This is for a Speaker in the category for a Beginner audience.
[ CrossFit: personal training in a group setting using functional movements. ]
Learning to code can be done on your own, but much like exercising, only the truly dedicated will reach their goals. By taking the lessons of CrossFit, such as practice, repetition, measurable progress, increasing intensity, testing and retesting, efficiency and community, we can take students and ourselves on a journey and simply put, learn how to learn. Before you know it, you’re buying the shoes, speaking the lingo and doing things you never thought you could do.
Background:
What I want to do is share how I approach learning new technologies, web design, and programming, which is a constant battle for all of us, and what methods I use in the classroom to teach new journalism students web design and development. Strangely, the tenets of CrossFit fit into the methods I use with students, and I thought it would be fun to have a visual way to understand the approach.
If we are to help journalists learn to be more technical, if we are to change journalism education, if we are to introduce students to the world of what I call “journalism+” (+design, +data, +programming), we have to work together. We have to learn how to learn and we have to share what we know.
How does your submission contribute to the diversity of the conference?
As a female professor teaching web design and development to journalism students, I have a fresh perspective on what changes need to be made in journalism education and in training current journalists. The goal is to find better ways to add that base level of knowledge about computational thinking, an understanding of web-based technology works and a familiarity with numeracy and data to their current traditional journalist skill sets. My experience at Indiana University has been similar to Cindy Royal’s (see her article http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/10/cindy-royal-journalism-schools-need-to-get-better-at-teaching-tech-where-the-girls-are/). My courses are 90-95% women, who want to be more technical, but aren’t sure what that means. If we want to bring more women into technology, if we want to bring more “journalist+” trained people into the digital media world, we need to start with how to teach ourselves and each other technical knowledge, and how to keep on learning.
What will your audience have gained by the time your session is over?
Suggested Speakers
Erika Lee | @ebigalee