I gave a lecture about Steve Jobs today. It was a little self-indulgent – I mean, maybe I was the only one who was really feeling it today – but it was for a point. My media and society class talks about the intersection of civilization, technology, and the media content we create. There was no better platform to talk about what it means that we lived in the era of Steve Jobs.

I went through the history of Apple, good and bad. I talked about Steve’s vision, for better or worse, and how his long term sense of where media was headed guided short term actions. I showed them the video I embedded above (go to 0:25 to start), talked about how Jobs couldn’t see this kind of potential in computers without being something of a Renaissance man. You can’t draw parallels between science, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and technology like he so often does without being a reader, without being curious. And the building blocks of success start with understanding the small things, the part about how things work.

I wept a couple times while talking about what he meant to me, that professors have heroes that inspire their minds too. I told them that my experience with computers taught me to hack my way through life, figured out how stuff works, and how to troubleshoot. It made me an independent thinking man, not a slave to the Macintosh. I challenged them to be curious, to use their time in Lehigh’s liberal arts environment to stretch themselves, take a class in something they know nothing about, to grow in ways that don’t seem to fit with their major.

I told them to find their passion. It’s the one thing I don’t often see in Millennials, and it saddens me. This age group has had a lot of varied experiences, but I worry they have trouble settling on one or two things that they really freaking love. And it’s that love for what you do that drives you to greatness. You can’t half-ass it. So I practically told them they’re wasting their time if they aren’t pursuing what they love here at Lehigh, here of all places in a place where it’s safe to do so.

I didn’t say it outright, but if they were really, really listening they should have connected the dots and gotten the following charge at the end of class. Go create stuff. Lots of stuff. Don’t wait for me to tell you to do it and - for the love of God – don’t wait for it to be assigned in a class or be for credit on the student newspaper. The great ones are never off the clock. They create stuff because it matters, not because they’re told to.

Last month I reached out to my current and former students on Twitter for a little bit of help. Part of the academic process for me at this stage requires I submit a portfolio that accounts for my teaching, research, and service as a professor at Lehigh. I’m going through my two-year reappointment now, the first of two before I go up for tenure.

The teaching part of this portfolio is many things, but one of those is a statement on teaching that articulates my particular philosophy when it comes to teaching and then assesses how well I am doing in implementing that approach.

For whatever reason, I wanted was to model my own philosophy in a document that talks about my philosophy. I’m very much in the show-don’t-tell crowd. So I asked the students to weigh in. I came with my own ideas; I wanted to know if that matched their experience. Call it a road test.

The results were pretty interesting, and I ended up adding another point because it came through so often. So I learned from the audience and also saw that some of my methods were apparent to them. Win-win, I say, and I’m not sure I want to do it the normal way from now on.

The link I just gave you is the culmination of that effort, and I was really pleased with the results after wrestling with the actual writing part forever.

I don’t know if anyone has ever crowdsourced a teaching philosophy, which means it’s brilliant and forward-thinking or splendidly idiotic. A teaching philosophy is supposed to be a personal document that is yours and personal in nature, and I know of many academics who hold that pretty tightly. Me? Not so much. I’m wired to do things in community at this point.

Anyhow, the results were a lot of fun. Give it a read, and thanks to all who participated. Also, special credit to my wife for the kicksave on editing this thing, because it was rougher than the Mos Eisley cantina on first edit.

And a warning: it’s a document produced for academics, which means two sucky things: there are no hyperlinks, and it’s longer than it should be. The meat of what this post is about is in the first section. Aren’t I helpful?

My short version would have simply read: “Just come to class. It’s magic.”

A new section for my syllabi, starting with JOUR 325 New Media & Social Change this spring:

How to rock this class

I don’t care if you get an A in this class. Really. It’s not my job to make sure you hit your marks, but in the long run your grades mean nothing compared to what you take away from your education. But for what it’s worth, I find that my best students have more than an A in mind when they approach their course work. The A comes as a side effect to an intellectually curious mind and a good work ethic geared toward learning, not mere grade achievement. So take the following to heart:

This class is all about ideas. That means you have to put in the effort to make it work. I realize many of you are graduating, but this class is structured in a way that discourages you from coasting toward the finish line. Life isn’t like that, and the ideas you bring to bear are sometimes all you have when things get tough. Trust me on this. I was a professional journalist, after all. So on that note, a few words of wisdom:

