Video project from Speak Your Mind

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Speak your mind (Thursday)

Today the students in speak your mind put some lessons learned yesterday at GlobalPost into practice after a crash course in gender studies...

Students collaborated on developing interesting headlines, and packing strong opinions into ~250 words.  The group will be revealing their collective work to the public on saturday morning, when we will share a link to our private blog site right here.

On the docket for tomorrow, the shooting and editing of  a short film discussing the importance of expression and the students final free write of the week!

Blog on.

Ins and outs of online dialoge

"Writing online is part of an ongoing dialoge not a definitive work. That simple fact has shaped the reality of news, blogs, and social media" - Katrine Demody

Students sat spell bound as they learned the ins and outs of online discourse from the professionals at GlobalPost. Additionally, students were able to see first hand how news organizations use social media to gather and disseminate information.

Stacey Leasca, Social Media Editor for GlobalPost, also let students in on a few writing tips and tricks for generating content. In addition to her work at GlobalPost, Stacey has a background as a blogger. SUMOskinny, a popular web magazine, was founded by Stacey and a friend. It also began as a blog.  Since SUMOskinny's inception it has grown into a web magazine geared for college students.

At the end of the day students walked away with 4 key messages:

• Know that your online persona is important, take an active role in shaping it
• What you post online is FOREVER, and that is ok
• Online discourse is not academic and has different rules for writing that align more with public speaking. 
• Have a blog (you can make it private), but above all you should have opinion and figure out ways to share it. 
• Graphics/ Art/ Imagery are mandatory for blogging. 

Fire 'em up

The "speak your mind" project has spent the last few days exploring the rules of communication. Daily, students have been challenged to approach topics with passion, and to find unique perspective.

Today, I learned that the quickest way to find the fiery passion dorment in each of my students was to offend them. After making calculated unflattering remarks about student's taste in music, and generational stereotypes, I found my students fire.

Long story short, our group is heating up, and we are looking forward to sharing the fruits of the fire later this week.

Here's to students learning to keep their fire alive!