This is for a Panel in the category for a Intermediate audience.
With a goal of redefining the morning newspaper experience, four undergraduates at the University of Texas created an iPad app, Newt, in one semester. The team of two journalism and two computer science students came up with the idea for the news, traffic and weather app and built it from scratch using XCode and Objective C in a cross-disciplinary class. They also designed the logo and all of the user interface, wrote blog posts weekly about their progress, produced videos, and created an engaging social media presence surrounding their app. In April, they presented the app to the public and a panel of judges from the Austin tech and journalism worlds at an end-of-semester demo day. The Newt teammates will be on the panel, along with their professor, Robert Quigley, to demo and talk about the app they built, discuss the struggles they went through and show what they learned from each other and from the project. The class is co-taught with Jeff Linwood, an Austin iPhone programmer who got involved in last year’s inaugural class by volunteering to come in and help the students in labs. It has now been taught for two semesters and is a popular course. Dozens of people were on the waitlist in the spring of 2014. Journalism students from this class have gone on to work at Apple and other tech companies, and a computer science student interned at the Texas Tribune and worked at the Daily Texan. These are the future leaders in our industry, and they are ready to make their debut at ONA.
How does your submission contribute to the diversity of the conference?
The Newt team is composed of millennials who are just entering the workforce, now armed to not only use the tools, but make them. The team also features female computer science and journalism students.
What will your audience have gained by the time your session is over?
Suggested Speakers
Robert Quigley | @robquig
Bobby Blanchard | @bobbycblanchard
Jennifer Rundle | @JennRun_DLE
Tim Carroll | @timcarrollatx
Katie Paschall | @KatiePaschall