Entries Tagged as 'Education'

Wednesday, September 21st, 2011

Using a group WordPress magazine site in online journalism teaching

Last semester on the Journalism BA course at UCA in Farnham saw an experiment in teaching first-year Online Journalism students. We created a group news site in WordPress that aims to replicate the processes and set-up of real-world online news publishing. Needless to say, this has not gone as smoothly as it might. The background
We […]

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

Using Posterous as a first-year student journalism teaching tool

It may be only July, but online journalism lecturers are eagerly preparing for the next intake of wide-eyed undergraduates in October. There has been a lot of change on the online journalism course at UCA in Farnham. For example, we’ve started using a group news site based on WordPress for first year students in semester […]

Friday, April 22nd, 2011

Open University science update: things get tougher

Regular readers may be aware that Freelance Unbound is a hotbed of scientific endeavour, as I am doing an OU science degree in my spare time. Posting has been even lighter than usual recently, and readers may be interested in the reason: Question 8.4 The spectrum of light from a distant galaxy contains absorption lines […]

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

Death of the Flip video camera will hit multimedia journalism students

Cisco has pulled the plug on its Flip video product, perhaps signalling the end of the cheap, simple standalone video camera. It’s a shame, not least for journalism departments, which have moved in on the product as a good way of giving all students access to half-way decent video technology. The Guardian report makes the […]

Monday, April 11th, 2011

Hedge fund manager says higher education is a “bubble”

Here’s a fascinating piece about the over-priced and over-blown higher education market in the US. Killer quote by very successful hedge fund manager Peter Thiel: It’s actually worse than a bad mortgage. You have to get rid of the future you wanted to pay off all the debt from the fancy school that was supposed […]

Friday, January 21st, 2011

Planning a live, multimedia newsday for journalism students

Today sees an experiment in both teaching and accreditation for the journalism courses at UCA Farnham. Rather than treat the scheduled accreditation visit from the Broadcast Journalism Training Council as a kind of external examiners visit, showing BJTC members boxes of completed student work, UCA aims to demonstrate student skills in action. The five visiting […]

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

Four rules for online journalism student success

As online journalism student assessment looms once again, here’s a handy guide for J-students on how not to mess up their web site assignment. This is aimed at students who create in WordPress, but can equally apply to other platforms. Or, probably, almost any similar student assignment. In brief: Start early Do it for real […]

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

OU assessment deadlines loom

Things will be quiet on Freelance Unbound for a few more days, as I have a couple of OU science assessments to work on, on top of the usual day job and dog. This is all giving me a fresh perspective on why my journalism students leave everything until the last minute, let me tell […]

Sunday, September 26th, 2010

My first OU science project

My bid for scientific credibility has finally got off the ground with my very first Open University science experiment. You can see the high-precision, high-tech equipment I’ve been devising to help me undertake Activity 2.1: Measuring Precipitation – part 1. It’s all a bit primary school – but actually quite instructive. After cutting down the water […]

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

Are undergraduate drop-outs voting with their feet?

This week’s HE news is that graduation rates have slumped, pushing us to 15th place in the OECD rankings. It’s a disaster that is threatening our economic recovery, warn university vice-chancellors (no special interest there, then) and university unions (likewise). It’s an odd counterpoint to the summer’s news that unemployment among graduates has risen a […]