Columbia Scholastic Press Association

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Summer Journalism Workshop - Class Description

Digital Media Boot Camp for Students

Description of the class:
Become a WordPress/online media pro! In this class, you’ll create, configure, customize and learn how to maintain a WordPress news/magazine/portfolio site. You’ll also learn how to create and post photos, slideshows and digital video/audio files, and promote everything you create using social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter. The class will focus heavily on understanding WordPress and website maintenance, with a secondary emphasis on content creation. Bootcamp participants will leave the workshop with a fully-functional online site they can install on their own web server for use during the school year.

Goals for the Week:
• Learn about convergence basics and how to use digital media for storytelling.
• Install and configure a WordPress site from scratch.
• Choose, install and configure a WordPress theme.
• Learn how to set up WordPress users, what user “roles” are, and how to modify roles using a plugin.
• Add, edit and properly format print stories to your WordPress site.
• Setup story categories and “tags” to organize your content.
• Insert single images, multi-image galleries and photo/audio slideshows into your WordPress stories.
• Learn how to build galleries and slideshows so they can be viewed on mobile devices as well as traditional computers.
• Learn what WordPress Widgets are and how to best utilize them on your site.
• Add surveys, quizzes and tests to your site.
• Use online tools to create interactive infographics/reader services to enhance your traditional coverage.
• Configure and upload video to Vimeo, and embed video in your posts.
• Learn how to use uStream and a video camera or smartphone to stream live video of an event on your WordPress site.
• Use Issuu to add eBook-style copies of your print publications to your site.
• Install and customize the WP Touch Pro plugin to create a touch-ready mobile version of your site.

List of Supplies:
• A wifi-capable laptop computer.
• The administrator password for the computer in case software needs to be installed by the instructor.
• A USB thumb drive or a USB external hard drive with at least 16GB of free space.

Class Instructor

 
Jacob Palenske is the President of NCompass Media, LLC in Dallas, Texas. Palenske is a graduate of Kansas State University and a frequent speaker and instructor at journalism workshops across the country and in Europe. Since 2003, clients of NCompass have been nominated for 26 Interactive Yearbook Pacemaker awards, and have won 13. He is the co-director of the European Exposure photography workshop, and was an instructor in residence for the high school program at The Poynter Institute.