New semester, and I am back

I took this Christmas break to unplug and focus on writing research. To let you know, I spend 50%ish of my work time teaching, 40% teaching, 5% keeping up with newer media trends, and 5% service. But I am back. I have been only blogging for a few months, and I miss it. This semester I plan to share with you deciphered research on newer media, teaching materials and classroom experiments.

To kick it off, I wanted to share with you my revamped syllabus on my teaching page. I added more class time to social media, which I believe is an important skill in understanding how to promote your content and yourself. I will address this subject more in a later blog post.

My first post

I have struggled during the past few years as to whether I should create my own blog. I have seen how it has consumed my colleague’s lives. They obsess for hours trying to write the perfect post. On the other hand, I have also witnessed how bloggers have helped so many people who are struggling with the transition online. Many academics and online information providers do not have many places to turn when trying to understand online journalism.

The goal of my site is to share teaching materials and ideas with other educators and information providers. I have witnessed the frustration academics encounter when trying to learn and understand how the presence of information online is affecting students, citizens, news organizations and academia. Not only will I share my teaching ideas and materials, as some great (e.g., Mindy McAdams) people have, I will also decipher research in journals related to online journalism. One common criticism I hear from some academics and professionals is that research published in journals is not written for the average reader. Just as history does, research can help explain, and even predict, how journalism will evolve.

Twitter Updates