delicate manner. In collaboration with the Dart Center Journalism and Trauma, I have developed a series of tip sheets with the Dart Center that cover important topics such as how to cover delicate issues such as homicide, rape, a crisis/disaster, as well as touching upon self-care tips for student journalists and much more. See here for the full list of tip sheets.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to present at the International Communication Association Conference in Seattle, Washington on a panel called, Theories of Journalism in a Digital Age with some amazing scholars. As part of the panel, I presented a concept I have been working on for several years now that I am happy to formally announce here called Spatial Journalism. I am launching a special section on my site devoted to the concept of Spatial Journalism and the work I am embarking in this area. New concepts are never created in a vacuum, so I welcome hearing from you on this – so drop me a line here on my site so we can get a new conversation going around this concept!