What role should blogging play in a journalism program?
I've told you, those of you who are in my MCOM 72 class, that the idea to have you all keep blogs through the semester (and to make it a major assignment for this class) was a new idea, an experiment. That is, it was an experiment for me, to have an entire class blog, and, as far as I know, it was a first for MCOM 72.
I never claimed that it was a first in any other way. What I did not know until a few weeks into the semester, was that a course called Journalism and the New Media (JOUR 163), was being offered for the first time in the School of Journalism & Mass Communications at SJSU.
Whenever a course is offered for the first time, it is under a microscope, and Journalism 163 is under the microscope right now. Steve Sloan, who has been team-teaching the course this semester with Cynthia McCune, has expressed concerns that the curriculum for this course will be forced to change into something it shouldn't be.
Read what Steve says about it here. And what Robert Scoble says about it here.
I would like to know what you, as students in this School, think. I encourage you all to blog your opinions. When I read your blogs next week, I will collect your posts and show them to Steve, and to the powers that be who make curriculum decisions in this school. You, my 73 blogging students, are uniquely qualified right now to have credible opinions on this topic, so make your voice heard. This is your chance to make a difference.
1 comment:
I read both of their blogs and I agree with Scoble. I think that although learning how to use many programs like Adobe Creative Suite can be helpful to any and all students in the JMC can be helpful, it can honestly be learned on your own. I am taking a visual communications class with Dr. Cheers and throughout the semester I have been required to use the programs. At the beginning of the semester I was a little worried, but these programs are better learned on your own, it's all about experimentation. I think that it is more important to teach students about the "new media." Teaching them about all the other journalistic medias out there helps students to find their niche or where they belong in the journalism world and that's what college is about. The JMC College is not about learning how to use a computer program, it's about finding your own place in the journalistic world and to do that you need to know what's out there.
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