The simple definition is that it is a kind of marriage
between print and broadcast and the web. It is more of a team approach to story telling, with all journalists involved in
the process of deciding in which format certain aspects of the story should be told. It involves blogging, podcasting, video,
print and visual story telling, photography and much more. See the presentations below for a better picture.
Why convergence?
We've recently had two state journalists of the year who have gone on to become JEA's National Journalists of
the Year. They happen to be brothers, and they happen to be taught by TAJE member and secretary Lisa Van Etta. They are Benito
and Alejandro Marcelino.
There was one other thing they had in common. They are journalists who can do it all.
They understand convergent media.
The professional news scene has changed dramatically in recent years. Big media
conglomerates own hundreds of stations, newspapers, radio stations, etc. They are looking for journalists who understand the
big picture.
Colleges are now training students to do it all, and there is now a move in high schools to do the
same.
Both Benito and Alejandro were experts in design, writing, photography and other skills. They clearly stood
head and shoulders above the competition. And this is the type of student journalist we'd all be proud to have on our
staffs.
Some presentations on convergence
Convergent Media Presentation by Jake Palenske, president and CEO of NCompass Media. This is a PowerPoint which has been converted to a QuickTime movie
format. You will still need to manually move it to the next segment. This is the presentation he did for the Fort Bend teachers
in February 2008 and is what got your web master so fired up over this idea.
Convergent Journalism by Dianne Smith. This is something I threw together while waiting to receive a copy of Jake's presentation. We used this
to present the idea to students, administrators and parents. It's not as good as Jake's but it covers the main ideas.
Audacity A free program for podcasting on a PC or Mac (very easy to use)
Samples of Podcasts from Travis High School. We use the voice recorder on a PC, import to and compile in Audacity, upload to podbean.com. Then we embedded a Podbean player
on the podcast web page of our online newspaper which updates soon after we upload new podcasts.
Lame MP3 encoder (You will need this to export Audacity files as MP3 for uploading to podcast hosts)
www.myspace.com Facebook and MySpace and other social networking sites are great places to get the word out about your media program,
yearbook sales, etc. Facebook allows you to set up a networking page which members from your school can join. On MySpace you
can create a profile for your program, and send out bulletins to students who are your "friends."
More to come. If you have resources on convergent media or its components to share, please email me at jteacher2007@aol.com
Media Storm is an example of convergent media created by Brian Storm. According to the web site, "MediaStorm's principal aim
is to usher in the next generation of multimedia storytelling by publishing social documentary projects incorporating photojournalism,
interactivity, animation, audio and video for distribution across multiple media.
