I am finishing up my second day at The Daily Freeman with ten open tabs in my browser. Today I started to play around with different tools on webjournalist.org. I found that my favorite websites were the ones where you can play around with pictures in slideshows.
I used Animoto to combine pictures with music and a layout to create a video of my dog Daisy as a test run. It came out pretty good and was very easy to use. I had to ask myself, how could this be related to journalism? Right now I can see this being useful on a website to showcase a pet contest, holiday pictures, or something that involves a lot of different pictures. Vuvox is another site that is similar to Animoto but is a little more complicated to use.
I used a website called Prezi. This is used to create power point-like presentations. The end product looks very organized, creative, and sophisticated. It was confusing to use in the beginning but if I sit down with it for a while I'm sure it won't be that hard to figure out. I was thinking that this could be useful to accompany a story that might be harder to follow because it is animated and gives you a closer look at certain aspects of the presentation.
I also came across a program called TypeWith.me which allows more than one person to type on the same document from different computers at the same time. I think this would be annoying to some extent to use; however, it might be useful if you are doing a collaborative story and need to have two people working on it from separate locations.
There were definitely some websites that were really cool but I couldn't think of effective ways to apply them to journalism. For example, Gowalla was a great website for traveling. It allows you to keep track of the places you've been while allowing you to communicate with other people who are on the website about places you may want to go.
Besides playing with these new tools all day, I began to understand Twitter better today. I think I am the only college student who doesn't know the in's and out's of twitter. I think I may need a lesson, but for now I'm going to keep playing around with it.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Digital Journalism
Three days ago,I began my internship for the Spring 2011 semester at The Daily Freeman. I really did not know what to expect out of my first day here. I met with my internship supervisor, Ivan Lajara and we created a set schedule and filled out some paperwork. I went on a tour of the building and was able to see where the papers used to be printed and how the system worked. I also met everybody else who works at the Daily Freeman and everyone was friendly and welcoming.
Afterwords,Ivan and I talked about what I would be doing over the semester. Ivan showed me his iPad which has a ton of apps on it and said that I would be using these apps to see what they do, how they work,and most importantly, how they can be used in the field of Journalism.
At first I felt like I couldn't keep up with the different apps that were being thrown my way through all different mediums of technology. The computer,two laptops,an iPad, and a Droid all have remarkable apps that can do amazing things. The Droid can take multiple pictures and piece them together so that you can see a whole stadium for example.
There was an edition of the paper where Ivan inserted a barcode next to an article in the paper. People with smart phones could scan the barcode and a map popped up giving locations that were relevant to the article. He said that it had not been as successful as he had hoped, but I don't think it will be too long until that is a successful tool.
As I've been learning in my classes and have seen for myself, Journalism is moving into the digital age, whether people like it or not. There is no way to get around it; instead we have to adapt to it and learn how to use tools and apps to improve and enhance what is turning into digital journalism. Instead of waiting for readers to search for news, we have to make it available and easily accessible to them.
This is what I am hoping to learn how to do in the following weeks.
Afterwords,Ivan and I talked about what I would be doing over the semester. Ivan showed me his iPad which has a ton of apps on it and said that I would be using these apps to see what they do, how they work,and most importantly, how they can be used in the field of Journalism.
At first I felt like I couldn't keep up with the different apps that were being thrown my way through all different mediums of technology. The computer,two laptops,an iPad, and a Droid all have remarkable apps that can do amazing things. The Droid can take multiple pictures and piece them together so that you can see a whole stadium for example.
There was an edition of the paper where Ivan inserted a barcode next to an article in the paper. People with smart phones could scan the barcode and a map popped up giving locations that were relevant to the article. He said that it had not been as successful as he had hoped, but I don't think it will be too long until that is a successful tool.
As I've been learning in my classes and have seen for myself, Journalism is moving into the digital age, whether people like it or not. There is no way to get around it; instead we have to adapt to it and learn how to use tools and apps to improve and enhance what is turning into digital journalism. Instead of waiting for readers to search for news, we have to make it available and easily accessible to them.
This is what I am hoping to learn how to do in the following weeks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)