[iDC] School of Web Journalism -Webnovinar

[Danica Radovanovic]

Hello iDCers!

Trebor asked me to say and share a few words about the School of Web
Journalism, its goals, challenges. This is the first School of its kind in
Serbia, started with lectures and web journos activism on March 2008. The
School is not only unique in the country, but in the South-East Europe. The
aim of the School is to present novelties to experienced and post grad.
journalists in New Media, Social Web, so they could adopt, use services and
applications in their everyday work creating future trends in journalism.

Idea came from the Association of Serbian journalists and variety of people
gathered, supported by Raising Voices. I was invited to be lecturer for two
courses: Web 2.0 intro and SNS -social networking sites. Students are mostly
young postgraduates in journalism, political sciences and professional
Serbian journalists. Beside theoretical part, the emphasize is on practical
work with them and collaboration among themselves and networking with
international media.
One of the goals is to teach and show them how to use blogs, edit their web
sites, create podcast, get familiar with photo and video journalism, social
bookmarking, social networking, and many other interesting things, and all
that through 12 course modules (in 12 weeks). Also they are taught on
citizen online activism, online marketing, new media.
Anyway, I'm not the manager of the School: when i started i realised that
there are several things missing in the school but since I'm not in
organization board I did my part as lecturer and instructor professionally.


Are there any similar schools of web journalism – apart from Universities or
maybe some state institutions? Frankly, I am not familiar in the region as
this is the first school in Balkan area. I've talked last week with a
colleague from BBC blogs management dept. and they don't have 'school of web
journalism' but BBC show their journalists how to use the systems they'll
need to get their content online at the BBC,  Electronic News Production
System and other CMS's, etc.
They also do (partial) training for people to become video journalists - and
I've been told it's a two or three day course on shooting using a handheld
DV cam and editing or one day classes on using photoshop or using digital
cameras.
There is a BBC College of Journalism but they don't really have a 'school',
just a few videos that talk about user generated content and how it's used
at the BBC.  So it's training inside the 'house, i Iguess other media houses
have the similar practice.

There are individuals (Graham Holliday, e.g.) offering interesting courses
at Frontline Club. Also, Paul Bradshaw does some interesting things with
students in Birmingham (http://onlinejournalismblog.com), or Andy Dickinson
– online journalism at the University of Central Lancashire.

My personal impression of the School of Web journalism (after being guest
teacher for two courses) is that this School (their instructors) needs
better teaching methodology (I can understand that some of them don't have
background in teaching, they are more skilled journos showing things to
their colleagues) and objective attitude.
I've met last week some dogmatic thinking among other instructors (but then
i realized they are political and citizen journalists – i'm the only one off
that story) that influenced on students opinions when I've interacted with
them. So, I had surprising elements where my students a priori had very
negative attitude toward e.g. My Space and Facebook as an 'big brother' or
'devilish' creation – later i found out that instructors before me were
showing them some films and dogmatic videos on western (web) civilization
that had as outcome students' (non)critical perceiving of social networks in
narrow and superficial way. Tried to fix that ::smile::
Also essays (assignments) I've read on their blogs -  I'm planning to bridge
blogging into English.
Web site of the School is http://www.webnovinar.org/.Some students works
here:
http://www.webnovinar.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=9,
and modest syllabi [in English] for courses I've taught:
http://www.webnovinar.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=1


If some of you want to share information on similar schools on web
journalism, workshops – you're more than welcome.



Thanks for reading,
Danica

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Danica Radovanovic

musings: http://danicar.wordpress.com
twitter:http://twitter.com/danicar
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unique -> just like you
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