Journalists’ Toolkit: A Learning Experience

Journalists’ Toolkit has definitely been quite an experience for me this semester.  Although I have taken other digital based courses here at UF, I don’t think that any of these have allowed me to practice and improve my digital skills as thoroughly and as often as this course has.

Yes, I knew how to create a soundslides slide show before I took this course, but only on the technical side.  I have learned that the storytelling part of creating a soundslides presentation is a completely different thing. I think this is one of the things that has really been emphasized for me during this course, although I realize I still have not perfected this art.  Yet, I know I have come to understand it more fully, and my storytelling skills have improved as I can see in my projects for this class as well as those completed for other classes.

Photography is another portion of this class that I have really enjoyed and learned a lot from.  I find myself taking significantly better pictures now than I ever thought I could.  Editing, sizing, and optimizing these for the Web has also become almost second nature to me because of this course.

Moreover, if I wasn’t completely aware of just how time-consuming and detail-orientated digital projects of any kind are before taking this course, I am certainly aware of it now.  I have learned that while “content is king,” design and consistency is also important.  Most importantly, I have learned that when you think you are done editing, edit again, and then edit some more!  There is almost always some small mistake you have overlooked.

Completing the projects assigned throughout this course has proved invaluable to me as they have helped me to significantly improve a lot of skills I already had some experience with such as collecting and editing audio, and creating digital storytelling projects.

In summation, although I have often been very frustrated by this course, its time-consuming nature, and the always unreliable Internet and computer software needed to complete projects, I have come out of it more knowledgeable, more professional, more patient, and more complete as a communicator in the Digital Age.

Story Package: Graduate Students Face Feelings of Depression

Graduate students are often under a lot of pressure. Immense workloads in addition to personal responsibilities and working long hours alone can often isolate these students from others, and cause feelings of depression. The following story package explains this issue with words, sounds and pictures. Enjoy!

Luck in Storytelling

As I think about my soundslides 3, I am reminded of the Ira Glass videos we watched earlier in the semester on the topic of storytelling.

I chose to do my issue soundslides on depression in graduate students because I had read several articles about the heightened risk of graduate students to feel depressed because of high levels of stress and pressure, and because the issue is personal to me.

I wanted so much to make this my best soundslides yet, and I feel I failed miserably. For weeks, I ran around interviewing graduate students, taking pictures, e-mailing and calling different depression and student panic experts around campus, and in the end I feel dissatisfied with the story.

I am reminded of when Ira explains that we often find ourselves having worked on a story for days or weeks, come back with hours of audio and tons of photographs, only to find we must throw it all away.

Although I think what the three different graduate students I chose to use in my slideshow had to say effectively represented the issue, I found it so hard to accurately represent this in the photographs. To make matter worse, the only expert who would allow me to speak to her only allowed me to take one very bland picture of her!

Still, there is good news. I know my skills have grown through this class because I am at the point where I can recognize when something is not satisfactory, and I find myself being harder and harder on work, but the simple truth is that sometimes in storytelling, luck is an important factor. Where subjects allow you to meet them, what they say, and what subjects even agree to let you interview and photograph them, can have a big impact on your story, regardless of the work you put into it.

I am trying to think of ways to improve the soundslides before the final story package is due. I am thinking of maybe using some of the other graduate students I interviewed or maybe a reorganization of the different audio segments. Maybe I’ll go black and white, I don’t know.

Take a look at the soundslides and please offer any suggestions! But, remember, be honest but kind.