St. Patrick's Day Slideshow Exercise Using Visual Communicator

The slideshow software program Visual Communicator offers the ability to record on-camera video (see opening), audio and provide some cuts along with a teleprompter-like running script--a really cool feature!

Thanks to Newsplex for making the content available. Hopefully, I can provide some of my own content and create something of my own, but for now, here's St. Patrick's Day in Columbia, SC.

What I'm Doing This Summer (at Newsplex)

So check out my Grammy coverage created today at Newsplex using the free software program Audacity and some clips that were provided. My voice overs aren't the greatest, but it does take practice.

I hope my students are keeping up with this, especially you Rambler folks, because you're in trouble now. I'm actually learning how to use the software to create multimedia projects so the bar will be raised once again.

Maybe by the end of the week, I'll have a unique project to post. Stay tuned to see.

My First Week at Newsplex

Today starts the first week of my convergence training at Newsplex at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. That's the back of my curly hair on the far right while Dr. Augie Grant speaks at front.

Eleven other intrepid journalism faculty members from around the nation are here, and right now, we're all trying to blog. I've been fortunate to have the blog established, so I'm cheating...no new blog created; you all are just going to be exposed to my Newsplex experience for the next two weeks. Lucky you, and lucky me--since I'm here for two weeks instead of just one.

Again, the basic skills of journalism were stressed as imperative in convergence journalism: reporting, writing, editing, basic photography, basic videography and basic audio production.

I'm always floored by how public relations people seem to be ahead of the curve in this struggle, since they've been needing to learn everything for so long. Now, it seems all of the folks who practice communication have fallen into the same boat--the all or nothing boat. Learn it all, at least the basics, or no job.

So stay tuned to see what happens this week. You can also check out my Twitter or Facebook accounts to get updates as well.