Why our students like design

I thought I'd share a video I made this semester with our advanced designers here at MU. The purpose of this video was to get our new students excited about design by seeing some of the work their peers have done. I also thought sharing some of their thoughts would be good for this blog.

I'm just getting started playing with video and iMovie (I couldn't scrape together the money for Final Cut, unfortunately), so I'm sure my plans for future videos will be much better than this one. Be sure to crank the volume -- I learned a real valuable lesson on the importance of external microphones with this project.

Here's the video:

Advice for next year

I've been in touch with Bill Gaspard, who's next year's site chair. I told him I had suggestions to make, and he told me to send them his way.

I plan to say that either students and educators should have tickets to the lunch and the dinner, or student contests/announcements, etc., should happen at other times.

Anything else you'd like me to include? Or actually, maybe if we all got in touch individually it would have more of an effect.

Interactive game

Check out this interactive game, made by a couple of our grad students who had physics undergrad degrees. They analyzed how fast and high a football would have to be thrown to make a local commercial realistic.

http://www.columbiamissourian.com/media/multimedia/2007/games/euler/physics.html

Student Web design

Awesome ideas, guys. Ryan, thanks for the link. I hadn't seen that before.

We're dipping our feet into the Web design world. And because everything we do here is for publication, we've been taking some of our big packages (the often-100-inch investigative-style cover piece we have each weekend, plus some features) and designing online packages.

Our Web site is totally database-driven, and if we want an article to be searchable, it needs to be in the database. So the clunky way we have to get readers to these packages is to link to them out of the text-only versions. We're working on how to get flat page templates that will show up in searches and archives.

But for now, here are a few links to what we've published. I'd love to see what your students are doing as we all navigate this strange new world of news design.

Status of Women in Journalism
Comic book group
MU National Guard helping to replant Afghanistan
Frolicking Fall Fun

Joy

Excellent multimedia resource

Just thought I'd share this link with those unfamiliar with it.

http://mindymcadams.com/tojou/

Mindy McAdam's site is a must-see on my daily web hits. Everyday she has links, tutorials or other helpful things for those of us struggling to understand this topsy-turvy industry.

Let's get this thing rolling ...

I heard something said today at one of the sessions that made me take some notes about things to include within this blog:

"Map out entire flow of experience."

And here are some of the things I quickly jotted down for the SND-edu site. These are in no particular order:

-- up-to-date directory of educators

-- syllabi from our courses

-- link to useful sites (for educators and students). Sites can include info on typography, color, design, teaching. Just a general roundup of the sites we know are used frequently, i.e., newspagedesigner.com, as well as sites we discover along the way

-- current educational-related issues/concerns going on within SND

-- student work postings (page of the day? pages of the day? slideshow just of student work?)

-- links to as many sites as possible that post internships and jobs

-- a running list of who's graduating, who's going where for internships/jobs (as I write this, I realize that this could get unwieldy ... but I'll throw it out there anyway).

More later! Just wanted to get this out there while it was fresh in my mind.

Julie

Welcome to the education spot

We've created this in the education committee meeting. It's a spot for educators to share what we're up to. Want to post? Let us know.