Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology

Kathleen Taylor Brown at Penn State Greater Allegheny helps communications students gain a competitive edge in the industry by both grounding them in theoretical foundations and having them plan and produce podcasts and videos.

Today’s journalism, she says, is often “backpack journalism.” Communications professionals who were once supported by production crews now often carry their own cameras and microphones and record, edit, and produce their own pieces. “You may be both in front of the camera and behind it,” explained Brown. “It’s not just writing the copy anymore; it’s writing, producing, and putting that end product out there,” she said.

In her “Newspaper Writing and Reporting” course, Brown asked students to interview a person who works for Penn State, be it a professor or cafeteria server, then produce an audio podcast. Brown said, “It brought the whole campus together because everybody was listening to it. We got a whole buzz going.”

In Brown’s “Public Relations and Advertising” course, she designed assignments around the Rachel Carson Institute in Springdale and Carson’s influence on the environmental movement. Brown said, “What I’ve learned since I started teaching is that students have to be passionate about something and they have to be able to be activists. One of the things they’re very interested in is the environment.”

As one assignment, students attended the Rachel Carson Legacy Conference at Carnegie Mellon University. Using iPods equipped with microphones, they captured the talks as well as walked around and interviewed attendees.

Student teams each created a video promoting environmental awareness featuring series of three words, such as “green your routine,” “don’t be silent,” and “erase your footprint.” They first had to develop storyboards. Brown said, “It gave them a concept they never had before on how you put together a movie. You don’t just go out and shoot. They had to have a plan, they had to have a process, and then they had to promote it.” Students edited the videos using iMovie software in the Digital Commons studio (http://digitalcommons.psu.edu/).

Other assignments encouraged students to capture the power of oral stories. In one instance, they interviewed individuals from three different generations on “why we fight.” In another, they captured the stories of women of the Mon Valley and learned what the area was like in the ’40s and ’50s. In return for their help, these “senior research associates” will each receive a computer in their home. Brown’s students will visit their homes and teach them to use the computer, through the “Follow Me Home” initiative.

Brown explained that having students spend time creating podcasts and videos does not mean they miss out on theory. “My colleagues may think if you’re putting all this technology in, you must be losing the theory. We’re not. We’re just enhancing the theory,” said Brown, “and the student gets more excited and passionate about it as a result.”