Yesterday I set up a web cam and Skyped for the first time with a journalism class in Indiana. It was so much fun. My class watched the videotaping on the big screen via projector. They sang happy birthday to Tyra, an Evansville, Indiana, student, who was wearing a crown and a birthday sash. They decided to do a joint story on “What’s hot?” together (two students form my class and two from theirs will complete the story). They really seemed to bond with the students two time zones away.
I also started my group that will be participating in Project Hello: Notes from the Edge of the World yesterday. I gathered a dozen students, mostly AVID students, together and told them about the ning exchange we’ll be attempting with kids from Sierra Leone. They looked like they didn’t really get it. That’s okay. It’s a huge experiment. It might fail. But I’ve got a $5,000 NEA grant to spend, and I’m going to give it a shot. The two Flip HD cameras I ordered came in the mail yesterday. One will go to Africa, via Washington DC, when I go for JEA in November. The other will stay in Ventura for my students to use. More to come on this project as we proceed.
I’m in Boston right now and tomorrow I will help present 21st century technology in the journalism classroom at a conference being held at MIT. I find this a bit surreal, considering this is my first year advising a journalism program and considering that literally two years ago I knew only how to surf the internet and get my email off a gmail account. I’m excited, jet-lagged and stuffed with yummy clam chowder from Skip Jack’s down the street.
The world is small.
Creative Commons photo by malthe on Flickr.
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