Poynter Institute Will Work this summer to help train advisers to move online – for free!

Join Jim Streisel, adviser of a 2009 online high school Pacemaker winner, and Poynter faculty member Wendy Wallace in this intensive (and fun!) weekend that will help you take your student journalism online.

Course dates: June 25-27, 2010, Friday evening through Sunday afternoon
Location: The Poynter Institute, 801 Third Street S, St. Petersburg, Fla.

Tuition is free, thanks to a grant from the Newspaper Association of America Foundation.  Participants are responsible for travel to Tampa/St. Petersburg and lodging. (Travel subsidies are available.)

Click here to apply. We will have a rolling acceptance policy and attempt to notify applicants within three weeks whether you are accepted so that you can make your summer plans.

Curriculum will include how to create and maintain a basic Website using WordPress or similar software, as well as:

  • fundamentals of video/audio
  • how to create an audio slideshow
  • digital storytelling
  • writing for the Web
  • options for organizing your staff
  • how journalists use Twitter and other social media.

Priority will be given to applicants with at least three years of teaching experience and to advisers:

  • from diverse backgrounds or from schools with an ethnically diverse student body
  • from schools with 25% or more students on free or reduced-rate lunch
  • seeking to reinvent or reinvigorate a journalism program
  • seeking to build journalism academies or specialty programs
  • with strong print programs who want to migrate to digital technologies.

Enrollment will be limited to 22 advisers.

Over two days, participants will experience the hands-on training that is Poynter’s trademark. Participants may bring digital stories and photos from their schools to incorporate in the beginnings of a site that they can expand with their students when they get home.

The format and content are based on a similar workshop the NAA Foundation funded in 2009 at Ball State University. Christie Gold, adviser at Freedom High in Tampa, took what she learned at that workshop and helped her students take the Revolution newspaper online.

“In 18 years of teaching I have never worked so hard but gained so much from a workshop,” Gold said.  “It energized me for the coming year.”

Advisers will leave with basic skills in reporting, writing and editing for online and with the confidence and knowledge to involve their students in taking their journalism to the Web. They will have created the beginning of a Website and populated it with enough content to get their students excited about the possibilities.

Lead teacher for the course will be Jim Streisel, adviser of print and online publications at Carmel (Ind.) High School.  The HiLite won a 2009 Online Pacemaker from the National Scholastic Press Association. Streisel is the author of High School Journalism: A Practical Guide.

News University, the e-learning division at Poynter, will share some of the workshop lessons through Webinars and live chats when school resumes in the fall. Watch for details at www.newsu.org.

The Poynter Institute is a non-profit school devoted to promoting excellence in journalism. It serves journalists, media leaders, students, educators and citizens in the interest of democracy. Many consider Poynter the nation’s leading source of journalism training, supporting people producing journalism in all its forms – print, broadcast and online – to help them serve their communities.

The Poynter Institute (take a virtual tour) owns a modern, airy building of computer labs and teaching spaces. Seminar participants use MacIntosh iMac computers loaded with the latest software. Classrooms offer wireless internet access and full projection and multimedia capabilities. A library on the premises includes more than 10,000 books, videos, journals, reports, magazines and newspapers.

Details:  www.poynter.org/adviserworkshop

Aaron Manfull

Aaron is in his 26th year of advising student media. He is currently the Director of Student Media at Francis Howell North High School in St. Charles, Missouri. He is the Journalism Education Association Digital Media Chair and co-Director of Media Now. He is the 2023 JEA Teacher Inspiration Award Winner and is a former Dow Jones News Fund National Journalism Teacher of the Year. He is one of the authors of the textbook "Student Journalism and Media Literacy." You can find him on X and Instagram @manfull. He's a proud father. A transplanted Iowan. And an avid Hawkeye Fan.

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