Learn to love the data

Numbers aren’t sexy, they are sometimes difficult, sometimes wrong (if they get inputted incorrectly) but they are to be treated with respect – and well worth having a conversation with.

Your readers/viewers might not want to see a data table full of figures – so you can use tools like Many Eyes Wikified to visualise them….

Highlight of the day at News:Rewired (at least as far as I’m concerned) was the data mashing session with the OU’s Tony Hirst and Francis Irving from My Society.

I’ve been looking at how to mash data, picking up ideas which have led me to start looking at Access, JSON, Python and Django (depending on what day of the week it is and the latest thing to fly across my social networks).

One of the great things was how the worked as a pair – Tony on how to do in-browser mashing using datasets (like Guardian datasets), get them into a Google Docs spreadsheet in a machine-readable format and then use Yahoo Pipes to clean, create your own bespoke search tools and then export the results to other tools such as Google Maps.

Sounds scary – well the language of IT can sound like that. But pleasantly for most people (after the initial shock of being an a room with two knowledgable people, and Tony introducing himself as a lecturer in telematics) this is something doable by people with a brain rather than hard core tech skills.

Lots of similarity to some of the visualisations created by CAR, but this was open and networked tools rather than closed in Excel/Access stuff. Okay, that means that other people can see your raw data and could potentially get the story – but as Tony pointed out over a beer, it will improve your network by attracting experts. A good return on investment as it builds your reputation – not all editors may understand that important lesson though.

Not every journalist is going to want to do this, but we don’t all do the same things at the moment anyway. But again, as people found with journalism and technology-related skills, if you are getting it then you could be ahead of the game.

If you are interested, look at the presentation posted by Tony.

Check out the buzz from News:Rewired

If you are interested in the raw material from News:rewired, then have a look at journalism.co.uk’s News:Rewired buzz page

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January 14, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized, communities, mi online gurus, mobile learning | Comments 

Web 2.0 and the lifecycle of a news story

Spot of essential reading from Alison Gow for anyone interested in journalism, education or journalism education.

Alison, who blogs over at Headlines and Deadlines, has taken a look at the cycle from gathering to publication and follow-up and comparing web 1.0 to web 2.0.

I had no idea when I started doing this how thin the ‘old’ opportunities for investigating stories would look compared to the tools at our disposal now; it’s quite stark really. It drives home just how important mastering these tools is for journalists as our industry continues to develop and change.

Headlines and Deadlines

This is a quote you will see all over the place (Paul Bradshaw switched me on to this via his Twitter stream and he used this quote in his blog post) – because it is very astute. The Web 2.0 services Alison talks about are important tools that are vital to all sorts of people – you’ll see the same things being talked about in edupunk, eduwomble, PLE, loosely-coupled teaching.

Alison’s point is major – things have changed in a major way and educators need to understand we are getting the point. I’m in the middle of putting together resources on Web 2.0 for my students, so this has been a great little fillip for me.

If you don’t get why WEb 2.0 is such a big deal here’s a a video by Digital Ethnographer Dr. Michael Wesch.

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September 2, 2008 | Filed Under Journalism, Social media, elearning, mi online gurus, social learning, video, web 2.0 | Comments 

Elearning and journalism – tackling the same issues

I’ve mentioned this before briefly, but what continues to amaze me is how much my two spheres of interest are essentially colliding. Not only are the same issues being talked about in both journalism and elearning on a regular basis – how should we change the conversation, ‘push or pull’ and on-demand content – but the same tools and concepts keep cropping up too.

Both Amy Gahran and Mindy McAdams have been looking at what a journalism school needs to do to help its students equip themselves for the 21st century.

Note to e-learning types from other fields, these two bloggers are well worth reading as part of your wider blog trawls – good stuff on teaching and technological support tools here.

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April 11, 2008 | Filed Under Journalism, blog, communities, elearning, mi online gurus, mobile learning, social learning, web 2.0 | Comments 

OU’s Social:Learn Project

Had a fun Flashmeeting with my tutor and some of my course mates last night.

We were looking at theories including push/pull in learning and teaching and how this applies to elearning (we’re doing some old-school reading of books and were discussing E-Learning Strategies: How to Get Implementation and Delivery Right First Time by Morrison.)

At one point we got chatting about how/whether pull learning (where you get what you want when you need it, rather than having it pushed at you by an employer or teacher) could lead to the end of a set and formalised syllabus for some courses.

One of the things we were wondering was how this could work and, indeed, if it should even work.

Would we need a VLE, or would a collection of Web2.0 technologies be more appropriate?

Just doing some blog reading and found this by the OU’s Martin Weller – who blogs as The Ed Techie.

The OU are working on how to use web 2.0 and social learning in what is a very rapidly changing world.

Here’s Martin’s slideshow

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But do please go and have a look at Martin’s own site.

Oh and he ‘dared’ to say that a Prof’s views could be as valid as a blogger out in the wilds of t’internet somewhere. Got to be the blogger, surely ;-)

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February 21, 2008 | Filed Under communities, mi online gurus, ple, social learning, web 2.0 | Comments 

PLE tools from Robin Hamman

Robin Hamman from the BBC and cybersoc.com paid a visit to Cardiff today for a chat and workshop about blogging and social media to journalism students and staff at Cardiff Uni’s Bute Building.

Fascinating guy, great session and great fun – he clearly loves what he does.

Picked up quite a lot from him, so will do a bigger post later.

A few of my favourite things he talked about were the web tools he uses:

November 21, 2007 | Filed Under mi online gurus, ple, web 2.0 | Comments