Soundslides 3: Depression in Graduate Students

The soundslides presentation below is about depression in graduate students. Because the work-load in graduate school is often quite large, graduate students tend to drown themselves in their work, often finding little or no time for social interaction or stress relief.

I chose this story because it is personal to me, as I have often suffered through bouts of depression throughout graduate school due to the lack of social interaction, and endless work and expectations. As I tried to tell this story, I found it very hard to photograph the issue. I tried to be creative and keep the shots from becoming repetitive, but I do not know if I accomplished this as well as I would have liked. It was hard to get these busy students to take time to let me take more photographs as I thought of different ways to demonstrate the issue. Still, I do think its my best audio work yet!

Take a look and feel free to share your comments.

Soundslides 3: Depression in Graduate Students

The Future of Storytelling

Before our last class we were asked to read a highly-known blog entry by Adrian Holovaty entitled A fundamental way newspaper sites need to change. I really enjoyed reading this because I like the way Adrian thinks. My favorite part is when he says, “Newspapers need to stop the story-centric worldview.” Reading this coming from someone else was exciting to me, because I’ve felt this way for a long time. Through my journalism studies, I have always had a problem with this old and painfully formulaic style of presenting information that some of us have a hard time letting go of. Although certain storytelling elements must still always be present to present information in a way that makes sense and is appealing, I agree with Adrian in that journalists need to be a little less resistant to change and welcome some of the data-rich capabilities offered by today’s technology.

During class, Mindy exposed us to several storytelling tools that can help us achieve the kind of journalism that Adrian envisions, including maps and graphs and how to make them for our own stories. We will be including one of these in our final story package. I am excited to try it out.

Finally we looked at some examples of this data-rich storytelling that is, I believe, the future of journalism. We look at and explored ChicagoCrime.org, Los Angeles Times Homicide Map, and Islam in Europe. These are all good examples of how data can be presented in more interesting and complete ways than by only using words. Take the time to look through some of these. Islam in Europe is particularly nice, I think.

HTML & CSS Basics

Last week in class, Mindy gave us (the students of Journalists’ Toolkit 1) an all inclusive, one day lesson in the basics of HTML and CSS; that is hypertext markup language and cascading style sheets. More simply put, HTML is a programming language made up of English words that tells a browser what to display on the screen. While HTML is used for the structure of Web pages, CSS is used to add style elements to that structure. Using cascading style sheets helps keep the presentation of a Web page separate from the content, allowing for faster downloads than if you were to style the content right in the HTML code.

Some of you who might have never been exposed to this stuff, might be wondering what I am talking about! Mindy introduced us to a lovely Web site, HTML Dog, which is perfect for beginners. It has step-by-step tutorials on how to write your own HTML and CSS code to start your own Web site. Also helpful for beginners interested in learning how to write this code, is a book I am using in my electronic publishing class, HTML, XHTML & CSS by Elizabeth Castro. Like HTML DOG, this book is very detailed and thorough. Both of these resources go at the perfect pace for someone that is just starting to try and understand these concepts. Elizabeth also has a very helpful Web site on the subject that you should consider taking a look at. The site includes more information about the book I have mentioned in addition to other books that can add to your computer savvy.

HTML and CSS can be simple once you understand what is going on, but it can also be very confusing as it tends to be very, very, excruciatingly specific, and therefore mistakes are easily made. If you are looking to get into this, I suggest you look at the resources I have mentioned here and look for more! For me, although I am currently taking a course in electronic publishing that focuses on HTML and CSS, Mindy’s lesson was still very helpful. Being taught the basics all in one lesson was useful, as it really helped to reiterate to me how this all comes together. This can sometimes be difficult when you are taught in very small steps. As with everything else, the only way to really get good at this is practice, practice, practice, so I suggest you get to it!

Soundslides 2: Flaco’s Cuban Food and Coffee in Downtown Gainesville

The following soundslides presentation introduces us to a relatively new Cuban/Colombian bakery style restaurant in downtown Gainesville. One of Flaco’s owners, Tim Darnell, takes us through a little bit about what they serve at the restaurant, favorite dishes, types of crowds that come in, and why he decided to open the business. Take a look and as always, let me know what you think!

Flaco’s Cuban Food and Coffee in Downtown Gainesville