One Last Thing: Sally

I just wanted to say that I really appreciated everyone's feedback on the blog. I also enjoyed viewing others' posts and being able to comment on what I liked/had suggestions for. I got to see some great pictures and hear about articles in the making. That was really exciting; this class did really well working together with and without technology. I wish we could have had more time in class to look at hard copies. That's one suggestion I would have for the next Journalism Workshop.

Final Blog Post: Sally

I just wanted to say that I had a lot of fun this semester. I learned how to do surveys and turn them into journalism articles. I learned how to interview people without being nervous. That wasn't easy at first; let's just say, I learned to ALWAYS ask for spellings of names, even if they seem like a 'no-brainer.' I learned how to manage a google site, which was pretty simple, although I wouldn't have done it without this class.
I also started my own blog for fun's sake, and as President of Alpha Nu Literary Society, I created a blog so we could share photos of events as well. (That one is slow-going.) I learned how to take lots of pictures in a fast-moving environment while using the rule of thirds as well as finding some interesting compositions. On a fundamental note, I improved with time management by setting up interviews and meeting class deadlines. It's harder than it looks when things go unexpected.

I'm going to miss this class and the other students involved. I got to tell Beth my secret macaroni and cheese recipe (I still kept it very vague, but would anyone guess the vanilla yogurt part? ;) ). I learned who Charlie the Kohawk is (he wasn't supposed to tell. Bad Charlie!) I got published in the Coe College Cosmos. Most importantly, I learned that Journalism is fun.

Beth: Final Post

Today was our last class meeting. We did some finishing touches on our alternative story forms, posted them to our websites, and did some other housekeeping things. We also took a class picture (in which I'm sure we all looked incredibly intelligent).

I learned a lot from journalism workshop. Prior to this class, I had considered my writing to be strong, but this class taught me more than I would have imagined. One of the most important things I learned was how to write concisely; pieces sound much stronger without all of the fluff words. I also found it interesting to learn about the different types of stories in journalism (i.e. ASF, news peg, inverted pyramid, etc.) because when I read the newspaper prior to this class I had never thought about how the different articles I was reading were written in different forms. It's fun to read the newspaper now and know more about what went into the writing process.

I think this class will help me out a lot next year as I'm going to work for the Cosmos, which should be fun, and it'll help me in my other writing intensive classes as well.

I hope everyone has a great summer!

Alternative Story Form

Hey guys. I did an interview with James Randall, who is retiring from Coe this year after 39 years of teaching. You can see the article here: http://sites.google.com/a/coe.edu/journalism-sally/home/alternative-story-form

Beth: News Peg Feature Update (again)

One of our recent assignments was to create a sidebar for one of our stories. I chose to do my sidebar on my news peg feature that talked about the environment, Earth Day, Earth Hour, and what college students can do to help out. I decided that adding statistics about Earth Hour (an event that is relatively unknown) would help readers understand my piece.

You can check out the finished product at my website!

http://sites.google.com/a/coe.edu/bethwallace/home/news-peg-feature

ASF Link

There are over a hundred schools in the country that support the Upward Bound Program. It was hard to choose a certain website for this program but I decided to choose a larger school closer to Coe's location that we all can relate to. The University of Iowa is a strong supporter of Upward Bound and has been for years. The link below is the link to their home page for their Upward Bound Program. It is a pretty neat set-up and it is very easy to navigate around and find what you are looking for.

http://upwardbound.uiowa.edu/

Beth: Another update on ASF!

I just completed my interview with Jason (as a reminder - he's the student I interviewed about summer physics research at Coe). He gave me a lot of good information about what a typical day is like for students; I found it interesting to learn more about how students play a role in the research. It sounded fun but it also sounded pretty challenging! Jason said research students really have to know their stuff to be able to keep up with the work they're doing.

Hopefully the story turns out well!

Here's a link to an article that was published in the Gazette about glass research last summer - Jason is actually in the picture!

http://gazetteonline.com/local-news/education/2009/09/07/coe-physics-department-makes-national-name-for-itself/comment-page-1