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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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.

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.

Amy started the ball rolling with a post about whether people should still become a journalists despite staff cuts?

Her reply to this question is

I think that developing journalism skills and experience is valuable
for many career paths — but I think that betting that you’ll spend your
career working for mainstream news orgs is a losing proposition in most
cases. I think most j-schools are setting bright students up to fail,
and that bugs me. A lot.

It’s such a shame that most j-schools still are not teaching new
journalists crucial skills they’ll need to act entrepreneurially in
media: content management systems (including blogging tools), mobile
tools and mobile media strategies, social media, business skills,
management skills, economics and business models, marketing, SEO,
community management, etc.

Ringing any bells with anyone? Lots of these skills are vital for people involved in elearning to get to grips with.

Mindy issued the challenge for people to make this measurable, rather than a general list. Something she outlines well,  and she has some interesting comments from her readers.

So Amy takes up the challenge herself and comes back with New J-skills: What to measure?

Things to learn include:

1. Content mangament and blogging tools – WordPress
2. Mobile tools and mobile strategy – Twitter etc, use of mobile phones to generate content
3. Social media.
   

   The point here is to help students learn a key tool for engaging communities, while also gaining experience with how influence works and information travels through social media.

4. Management skills – including using software including Basecamp for team coordination/project management
5. Community engagement and management -
   

   The point is to get them used to creating news as part of a conversation, rather than simply as a one-way product for publication. It’s about promoting constructive public discourse through active engagement.

These are all keys skills that I’m looking at with Terry King and her colleagues from Portsmouth University as part of the elearning masters programme I’m on.

But maybe, just maybe, they should be skills for all students in this bright new future.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: journalism, elearning, web 2.0, Amy Gahran, Mindy McAdams, Twitter, Basecamp, blogging, community

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

Blogged with Flock

Tags: PLE, social learning, Open University

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:

• mobile phone to Flickr – he uses zonetag which geotags the photo post on a map. unfortunately my phone will not take it, so struggling a little bit with ShoZu
• Flickr to blog – rather than uploading via your blog cms
• del.icio.us as a group sharing tool for projects
• Dopplr to keep people in touch with where you are

He may not have realised, but he might as well have been giving a lecture on e-learning because his tools could easily be part of a personalised learning environment (PLE).

Plenty of stuff about the community aspects, which is also relevant to learning as well as social media.

Hope he doesn’t mind, but he’s the first post in a new category – gurus of geek now “mi online gurus”, dedicated to people whose love of technology makes me think about what I’m doing (in a very good way).

I’m just back to the help files on Shozu to find out where I’m going wrong and to pimp my Press – you’ll know it worked when a picture of Robin appears!

(Oh yes, and I’m playing with Flock too!)

To be continued…

Blogged with Flock

Tags: PLE, Web2.0