The introduction of convergence into the setting of a classroom has always been an issue that is fraught with great highs and many pitfalls. Although the world of professional journalism is still grappling with the meaning and usefulness of convergence, the process has yet to achieve familiar parameters of implementation within the classroom.
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Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter
Saturday, August 14, 2010
August 2010 Convergence Newsletter
August 2010: The Successes and Challenges of Converging On Campus
Texas Christian University’s Aaron Chimbel gives an inside look at the school’s introduction of a renovated journalism school that places a direct emphasis on convergence and its application within the classroom.
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Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
June 2009 Issue Now Available
Cyber social networking is helping to fuel the current Iranian protest against recent election results. But with Iran’s government trying to stem the opposition’s mobilization by actively removing opposition Web sites and attempting to slow down social networking portals such as Facebook and Twitter, the world is being deprived of information concerning this major political movement. Iranian censorship of the Internet is not unique. The Chinese government tried to shut down dissidents’ online use at the time of Tiananmen. Other nations face such roadblocks to cyber information. This issue of The Convergence Newsletter offers two articles examining problems of Internet access in Ethiopia. We also present a study focusing on India’s use of media, examining how and where convergence in that country takes place.
June 2009: The "Imprisoned" Internet of AAU
June 2009: Meeting Media Needs: What You Learn When You Ask Your Students Questions
Dr. John Cokley of the University of Queensland presents quantitative findings from a 2008 convergence journalism workshop in Delhi, India. Participating journalists from across India provide insight into media consumer needs and just how those needs are being met.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
May-June 2009 Issue Now Available
This May-June issue of The Convergence Newsletter looks at how convergence is serving some local communities.
Leading off is an interview with Mike Orren, founder and president of Pegasus News, a Dallas-Fort Worth online publication founded in 2005. Pegasus offers people the opportunity to localize their news, and, if they desire, to be unfettered citizen journalists, reporting the news as they see it. Orren tells The Convergence Newsletter that to be a successful online news source you need to offer your reader more than just news.
Doug Fisher of the University of South Carolina, and executive editor of TCN, says you can save the money you'd spend on some of those "secrets of social media" training sessions. He explains some simple truths he has learned from creating Hartsville Today, a three-year-old experiment in online community news and social networking.
Finally we bring you Douglas Starr, a former Associated Press journalist and now a media professor at Texas A&M, who stresses the importance a free press plays in today’s society. Starr encourages readers to seek out all forms of media and apply it daily in making informed social decisions. He says a free press serves communities and aids all in becoming better citizens.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
August 2008: Making Your Wiki Sticky: Allowing Students and Faculty to Experience Convergence Together
The Mass Media Department at Washburn University does not merely talk about convergence -- they walk the walk, too. Drs. Maria Raicheva-Stover and Kathy Menzie tell us how the department has been using a wiki to allow students and faculty to learn about convergence together.
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Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter
August 2008: Rescuing our Classrooms and Students from their Technology
Rapid developments in technology mean each successive generation of students brings different information-processing tendencies and competencies. Former USC professor Dr. Paul S. Lieber discusses the need to bridge the gap between students' access to information and their perceptions of information value.
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Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter
August 2008: Pause, Watch, Listen, and Learn … Then Converge
Media hype is a phenomenon we are all familiar with. Have we considered that convergence may be among its current beneficiaries (or victims, depending on your perspective)? Hofstra University's Victoria Geyer thinks so. She offers sound advice for how instructors can teach students to see through the hype and use convergence wisely to serve audiences -- even (and especially) those who refuse to give up their newspapers and TVs just yet.
Read the full article here.
Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter