AEJMC Resources: Teaching Tools

Course Development, Online Journal

INTRODUCTION

The AEJMC Subcommittee on Educational Strategies and Technological Change has created this information to provide journalism educators with relevant links to resources to help them create, revise or improve their web-based courses. Please send any suggestions for links to be added to this site to Eddith Dashiell, Ohio University, e-mail: dashiell@ohio.edu

GENERAL INFORMATION

About.com
http://www.about.com

A good place to actually start a project -- especially for students who seem rusty with their Boolean syntax (or are having trouble grasping the concepts in the first place). Basically, About.com is a series of pages organized by topic, each hosted by a Guide (named and pictured--nothing anonymous). Not only is it a good tool for basic (and, on some pages, sophisticated) searching, a possible model of how Web journalism is evolving. If you call each guide an editor or a gatekeeper, I think you'll see what I mean. For each topic the Guide writes feature articles, provides news summaries, and assembles links to both articles and resources within and external to their own site. The Guide also manages chat groups and devises focused questions for the chats. Each Guide usually has a regular time when they are available on line for live talk. About.com is journalism--it provides selected, edited news, but it seems to be fully exploiting the qualities of the medium. I also find it interesting that they avoid words like "editor" or "reporter" but do use words like "news" and "articles."

The Alertbox: Current Issues in Web Usability
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/

This site contains links to a number of columns about the online community. Columns include: "Trust or Bust: Communicating Trustworthiness in Web Design," "Bill Gates Shopping List to build the Internet Desktop," "Personalization id over-rated," "How people read on the Web" and "How to write inverted pyramids in cyberspace." Future columns will deal with web research and video and streaming media.

The Beat Page
http://reporter.org/beat/

The Beat Page is a reference tool organized according to 14 newsroom beats, from agriculture to transportation. It also offers general reporter guides, internet search tools, organizations and services for journalists and links to other sites that might provide answers to a journalist's difficult questions.

BizWeb
http://www.bizweb.com

BizWeb provides complete site maps by topic, from antiques and art to Web service and software. It offers favorite categories (computer retailers, computer software, flowers, gifts, aviation, hobbies, music, employment and Web services) and favorite shopping sites.

Business Wire
http://www.businesswire.com

This site provides the day's news, industry and company specific news and a variety of articles on business-related topics.

The Center for New Media
http://www.cnm.columbia.edu/

The purpose of the Center for New Media is to advance the "art of telling stories: their content, context, design and delivery." Founded at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in 1994, it serves as a teaching and research center with a mission to define content, ethics and professional standards for "new media." According to the Center's web site, the Center's goals are to: Harness technology for appropriate uses in journalism. Develop new forms of teaching using digital media. Pioneer news gathering and multimedia production techniques. Create compelling and interactive multimedia prototypes. Develop journalistic and educational products and services. Assist the development of new media technologies. The Center for New Media is developing a comprehensive research and development program to identify, create and examine innovative uses-and misuses-of new media. The Center invites forward-looking companies to work with its staff and students to co-develop new ways of telling stories.

CIO
http://www.cio.com/forums/behavior/hci.html

This forum is dedicated to human-computer interface, a subsection of "Human Behavior and the Web." Posted are a number of articles on the ways that people interact with the Web and how to make the most of users' reactions, from getting their input on your site to finding the optimum Web page length. The site also lists 17 resources for those interested in more information.

Contentious
http://www.contentious.com

Contentious is a monthly web-zine designed primarily for professional writers, editors and others involved in creating online publications. The publication examines the differences in online media and between online and other media, the availability and type of job opportunities that exist online, the success of journalists (rather than marketers) in producing quality sites and the editorial rules that are emerging for Web sites. The web-zine features an editorial, interviews with online editors and writers and examinations of the best and worst online content.

E & P Media Links: Online Media Directory
http://www.mediainfo.com/emedia

The E & P directory allows users to search the database of all media on the Web in a number of ways, including by media category and region. As of June 2, 1999, the research department of E & P included 164 newspaper and journalism associations, 301 city guides, 3,809 magazines, 3,581 newspapers, 190 news services and syndicates, 2,042 radio and 1,311 television sites in their database.

Editing for the Web
http://www.towson.edu/~lieb/editing

This site provides an online tour of media companies that use the World Wide Web; there are links to sites being discussed so users can learn from other examples. "Editing for the Web" also suggests training methods for web editors and offers pointers on how to make Web products work. There are a number of tips offered on how to make a good Web site, from design features to testing and marketing your site to the desired audience. Interesting features include discussions of the history of electronic publishing, job opportunities in Web publishing and legal and ethical issues involved in working in this medium.

