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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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

But one fun one I’ve been testing is qik (prounced quick as you’d expect in a web 2.0-styley, it’s a site and app that lets you stream live video from a smartphone – I’m playing with the N95 at the moment.

Had a fun one tonight, been trying to get a couple of friends to comment on it because (drum roll please) you can see their comments on the phone while it is streaming.

I’m afraid I’ve deleted the first couple as I look like a complete bufoon – need some in front of camera training to get this right (very painfully self-concious so ideas about using this kind of thing for broadcast might take some work).

As you’ve guessed I’m egrommet there – but as of 21.50 on March 5 there’s nothing there. Stay tuned for an embarrassed looking Gromm yacking total nonsense at you.