1. Do the reading not because you have to but because you need to. Scribble notes in the margins. Think about it. Wrestle with it. Argue with your friends about it. Not every idea is obvious or easy, and connecting the different thought lines in this class sure won’t be easy. Don’t settle for less when ideas challenge you.
2. Don’t think of the reflection papers in this class as an assignment. They are a blank canvas for you. Have fun with them. Be funny. Be irreverent. But come with some original thoughts that don’t use citations as a crutch to demonstrate that you can think a little. Interact with the material, but give me way, way more than a book report.
3. The study of social change in the context of media is by definition interdisciplinary. Make use of ideas you’ve learned in other courses in discussions and in your papers, particularly ideas from non-journalism and non-communication courses. This class is intended to combine of all kinds of different work you’ve done at Lehigh, and by now you better have some ideas to bring to the table.
4. Come prepared. Read your classmates’ papers and pick two that make you think, or furrow your brow, or ask new questions unrelated to the paper itself because the approach is so fresh.. Apply #1 above to this gold mine of thoughts being generated by our own little crowd. If you bring only papers that you think are awesome, I will be sorely disappointed. This is not a lovefest — it’s an ideafest.
5. Be prepared to be wrong. Or gloriously right. Throw your ideas, even the offbeat ones, into the crucible and let’s kick them around every week. You don’t have all the answers, I can guarantee that.

I just finished teaching my second semester of our experimental course JOUR 198 Multimedia Reporting. We’ve come a long way in just a year and the progress we have made in digital journalism is noticeable. It’s not just that they’re showing off new skills (video on the Brown & White student newspaper took a big leap up as we have better-trained students in the system), but there also is an attitude of excitement among our students about this evolution and I could not be more pleased.

More on that later, but first I wanted to show off the microsites produced by the groups in my class. While the first part of the class focuses on skill building with video, editing, and interactive media tools, the meat of the course is a final project produced by students working in groups. Their job is to pick a topic that deserves to be told with a multilayered multimedia package and then produce a Web site that houses all those parts. The story angles and platform choices are all their decision. I don’t really “approve” anything but I do make them aware of potential pitfalls and help them talk through the project. They own this thing from start to finish.

Here’s what they came up with: Read more

Those of you unfortunate enough to run into me often have heard me chirping about “a classroom without walls” for over more than a year now. My vision, simply, is this: In an age of YouTube, social media, and online degrees, the classroom of the future needs to go beyond the brick-and-mortar boundaries and take advantage of community both in the real world and online.

This is why I’m all over social media. It’s a tool my journalism and strategic communication students desperately need to know when they hit the job market even if they don’t quite understand it. But I also am active on and my blog (in addition to some excellent flash conversations on Facebook groups at times) because I consider the learning environment to be boundless. Sometimes I wonder whether older-style professors think I’m screwing around on Twitter instead of doing things related to my job; my view is that in many ways Twitter is my job, and that everything I do in that medium has a purpose.

So what do I do? I post articles from the news, particularly about things related to my field of journalism. I pass on good information from others. I post internship and job opportunities. All “work related” activities. But I think it’s important to model what the medium is about for my students so they see how regular folks (read: not journalism professor nerds) use it as well. So I crack jokes about what I’m watching on TV. I make fun of the University of Kansas a lot (it’s the Mizzou blood in me). I the other night. I retweet their comments. I reply to them. In general, I let what little hair I have down. For me, Twitter is a way to show that expertise in something doesn’t mean losing your personality. And all of this stuff helps teach them about the culture of the Web, and particularly of Twitter. Read more

Welcome back. Most of us in education are finally digging ourselves out of the rubble that comes with the first couple weeks of school. Administrative duties, forms to sign, students to corral, and all the other stuff that comes with a new term. For some reason I felt busier this time than I did last fall.

Mostly I’m settling into a role here at Lehigh that has been evolving here for the past year. I was brought in to help bring some direction to multimedia efforts here in the Department of Journalism and Communication, but that job hasn’t been so hard in part because all of my other colleagues are interested in this stuff. I have, of course, been working on curriculum changes and such that we need, but there has been no fight here.

JOUR 198 (Multimedia Reporting) is starting to encompass my other unofficial job as head cheerleader on new media. Nobody has told me this is my job, but it’s one I’ve kind of adopted. I have an excitable personality at times so this is a natural, but I see my role here as being the person to constantly extol the virtues of technology in our field in hopes that our students will catch the vision and embrace it.

Mostly I think there is the job of selling this new direction for us. I believe students need to see my passion and excitement for teaching them how to do these new things, and see my firm believe that journalism is by no means dead. The reason is that some of the tools I teach, such as social media, are new and weird for many and even to some who are educators in my profession. They aren’t making a lot of PhDs like me right now, although I believe that will not be the case for long. So there is still the issue that I am a bit unique in my own field and I have to sell people on why the things I do and think about are important. Read more

I love technology. This is why I am banning the use of laptops in my big lecture course, Media & Society, this coming fall.

