by Julie Dodd
JEA Mentoring Committee co-chair

In a recent e-mail exchange with mentor Carla Harris (Oregon), she asked me about online journalism courses that new advisers could take.

We know from our work with new advisers that many of them become journalism teachers without having taken any journalism courses.

I contacted Mark Newton, JEA Certification Commission chair, to ask what information he could provide. Here’s his helpful info:

This link to a list of colleges/universities that offer journalism courses that the Certification Commission compiled. The list was updated in 2008. http://www.jea.org/resources/proorgz/masscomm.html

In addition, here’s other info from Mark:

The University of Missouri offers an online master’s degree in Journalism Education – http://mudirect.missouri.edu/journalism-education

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The Eastern Illinois University Journalism Department will be offering three one-hour online graduate credit courses for high school journalism teachers and publication advisers during summer 2010. All three courses will be entirely online. Graduate tuition and fees for each class are $292.95 regardless of in-state or out-of-state status.

Journalism 4801–Issues in Supervising High School Publications (one-hour graduate credit): Course requirements must be completed between June 7-26. Study of the issues faced by advisers to high school publications with emphasis on adviser, administration and staff relationships; staff recruitment and motivation; publication finance and management; and legal and ethical issues. Prerequisite: None

Journalism 4802–Issues in Supervising High School Newspapers (one-hour graduate credit): Course requirements must be completed between June 28-July 17. Study of the issues faced by advisers to high school newspapers with emphasis on the adviser’s roles and duties; development and implementation of editorial policies; staff organization; development of content; and writing, editing, design and production. Prerequisite: Journalism 4801

Journalism 4803–Issues in Supervising High School Yearbooks (one-hour graduate credit): Course requirements must be completed between July 19-Aug. 7. Study of the issues faced by advisers to high school yearbooks with emphasis on the adviser’s roles and duties; development and implementation of editorial policies; staff organization, development of content; and writing, editing, design and production. Prerequisite: Journalism 4801.

For more information on each course: http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~jtidwell/classes/advisers/

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I also found a post on the JEA Digital Media blog to a list of 2010 summer workshops for students and for advisers that focus on digital media training. Here’s the link to that post. Within the post are links to go to information on specific programs. http://jeadigitalmedia.org/tech-tutorial-resources/workshops

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Another summer digital media course is Multimedia for High School Journalism Educators, a one-week course that Judy Robinson and I are teaching at the High School Journalism Institute at Indiana University, June 21-25. Advisers can learn and practice technology skills that can be incorporated into journalism and media production classes. The course will include:

  • Recording and editing digital audio and planning and shooting digital photos to be combined to create multimedia for the Web.
  • Using social software, such as blogs, wikis and Flickr.
  • Learning to use cloud applications for file sharing and photo editing.
    http://journalism.indiana.edu/programs/hsji/teacher-info/

If you have other journalism courses to recommend, please let us know by providing the information (and a link to more information) in the comments. I’ll also post other sources of training.