thestoryofjory.com

Last week, I introduced my classes to Photoshop.  This isn’t a design class, but many of my students will be expected to advance their Photoshop skills as they get into upper-division advertising and public relations courses.  About a week ago, I overheard a professor going over extremely basic Photoshop stuff with a senior-level PR class.  It’s simply unacceptable to be a senior and not know anything about Photoshop. Some of the students already had some experience, which was a relief to me because we all know I’m an absolute Photoshop hack. Luckily, it doesn’t take a pro to teach people about the different tools, when they might be used, and how to use them.

We’re talking about visual storytelling now, so the students are having to take pictures for their assignments and I want them to have some knowledge of photo-editing.  For the purposes of my class, Electronic Communication, I wanted them to at least be able to crop, rotate, and correct color problems using auto color. I used the sample materials from the Adobe Classroom In A Book series and took them through using all the different tools.  I can tell it was one of their favorite classes so far – they all seemed to have fun, particularly when accidental Photoshop disasters were created.

So, for their blog assignments this week, the students did a before-and-after Photoshop photo.  Here are a few of my favorites:

• Sabrina Swanger
• John Garrison
• Jennifer Gilliland

And, just for fun, here’s a pattern of my sister’s head Photoshop’ed into a drawing of Oklahoma:

I like making my own Photoshop Disasters. I call this one: Jackie Oklahoma!

Last week I realized two important things: first, that teaching is much more stressful than being on the other side of the lecture; and second, that it is impossible for most students to go longer than 30 minutes without checking Facebook or their cell phones.

I’m also struggling to come to terms with the fact that, while I may care immensely about the material and technology, I cannot will my students to care about it through sheer enthusiasm.  Even if I were the most enthusiastic person in the world about blogging, the students would still stare at me like I was a giant, talking Cockatiel. Enthusiasm alone is not going to cut it.

My first tactic to increase students’ level of caring was to appeal to their desire to get a job after graduation.  The students seemed to be more-or-less with me for the lecture about writing blogs and why they’re relevant.  I think the majority of students also liked learning about RSS and Google Reader, although I seriously doubt they’ll continue using it after this semester.  And that’s a shame, too, because I find RSS readers to be one of the most helpful listening tools in the communication trade – but I digress.

Many students did care about using their online identities to find a job after graduation. But a sizable number still seem to have the attitude that they can learn it later – it’s not important now. Enter ‘Get-the-Kids-Interested-in-the-Material’ tactic number two: If you know enough about technology, you can use it to creep on people way more effectively than Facebook.

I stumbled on that tactic by mistake.  I spent the whole lecture of my first class trying to apply Google Alerts and search tips to real-life job scenarios to no avail. The students were completely bored until I got to the very end of the lecture/exercise and started talking about finding information in databases.  I instructed them to go to OSCN.net so they could see how the database of information in the Oklahoma State Court Network worked. BINGO! The students got really excited when they realized they could find information on people they knew.  In hindsight, it makes perfect sense – these kids spend a lot of time snooping on people through Facebook – why not show them how to get the real dirt?

The next three classes went much more better engagement-wise, because I put more emphasis on finding information about people rather than issues.  I just hope I haven’t created an army of cyber-stalkers, and that they’ll use their information-finding powers for good purposes.

On the agenda for next week: Design for non-designers and an intro to visual story-telling. If anyone has any ideas for how to make that interesting to 19 year-olds, I’m all ears.

The first week of classes at Oklahoma State University is complete, and I don’t think my students or myself are any worse for the wear. I’ve hit a few snags – like going to the wrong classroom on the first day, breaking the projector, etc; – but I’m hopeful students will forgive that initial incompetency and really enjoy the class.

For the curious, we’ll be covering blogging, basic photography and basic Photoshop, Soundslides, basic audio and video editing in Audacity and iMovie, and we’ll dip our toes into building a website with iWeb or Dreamweaver.  Students will write weekly blogs relating their area of interest (say, Sports P.R.) to the topics we covered in class. They’ll also turn in all their projects by posting them to their blogs.

In the first week, I got them all signed up for a blog on Wordpress, and started showing them how they can post blogs, add new pages, and create tags and categories. This week, we’ll talk about writing effective blog posts and blogging strategies.  I’ll also introduce them to RSS – which not a single student said they had heard of or used before, if you can believe it – and setting Google Alerts. The blogging section will conclude the following week with a discussion about design and a workshop on improving their blog’s appearance.

I’m very excited to share what I know with these students.  Most of them indicated that they had little to no experience with blogging or audio/video editing. This class will introduce them to the skills they’ll need to become the professional communicators of tomorrow. I also hope to teach them to connect the content they create with the technology that supports it.  Communications professionals should be able to converse knowledgeably with the designers and programmers who help deliver their content. After all, the world would be a better place in the future if all public relations professionals took a little more time to understand the IT behind their projects, right?