Teaching a new Web Development for Media class at Georgetown this summer

May 21st, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

I’m very excited to be teaching a new course at Georgetown University this summer called Web Development for Media, which begins tonight in Clarendon. The class includes 10 journalism and five public relations graduate students in the School of Continuing Studies.

The course assumes no prior knowledge of code or web development and will be akin to a practical survey class — intended to guide students through understanding and using some key tools. With fundamental understanding and hands-on practice, they’ll be able to dive deeper and teach themselves more after the 12 weeks. Here’s the official description:

Merely using the web and digital tools is no longer enough for today’s media professionals. Journalists and communicators alike need to have a strong foundational and practical understanding of how websites and applications are built and how to troubleshoot when problems arise. This class does not aim to make you hard-core coders or require any web development experience, but we do want you to come away with some coding skills. You’ll also be able to more effectively collaborate with web developers and continue learning on your own.

Students will learn about the various phases of web development and the fundamental technologies used to code and design web pages by diving into HTML and CSS, plus some basic JavaScript, jQuery and PHP. Students set up their own self-hosted website using WordPress. Readings, guest speakers and hands-on learning activities and assignments will be the basis for instruction.

Follow along on the course site, check out the syllabus and let me know in the comments below what you think.

Manipulated music mirroring Möbius-mannered movie

May 8th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

Inception Music Comparison (by Cameron Whitehouse)

It’s been a while since I first saw this video comparing the most recognizable part of the Inception soundtrack with Édith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.” But this time I did a quick search after watching and found an L.A. Times post with the following quote (emphasis in bold is mine):

“If you were to see this movie a second time,” Zimmer said, “you realize the last note you hear in the movie is the first note in the movie. It’s a Möbius band. But the next thing you hear over the logos is actually telling a story. You realize that the elements that we’ve extracted from the Piaf song are the way you get from one dream level to the next. When the movie starts, some action has already happened.”

From another LAT post:

Pieces of Piaf’s interpretation of the song were stretched, manipulated and woven into Zimmer’s score.

Möbius on my mind? Probably. I wonder what Hofstadter would have to say about this…

#bcni13 measuring the impact of journalism recap

May 7th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

Below is a round-up of materials from BarCamp News Innovation Philly 2013 discussions about measuring the impact of journalism. Thanks to Gino Canella and the Center for Public Interest Journalism for the videos! Also, check out Jim MacMillan’s roundup of posts from #bcni13.

Erika Owen’s post:

So you want to measure impact: BarCamp 2013

CPIJ summary video of the session Brian Abelson, Erika and I led:

Full session video:

Temple University journalism chair Andrew Mendelson’s ”Beyond metrics: Thinking more broadly about journalism’s impact”  talk:

Summary

Full session

I live-tweeted the session and Storified some key points he shared:

Patterns in shells, cellular automata, knitting and music

May 6th, 2013 § 1 comment § permalink

Earlier tonight I read the following article (via an NYT piece about Nautilus mag):

Biologists Home in on Turing Patterns: Was Alan Turing right about the mechanism behind tiger stripes?

For the work that led to his 1952 paper, Turing wanted to understand the underlying mechanism that produces natural patterns. He proposed that patterns such as spots form as a result of the interactions between two chemicals that spread throughout a system much like gas atoms in a box do, with one crucial difference. Instead of diffusing evenly like a gas, the chemicals, which Turing called “morphogens,” diffuse at different rates. One serves as an activator to express a unique characteristic, like a tiger’s stripe, and the other acts as an inhibitor, kicking in periodically to shut down the activator’s expression.

And then watched an older video linked from it:

Mathematical Impressions: Shell Games

From the description:

One-dimensional, two-state cellular automata produce a list of bits at discrete time steps, whose output, depending on the parameters, may be trivial or very complex. Surprisingly, this simple mechanism can be Turing complete — that is, capable of calculating anything that any computer can calculate.

The knitting part reminded me of this photo I took of one of my mom’s crocheting pattern books:

"I can read patterns. It's kind of like programming," says @excdinglyrandom while crocheting next to me.

“I can read patterns. It’s kind of like programming,” says @excdinglyrandom while crocheting next to me.

I then went to Hart’s site, which included a link to his daughter’s YouTube page. I hadn’t watched one of Vi Hart‘s videos for a while, so I browsed and immediately clicked the one on Folding Space-Time:

And, of course, it reminded me of Crab Canon on a Möbius Strip:

All of this really just being another reminder that I need to continue reading Gödel, Escher, Bach!

Join us at #bcni13 to work on measuring journalism by impact

April 25th, 2013 § 1 comment § permalink

It’s April so it must be time for BCNI! Brian Abelson, Erika Owens and I will lead a session this Saturday at BarCamp News Innovation Philly 2013 (see schedule) about implementing ways measure impact in journalism.

Last year I led a more general discussion about impact, which Andrew Spittle expertly documented in his notes. Springboarding from that, Wendy Warren and I did a follow-up #BCNI12 session to dive into specific, qualitative possible news metrics for success.

The thinking and conversations about impact have grown and evolved in the past year, such as with a conversation about impact at #ONA12. With this progress, we’re going to take a much more hands-on approach at the unconference this time, as Erika wrote in her preview post:

It’s pretty easy for the conversations around impact to go in circles, but the aim is for this discussion to be more focused. Greg suggested an “impact-a-thon” format where folks share case studies, discuss them in small groups, and then report back on the findings.

Do you have any case studies of stories you’ve worked on? Analytics and/or anecdotes to share of impact of the stories? Think back to those awards application cover letters, what did you describe for why your story should be honored?

The session, rather than theory, will focus on implementation. How have organizations monitored impact, and what are some specific examples of things they can do for future stories? We look forward to an insightful, action-oriented discussion, and want your help in designing the session. Please email the Google Group, share your thoughts, and join us Saturday morning.

Brian will share his experiences thus far exploring impact measurement as an Open News fellow at The New York Times:

In preparation for the discussion, I’m hoping to get your thoughts and concerns about impact measurement (read up here) – what have we done right so far and what’s missing from the conversation?

In that line Brian links to an extremely thorough list of posts, articles, studies, etc. relating to journalistic and media impact. Be sure to read up beforehand, especially ProPublica’s white paper, “Non-profit journalism – Issues around impact.”

The conversations and the company should be fantastic, so please join us on Saturday — and register for BCNI before tickets are gone!

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