The European Journalism Centre
http://www.ejc.nl

The European Journalism Centre in Maastricht, Netherlands is an independent, non-profit institute for further training, a forum for journalists, media executives and journalism educators. It is where journalists from around Europe - and beyond- can meet one another, build networks, voice their views and receive additional training. Sample posting: A report on "Future of the Print Media" with a focus on European print media, which is interesting for its suggestion that media professionals and educators worldwide are all grappling with the same issues.

Experts.Com
http://www.experts.com

Experts.Com is an internet directory that links users to experts on a particular subject or subjects. The site links journalists, attorneys and other researchers to political resources, professional speakers, authors and consultants.

FedStats
http://www.fedstats.gov

This site is a collection of the statistics gathered by more than 70 United States federal government agencies. It is maintained by the Federal Interagency Council on Statistical Policy to provide the public with easy access to the statistics produced by the government. Users can search the database, look for fast facts or connect to the individual agencies? home pages.

Freedom Forum
http://www.freedomforum.org

Freedom Forum provides information on constitutional freedoms (the First Amendment, fee press, free speech, religion and assembly) and on other legal issues (international journalists, technology) that affect the media.

Govbot
http://ciir2.cs.umass.edu/Govbot/

Govbot is a database of more than 1 million U.S. government and military Web sites. The Govbot form lets users search these sites for specific terms.

Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc.
http://www.ire.com

IRE's Resource Center has more than 12,000 stories (print and broadcast) on database and tip sheets designed to improve reporting. The site also lists reporter contacts and resources for specific beats.

JForum: Journalism on the Web
http://www.jforum.org/links.html

This web site provides media links of interest to journalists and news consumers. Current categories are newspapers, television, radio, news sources & resources, students (journalism on campus), international journalism, etc. (miscellaneous), politics, and news technology.

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, September 1998 issue
http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol4/issue1/

This site for the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication has a well-done special issue (Sept. 98) on research on online journalism. It includes articles on the changing role of the online journalist, finding information in online newspapers, who pays for content, online communities and online newspapers, etc.

The Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov

Users can read about American history, visit an online gallery, search for general information, get forms and information from the copyright office and see Congress at work. In the "Using the Library" section, clicking on "Explore the Internet" lets users browse government resources.

Martindale's The Reference Desk
http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/~martindale/Ref.html

Since 1994, the University of California at Irvine's James Martindale has been adding links to his on-line Reference Desk," which can point you toward information on practically anything.

Marylaine Block
http://www.marylaine.com

Marylaine Block has spent more than 22 years as a librarian and is the author of a number of online columns. One major feature offered by the site is "Best Information on the Net," which Block created for St. Ambrose University. It includes categories like 'Hot Paper Topics,' 'Reference Desk,' 'Faculty Resources' and 'Looking for Work.' This site can be accessed directly at HYPERLINK http://www.sau.edu/bestinfo/index.htm. A number of Block's other sites can be accessed at marylaine.com: a weekly e-zine for "information junkies" called 'Ex Libris,' a column on American life called 'Observing US,' and 'Neat New Stuff I Found This Week.'

MediaSource
http://www.mediasource.com

This site provides headline and feature news, allows users to get online press kits for a variety of companies, to contact industry experts, obtain press releases and provides news on trends and new products. It also features the Middleberg/Ross Media in Cyberspace Survey, a survey of journalistsí use of the Internet.

National Press Club
http://npc.press.org

The National Press Club site provides users with membership information, a job bank and a listserv sign-up. One of the best aspects of the site, however, is the Eric Friedheim Library. This ìlibrary is a non-profit organization that provides facts, statistics and articles to journalists world-wide. "Reporter's Resources" is a page dedicated to collecting resources for reporters. There are also links to an urban studies collection and to archives maintained by the Press Club Foundation.

OJR's Guides to Journalistic Resources
http://www.ojr.org/indexf.htm?/sections/features/98_stories/stories_ona_121698.htm

Located at the Online Journalism Review web site, this listing provides useful journalistic Internet resources, as recommended by journalists who use them regularly in the course of their reporting. They were compiled by the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, under the direction of New Media Program Coordinator Paul Grabowicz. E-mail him at grabs@rosebud.berkeley.edu with comments and suggestions. This listing includes a table of contents that conforms generally to traditional reporting beats. Each topic contains a list of links to selected Internet sites and a general description of most of them. There are also step-by-step user guides to some of the sites.

On-line sources for J233/Infogathering
http://www.scripps.ohiou.edu/j233/

The web site for the Information Gathering course taught at the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism, Ohio University-Athens. This site contains links to general and specialized electronic databases students need to be familiar with in order to conduct efficient, thorough research on a given topic. Site contains links to general search engines, general reference sources such a dictionaries and encyclopedias as well as links to government documents, business information, statistics, and on-line media.

