Robb Montgomery

Here are all of the classroom reports filed yesterday
at the Fisk-111 multimedia classroom.

Learning is for teachers, too.

I am thankful to have survived yesterday’s encounters with airports, expressways, and university campuses.

With a week’s notice I agreed to give two lectures on Web reporting to journalism students at Northwestern University. A week is usually fine but I was unplugged in Orlando for most of that time with short grass under my feet and golf utensils in hand.

I arrived (jet-lagged and sleep-deprived) to share with the students and visiting faculty the power and versatility of new web reporting and writing techniques. And, I wanted to push myself a little bit, I guess.

Walking the talk
Both the lecture preparation and in-class demonstration relied completely on browser-based and mobile-enabled web reporting technologies. In other words - any computer anywhere in the world and a properly hacked mobile phone allows reporters to file stories with text, images and more. I had my iPhone with me and links to all my research on my Web server.

I did have computer access for one day while in Grand Island and I did some additional research and saved out all the appropriate Web site links and notes for the lecture. I woke up at 4 a.m. Tuesday in Orlando and even though I was on-time to the airport, the arrrival schedule slipped with a late landing into O’Hare, I only had an hour to properly work things up between the baggage claim and the Fisk classroom. I copied the links to my laptop and built a few Keynote slides from my pencil notes. I arrived at room 111 only to discover that I now had a dead laptop battery. Apparently the Powerbook was still in “vacation mode.” Fortunately it only took a couple minutes to recharge and during that time we did some “friending” and social network publishing in the class using nothing but pencil and paper.

The Fisk Bureau is online
For each session I renamed the classroom the “Fisk Bureau” and within 50 minutes asked the students to do things I ask reporters to do. Ask questions, talk to people, document an event and make sense of trends. To illustrate the processes - we published our reports live from the room.
I was pretty impressed with the students and shocked to learn that some of the common myths about 19-year-olds media habits may need more study by blog pundits.

The live classroom reports.

First of all - none of these kids admitted to visiting You Tube that day. All but four were on Facebook. They said that they are on Facebook because that is where there friends are. (The research method was based on a ‘double-blind’ comparison. Two randomly-paired subjects had to write the same Web site down in order to make the list.)

For news they said they go to Yahoo, ESPN, CNN and Perez Hilton. Beyond the NU sites they are required to visit as part of managing their academics - the overwhelming attraction was Facebook.

None of the kids in the two classes (100 students) use Twitter or even knew what it was or why news organizations are interested in publishing breaking news alerts using the service.

Instant message
I just now got this e-mail from a student:

Hey Robb! I was a student in your 1:00 Medill lecture, and I just wanted to thank you so much for your lesson! I found it really helpful, and I’ve already got a Twitter account and my first two blog entries up. Thanks for getting me so excited and involved in new media! I hope we can keep in touch.

Best wishes,
Lizzie

Sure enough, overnight she has Twitter love, a new blog and three comments on her first post. Impressive.

Break out the popcorn
Only one student out of a hundred had ever used a feed reader to monitor blogs and other RSS feeds.

I got their full attention when I showed a video tutorial explaining RSS and feed readers.
(Note to self: Screen more movies!)

I had the most success connecting with the night class when I opened up my Facebook profile and showed them I how I use these same Web reporting techniques and technologies to report and monitor trends with my media colleagues.

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