Talking points for social media use

   We are three weeks into the semester and most of you should have your social media accounts (Wordpress website, Twitter & Instagram) set up.
   If you use other social media (LinkedIn) for professional use, I encourage you to add it to your website. The following are talking points we will go over in class.

Guidelines for building a Wordpress website that works for you

Social Media

Guidelines

This semester, you will use your Wordpress website for several reasons:

•       Build a portfolio
•       Turn in your homework
•       Create a platform to share information with your students
•       Share your vision and voice

Consider these guidelines to help you find and organize your website.

Step One:

Template. It is very important you choose the right template; it could become a part of your portfolio/resume. 

• Spend at least an hour searching through various templates until you find one that works for you
• Make sure it’s easy to read and follow
• Keep it simply organized
• It absolutely needs to be photo friendly
• Stay away from websites designed for marketing or selling stuff
• Don’t feel you need to select the first one you find. Go through them until you find the right fit
• When you do find one you like, but then decide two weeks later it doesn’t work, then change it
• Spend the first month getting to understand and know your website. Experiment!

Lori King's website: With dynamic photo and menu

Step Two:

Homepage or cover page? When a visitor lands on your blog, what will they see? Will it begin with a cover page, with a dynamic photo and a menu like what on the right? Or a homepage, with a menu for the various pages? Or will visitors be greeted with your blog and social media right away?

Consider these options:

Visuals and Voices – This doesn’t have a homepage

Lori King’s Website – This one does

King’s Klass Blog – This is a true blog, not a website

King's Klass Blog: All elements on homepage

Step Three:

Blog. Once you’ve chosen your homepage option, then add a blog, or not.

Some websites are blogs, while others have separate pages for blogs. You have to decide which one works for you. Whatever you decide, your blog posts need to be found fast and easy, because this is where you will post 99% of your essays and photos.

Step Four:

Twitter. Your Twitter feed should be on the homepage.

Visitors need to be able to read your most recent Tweets. They also should be able to click on your name to go directly to your Twitter feed.

Remember the following requirements:

• Upload professional headshot
• Brief but informative description
• Include Website URL in your description
• Include required hashtags in every post
• Follow @intro2pj + five others from my feed

Step Five:

Instagram. Your Instagram feed should be on the homepage.

Visitors need to be able to view your most recent Instagram posts. They should also be able to click on your name to go directly to your Instagram feed.

Remember the following requirements:

• Upload professional headshot
• Brief but informative description. This can be the same as your Twitter description
• Include Website URL in your description
• You must post a first photo to make it active on your website
• Open a new account if your original account is mostly selfies and personal content
• Follow @toledophotog + five others from my feed

Prezi presentation on social media

Your Wordpress: The site that binds

Summer: Time to reflect, rebuild and replenish the journalism toolbox

Screen grab of a social media tool search.

   Summer.

   For many college students on break, summer is all about relaxing, partying, traveling or working for tuition money.
   Unless they are attending summer school, there is no homework to ruin much-needed downtime for the brain.

   But for university instructors (and I probably speak for many), much of our summer is spent doing homework.

   I use summer to catch up on what’s new in the journalism industry, and to update lesson plans that reflect modern trends of storytelling.

   Thinking back, it seemed that being a journalism student was less tasking in the good ole days. Now I’m simplifying here, but we students primarily learned the traditional skills of interviewing, writing and editing. The basic tools included a typewriter, paper and pens for reporters; and a film camera and wet darkroom for photojournalists.

   And back then only editors had the capacity to design and disseminate news on a printed page. Oh, how I remember those design tools fondly: Xacto knives, pica poles and whiz wheels… oh my.

   I will never forget the beloved Xacto knife, which nearly cut off a couple of my fingers while finishing a page design for The Huachuca Scout military newspaper in Arizona. Not a fond memory.

   But journalism tools now a days? OH… MY… GOD!

   There are so many (countless, really) that I fear it’s impossible to teach students everything they need to know to succeed in the 21^st Century. How can we possibly keep up with the industry standards when there are so, so many tools?

   Social media tools are supposed to make our lives easier, right? There is no doubt they are a necessity. So, I’m thinking the best plan is to keep it simple.
   I recently read somewhere that journalists shouldn’t maintain more than three social media tools at a time. If I go by that advise, then I need to determine the most important social media tools that I think students should know. Are they Twitter, Facebook and Instagram? Snap Chat is wanting in on the game now, and You Tube is no slouch.  

   And how we need to contain them? Consider Rebel Mouse and TweetDeck.

  Need to congregate a bunch of similar topics together, or looking for similar topics to add to your story? Try Storify or Storyful.

  How about live storytelling? Download Evrybit or Periscope on your smart phones.

  Do you get my point?

   I decided to write this blog post because I was searching for new tools to teach my photojournalism students next semester, and I wanted to share that I’ve found more than I bargained for.