OSU Library Online: WWW Resources, Journalism and Broadcasting Oklahoma State University
http://www.library.okstate.edu/info/netref/journ.htm

This web site contains links to various journalism-related resources such as the Pulitzer Prizes, Parrot Media Directories (searchable, browsable directories for radio stations, broadcast and cable television and newspapers in top markets), American Journalism Review, Media Watchdog, and Yearbook of Experts, Authorities and Spokespersons.

Plagiarism.org
http://www.plagiarism.org

This service is the largest of several new online detection services that help professors fight plagiarism from the Internet. Its database is enormous. You can upload the papers yourself and have the service check them over or you can require students to do so. With this latter option, you register your class, then each student sends the paper to the service and it in turn sends to you a report on each paper's "degree of originality." Students report they like it when professors use the service because they feel more motivated if they know cheaters will be caught. The magazine Yahoo Internet Life did a test of this service and two others (Integriguard and Essay Verification Engine) in its May issue. Plagiarism.org caught all the forgeries. Integrid caught about half and Essay Verification caught none. The founder of Plagiarism.org is John Barrie, a Berkeley grad student who felt the Internet spawned the problem, so the Internet should solve it. The advantage of using something like Plagiarism.org is students believe you are Net savvy, but if you don't use it and get a paper you're suspicious of, the simplest way to test it is to take a unique or unusually worded phrase and run it in altavista.com. Be sure to put quote marks around the phrase or the search engine will bring back documents that have any of the words in the phrase.

The top three are blatant--("you forgot to study, a paper's due tomorrow, we have the solution," etc.). The last two claim their papers are for reference only. The papers often are quite good and there's no crime in CITING these papers. It's passing them off as their own work that is wrong.

ProfNet
http://www.profnet.com/

ProfNet is a subsidiary of PR Newswire that allows users to reach sources through e-mail queries and by searching a database of 2,500 "experts." Searches can be limited to academic, corporate and public service sources. Users can also read reporters' comments, see what news organizations have been assisted by ProfNet or visit the PRN press room.

The Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies
http://www.otal.umd.edu/~rccs/

The Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies is an online, not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to research, study, teach, support, and create diverse and dynamic elements of cyberculture. Collaborative in nature, RCCS seeks to establish and support ongoing conversations about the emerging field, to foster a community of students, scholars, teachers, explorers, and builders of cyberculture, and to showcase various models, works-in-progress, and on-line projects.
Currently, the site contains a collection of scholarly resources including university-level courses in cyberculture, events and conferences, an extensive annotated bibliography, and a monthly book review.
Starting in fall 1998, RCCS began to sponsor the Cyberculture Working Group, a collection University of Maryland and neighboring graduate students and faculty members from across the disciplines interested in exploring cyberculture through a series of symposia, workshops, and community service projects.

Virtual Reference
http://refdesk.com

This site lets users search the web, dictionaries and other reference sources for stock information, weather around the world and quotes. It has links to major news organizations like the AP and CNN, as well as radio, newspaper, magazine, internet and technology news sites. The research tools section allows users to find anything from acronyms to ZIP codes with the click of a button.

Web Page Design for Designers
http://wpdfd.com/

This site is designed for people who already have knowledge of typography and design in print mediums and now want to use this knowledge to create online. Writer and designer Joe Gillespie says: ìWhen I started this site in August 1996, it was with the intention of helping other graphic designers make the transition from print to web design as I did. The site provides information on typography and graphics and provides links to a number of Web design resources.

Web Pages That Suck
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com

Vincent Flanders uses this site to discuss and illustrate design flaws by linking users to the pages that he dislikes. However, Flanders does include links to sites that he says are designed properly. He also provides helpful tips for designers, like "The Number 1 Overlooked Design Mistake." According to Flanders, "The purpose of WebPagesThatSuck.com (WPTS) and its related sites is to provide easy-to-read and understand information about how to make your Web sites successful."

Web Review
http://www.webreview.com/wr/pub

Webreview.com discusses issues and topics of importance to designers. The site takes into account various aspects of developing a Web site, from advertising to becoming a Webmaster. The issues section offers advice on how to solve a variety of problems and how to improve your site. Departments discuss moving beyond the HTML format, developing a database, news and Web tools and include columns about creating a site.

The Well
http://well.com/

The Well is a group of more than 260 electronic villages that facilitate discussion on numerous topics. Categories include parenting, speculation on the future, and pop culture. Although users can read from one conference without registering (by going to Inkwell.com), users must join The Well in order to access the electronic villages and participate in discussions.

Yale Web Style Manual
http://www.info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/contents.html

The Yale site is a project that developed as a way to integrate multimedia software design, graphic interface design and book design with the World Wide Web. That is to say, the site combines traditional editorial approaches to writing with the technical skills necessary to create an informative and exciting Web page. Features include: How to identify your target audience; Developing a statement of purpose for the Web site; Knowing your main objectives and your long-term goals; Creating an outline of the content of the Web page. The site also discusses design strategies, incorporating multimedia effects into a site and editorial style.

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