TechQuest Proposal

The educational need or opportunity:

For my project, I plan to incorporate an online newspaper. I will have taught the class for four years, and the publication has always been print. Because of the cost of printing, my principal has asked that I go online with the newspaper. Not only is this needed because of funding, but it is also essential to the journalism program if it is going to adequately prepare students to seek journalism as a career. Most newspapers are converting to sharing news online rather than in print. Print publications are becoming “dead” while online publications are becoming the norm. Most of my students who have gone on to pursue journalism are now publishing online and are learning a variety of things they must know for online publications in order to succeed in the profession once they earn their degrees. This emphasizes the importance of making sure students in high school are prepared when moving on to higher education and into the workforce. If they are to succeed, my students must be taught a variety of things including but not limited to:

· how to write for an online publication vs. a print publication

· how to create appropriate podcasts and vodcasts

· the appropriate ethical and legal issues associated with online publications

· how to post to an online publication

· methods of design online

· how to use a variety of mediums of technology

Use of Technology to meet the educational need and opportunity:

There are several services that are offered to teachers of publications. As far as funding goes, they vary in pricing. The sites that are designed specifically for online publications are usually really well designed, but cost about $400 to set up and $200 to maintain every year. This will be too expensive for our paper, so I am going to opt for a free website, Weebly. This service will allow me to first create a free site, with the option to pay about $58 a year to incorporate audio and video and to increase storage space. $58 will not be too expensive, and we can easily fundraise or sell ads in order to pay for the site. Because my principal asked that I convert to an online publication due to funding, it is important that I stick with a service that is relatively inexpensive, but is also user-friendly and will be easy for students to upload to. Weebly will offer us these qualities.

Research

In my research, I surprisingly could not find much about the benefits of online newspapers in the secondary classroom. I did see several sites that mentioned they offer students more opportunity to create videos, podcasts, and blogs, and to publish for a wider audience, but not much more was offered. I did check out a few high school newspaper websites to see how they set theirs up. I emailed a few advisers a week ago to see which programs they used, but none of them have responded yet. A few of the newspapers I looked at include the following:

Channel One News- Student Newspapers Online

HiLite Online

I also looked at the following sites in my search for programs and services I may use instead of Weebly:

Online School Newspapers

School Newspapers, School Web Site Publishing & Student Newspaper Templates

Plan for Implementation

During this course, I will implement the free website to my class. Since some of my students will be returning next year, I will show them how to upload articles and images, and how to design the site. Students will be able to practice by publishing their current articles to the site. This will give them the necessary experience of building the webpage prior to incorporating more advanced programs. I plan to have students actually help me design the site so that they have ownership over the site and are excited to use it next year. After the site is complete, students will work with Audacity and with the video camera (if I can borrow one from the film production teacher). They will begin using the technologies so that they can get used to their functions. Next year, I plan to teach students how to appropriately write for and create podcasts and vodcasts. Once the site is up and running and students are prepared to take the next step, I will spend the $58 to incorporate vodcast and podcast.

Four common places of education:

This project addresses the following four common places of education in the following ways:

• Someone teaching: This site will help me teach to the journalism standards of higher education and the workforce in a user-friendly way.
• Someone learning: The students will learn the cutting edge technology that they will need to know in order to succeed in a career in journalism. If they do not plan to pursue a career in journalism, they will still be learning essential tools of technology (website construction; writing and publishing for a large, online audience; blogging; podcasts and vodcasts; ethical and legal issues in online publishing, etc.)
• Some subject matter: Both beginning and advanced journalism
• In some setting: In the journalism classroom, in a brick and mortar high school.