Social media gives students a voice in the Blogosphere

   It was exciting to see the students create their blogs last week.

   There were lots of questions on how to create certain elements, how they will use their blogs, and if they can post what they want.

   Let me preface by saying creating a blog is not as easy as it seems. We use Blogger.com, but there are so many other choices these days. I plan to look into Wordpress this summer, to see if it offers other features we could use. But for this semester, we are sticking to what I’m familiar with.

   Anyway, students are required to add certain elements, like a blog description and a blog roll. Besides learning how to accomplish doing these things, they also have to learn how to design their blog, post text and photos, follow other bloggers, and share their posts on Facebook and Twitter. But like anything else, you have to use it to know it, so they have the weekend to get comfortable with their new blogs before I post their URLs.

   They will use their blogs to post their mandatory essays and photo assignments. I also encourage them to post anything else they deem interesting or newsworthy, as long as it has to do with photojournalism, photography, media or education. I want them to make their blogs their own.

   Inside their course manual is a list of legal and ethical guidelines for using social media. This includes not posting personal information, like phone numbers, and not spreading gossip. This latter comment refers to ensuring that they verify anything they post or repost.

 Their URLs are now available in the Page bar at the top of the blog. 

 Right now their heads are spinning, and it’s fun to watch. 

Me and my shadows: Owens students follow me around on the job

Owens student Cheri Guthrie shares the photo box with CatTrick at a Walleye hockey game Nov. 30. (Photo by Lori King)

   With only a week left in the semester, the pressure was on for photography students at Owens Community College to finish all of their homework assignments.

   One of the final projects for the Photo Seminar course, taught by Margaret Lockwood-Lass, was to shadow a photographer of their choice and create a PowerPoint on what they learned. I'm a little flattered that four of her students, including Cheri Guthrie, chose to follow me around during my 'day' job as a photojournalist with the Toledo Blade newspaper. Cheri worked on her panning skills, and I think she nailed it!

   I don't have grand illusions that any of the four students, or even my own PHO245 students, will go into the photojournalism field. First of all, the competition is very, very steep. There are so many so-called photographers out there, thanks to digital cameras with auto capabilities, that finding a good paying job these days is nearly impossible. Secondly, aren't newspapers supposedly dying a slow death?

   As dismal as that sounds, I still believe that my role as an Owens photojournalism instructor is vital because the students become informed citizens with photojournalism sensibilities. The education taught in that classroom helps them to better understand the basic legal, ethical and civic responsibility of the news industry.
   We can not survive as a free society without trained journalists and citizen communicators.

   Yes, modern journalism is complicated, but it allows non-traditional photojournalists to tell truthful stories via social media, which makes it possible for them to have a voice without a newspaper to print it.

   This my train of thought when I'm in that classroom, or when I'm being shadowed by eager students who think photojournalism is cool.

Let the blogs begin

   It's already Week 3, and the students are busy tweeting and blogging. I couldn't imagine teaching photojournalism without social media.We must adapt and embrace technology as the delivery system of the news changes. And it is changing. In fact, a few days ago I received the Buckeye Guard Magazine in my snail mail box. It came to me the old fashioned way, but on the cover was the announcement that it was the final issue. The hard copy of the award-winning monthly military magazine is going online. This sentence in the article titled Farewell to an icon: Buckeye Guard in transition on Page 4 says it all, "Please join us and engage in our social media space at...Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Flickr."

   I'm keeping this issue because not only does it represent the future, it reminds me of my past. I was a military photojournalist for that magazine for 13 years.
   Social media is not the future anymore. It's the present. It's here right now, and students need to be prepared to share their photography, stories and experiences anyway they can in order to compete in a point and shoot world. This is my justification for teaching them to be engaged in social media.
   As of late Monday night, there are only two students who have their blogs listed in the blog roll, but there will be nine by the end of the week. I can't wait to see what they all have to say!

Welcome back!

    Greetings scholastic journalists! 
    Prepare to be educated about the field of photojournalism and the growing role social media plays in our lives. Here are a few highlights from the course:

• Learn how to shoot feature, portrait and sports assignments;
• Know your law, ethics and photographer's rights;
• Use social media to share yours stories and lessons learned;
• Work as a team to document an event and produce a Soundslides story;
• Build a portfolio.

    New to the course this semester is the requirement to tweet. Blogging and tweeting are essential skills to learn in a very competitive market. 
    I struggled with the decision on whether to add Twitter to the curriculum, considering this is only an intro class. Since my goal as an instructor is to prepare the next generation of citizen communicators, how could I not include it? But tweeting is not an additional lesson; it simply replaces the discussion board, which students were required to use last semester. The discussion board is a good tool to practice writing skills, but their comments were enclosed in a bubble. That changes with Twitter, a micro-blogging tool that is a nice addition to the storytelling toolbox.
    So, let's get to work, shall we?