Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Out-of-Class Story #3 -- General Comments

I'm happy to report EVERYBODY did well on the latest out-of-class assignment -- even though it was your most complex assignment to date, where you were asked to file a long written version, a short breaking news version, two related blog posts, a Twitter stream with at least 12 tweets, a related map and a multimedia component such as a video, audio slide show, interactive map, ect.

In general, I thought you all did a nice job of finding the best ways to tell your stories in each medium . . . writing emphasizing details and structure; video showing action and movement; blogs using a personable style and hyperlinks to relevant info; and tweets that captured an event blow-by-blow or presented interesting details and insights piece-by-piece.

Some of you may notice generally lower grades for the writing exercises than for the multimedia and social media components. I graded the latter more leniently since you've been working on new media only for the past three or four weeks, while we've been focusing in on writing, reporting and story structure all semester long.

Still, I have seen improvement across the board -- and no fatals! Fatal cat says thank you! -- and that makes me happy.

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