Journalism in English classes 

While reading "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By" by Barbara Ehrenreich, I had my 45, 11th grade English students conduct interviews of people struggling to make a living at low-paying jobs. The nonfiction book focuses on the undercover work that one journalist conducted over the course of one year as she tackled a variety of minimum-paying jobs in various parts of the country to get a glimpse on how people live when they have low-paying jobs. 

To get a better understanding of the struggles of the working class, students were asked to interview someone in a similar economic situation. Some students chose to create podcasts (which is a digital recording posted online), others took photographs of their subjects and recorded their interviews. Other students took video footage of their subject. 

Since the school does not have much equipment that the students can borrow or use, such as recorders, video cameras or digital photo cameras, students mostly utilized their own cell phones or point-and-shoot cameras to take record interviews, take pictures and shoot video footage.

Students used the school's computers and the software the computer already comes equipped with to create their projects. They used Garage Band to create their podcasts. They used iMovie to edit their audioslides or their videos. Both of these programs are available on Macs.

Once the projects were completed, they were uploaded to a class blog I created to showcase the students' projects. The projects that students created last year are also posted on the same site. 

To see the students' finished projects on the working poor, click here.

Online Journalism without spending any money

While the Journalism 1 class does not produce the monthly newspaper publication, they have a few opportunities to have their work, whether it is a story, photo or podcast, published.

At the end of each semester, students work in pairs to create a 3-minute news podcast. They students usually read a portion of their articles, whether they are news, features, entertainment, opinion or sports stories. They write a script that features an introduction and ending to their show and they record it using Garage Band. The students then post their podcasts on a free site. You can hear the podcasts that the students have produced by clicking here. The website podbean.com is free to use and is accessible from school websites.

At the end of the school year, students select one of their best pieces of writing that they wrote for the introductory journalism class that was not published elsewhere, either the school newspaper or a community website. Students learn to upload their stories or photos and post tags to improve their search engine optimization. You can read the online newspaper, The Pearl Journal, created by the Journalism 1 students by clicking here. I used WordPress.com to create the website and used their free themes.