I've been giving a lot of thought about how I can use/introduce open source in my classes.
Here is a rundown of what I've come up with:
1) Encouraging the use of open source software to create multimedia projects. It would enable students to work on projects outside the university labs.
2) Making my students write about open source by engaging with the open source community. This exposing them to a technical topic, requires them to report in new ways (ex. IRC), and challenges them to write in the "tell a friend" manner I try to convey.
3) Encouraging my students to gather clips by writing for open source sites. (Thanks to Mel Chua for help compiling these:)
3) Talk about the open source movement as a topic in my Introduction to Journalism class.
4) Continue to integrate wikis and blogging in my classes.
On Friday I expressed how difficult I've found it to keep up with who contributes to blogs and wikis and when. After our discussion on group work, I'm thinking maybe I should assign students to read other blogs and grade the blogger at the end of the quarter. The blogger's grade would be a combo of my evaluation and the students.
Finally, one of the main reasons I came to POSSE was to learn how FOSS is or could be related to the future of journalism. I'm still having a hard time articulating an adequate research question. I suppose my interest is at the sociological level. In a nutshell, here is what I'm trying to understand:
1) How does open source effect the future of journalism?
2) Can journalism learn from the open source business model?
3) Can the workflow in open source communities be a model for citizen journalism?
4) Can the open source community be encouraged to develop games/programs that promote doing *good* journalism? For example, one major lament about international news is that there isn't much of it. Companies have cut international news budgets and have to rely more on native reporters to pass news on to them. Could an open source platform help with this?
I look forward to keeping in touch with everyone and trying to parse out these questions!
PS: I just printed out my students' POSSE stories (yes, I still have to edit in hard copy:). I'll keep you posted on where I will share them.
1) How does open source effect the future of journalism?
ReplyDeleteI'd break it into 3 or so Answers:
- Implications of Copylefted content on Stories and Media
- Free Webapps = Free Printing Press
- New political/social Economy of educated producer-consumers
2) Can journalism learn from the open source business model?
Opensource developers are driven by the same motive as starving journalists on the come-up: Attribution.
Getting the by-line in an article in journalism is like getting author in a header of a source file. Lets face it, its definitely not the oodles of money that motivate contributors of either code or copy; That is not the rule; mostly just the exception.
3) Can the workflow in open source communities be a model for citizen journalism?
Certainly. Tools like Git can open the eyes of editors tired of emailing back and forth the same damn .docx file repeatedly.
Trac can be a great way to track, well, anything. Tickets are just actions broken down into bite-sized tasks.
4) Can the open source community be encouraged to develop games/programs that promote doing *good* journalism? For example, one major lament about international news is that there isn't much of it. Companies have cut international news budgets and have to rely more on native reporters to pass news on to them. Could an open source platform help with this?
Talk to Stephen Jacobs. There's an app for that, and if there isn't then there is definitely a co-op for that in the near future ;)