Wait, that didn’t sound right. But it’s true. I love technology so much that I know that I would be distracted in a course should I have the choice between paying attention to the course or looking around online. I’m just a year out of grad school, and even in some of my amazing graduate courses the temptation was strong.

Now, self-discipline is the best policy, and generally I will let a student suffer the grade consequences if they want to screw around during class. So while a recent article about professors observing bad grades among students and using that to justify laptop bans did resonate, it wasn’t the bulk of why I decided to do it. Read more

Note: This is written for AEJMC’s call for responses to the question of what the future holds for journalism and mass communication. Submit your own entry by following this link, and win free registration to the convention in Boston.

The future of news is just fine. It’s the future of journalism that is so unsettled.

Since Walter Williams founded the first school of journalism at the University of Missouri in 1908, we’ve seen a lot of technological advancements that have thrown journalism, the system by which we produce news, into states of change and upheaval.

Journalism itself is undergoing change, but the basic unit of that product – news – is at its core unchanged in terms of the value it brings society. The modes of production have changed in the past 100 years, but our basic charge to teach storytelling is still central to what we do. This part of human communication is as old as time and probably won’t go away any time soon, but the ways in which people are willing to pay for it is undergoing what some call change, others call assault. Read more

During this academic year I’ve been involved in a fantastic program here at MU called Preparing Future Faculty. It is what the title describes, a program that prepares doc students for faculty life and the challenges they will face. It’s run by Dr. George Justice through the Grad School and has a lot of different facets, including monthly classes on different topics (tenure, teaching vs. research loads, etc.) as well as professional development seminars (hiring, negotiating job offers, etc.).

One of the unique things we do in the program is mentor visits. We are required to do at least one visit per semester and Dr. Justice tries to match us with people at institutions near MU who also do similar work in our field. Last semester I had a great visit at Kansas with Mike Williams, who is the chair of the news/information track. I learned a lot from him about the places career can take you as well as the challenges of teaching vs. administration. The visit also took place right before Lehigh offered me the position in December, so it gave me a lot to think about.

Today I went on my second visit. I spent the day shadowing Dr. Dan Kozlowski at Saint Louis University. This was a different experience. Whereas KU is a large public Research I institution in profile, SLU is more in the profile of what I’ll be experiencing as a member of the faculty at Lehigh. SLU has a strong commitment to both research and teaching, and it was evident throughout the day as I observed Dr. Kozlowski in his normal duties. Read more

I’ve been teaching a large lecture class this semester, my last one here at MU before I start at Lehigh in the fall. It seems like the lessons I’m learning as an instructor are much different than mid-size classes, and I’m not sure if it’s because a 200-student course means different challenges or if I’m just noticing issues more because the problems are being multiplied by 10.

I should preface anything here by saying I love being a teacher and enjoy being in the classroom. I know I’m not great at it yet, but I’ve learned a lot in six years of doing it and relish those moments where you feel like you’re breaking through with students and helping them develop as thinkers. A great question in class yesterday, for example, where a student on their own connected free speech issues to the Jena Six problem (showing curiosity and application) was one of those moments that gets you high.

Still, I’ve struggled with one part of the class, and that is enforcing standards. The students are required to do five participation events in the semester, which entails them going to an approved event (a lecture or civic meeting of some sort) and writing an essay that is pretty wide open in terms of format (personal reflection, recap, news style, etc.). The one thing we’re asking is the essay quotes someone who was at the event and that they list their contact information on the essay. We do this because we are verifying the students actually attended. Read more

An interesting discussion broke out on my Twitter feed today when MU RJI fellow Jenn Reeves (one of our brightest new media minds here) tweeted the following:

interesting- i’m seeing a number of students joining twitter and saying they were “forced” to join. Probably not a productive use of twitter

The tweet perked up my virtual ears as well as a number of others who follow her. Apparently several professors have forced students to join and register tweets as part of class material. It’s understandable from a professor perspective, because it’s a way to get students introduced to a wider media world and see the uses of technology. Read more

I’m a longtime WordPress user in my blogging, but I finally found a little time to mess around with one of Brian Gardner Media’s Revolution themes.

Holy. Cow.

I used the Metro theme to redesign my professional site and integrate it with a professional blog for a more seamless look. What you see as of today took about three hours to set up. I could’ve designed this all by code and it would’ve taken a week for me (I can do it, but I’m not fast with PHP). Obviously I have more of the deep links to fix, but I pretty much configured the front page and got it to look how I wanted in a few hours. Read more