I found an interesting read via Commmon Sense Journalism on Three Job Tips for Students. Paul Conley talks about why students should be focusing on living online, learning beyond classrooms and thinking as an entrepreneur rather than relying on print clippings for a resume.
One paragraph really caught my eye -
So I want new hires who have enough sense to teach themselves what they need to know. Sure, there are skills and software that I prefer to others. But when I’m meeting students I’m thrilled by someone who taught himself Dreamweaver, whereas I’m not so impressed by someone who took a course in PhotoShop.
There are only an handful of FCCPA schools that have any online presence and even fewer that are interactive, meaning that students can post at will and in different formats (video, audio, podcasts). As advisers, we may not know how to do or teach all this “new media” but there’s no reason we can’t let the students experiment.
Two years ago, I grabbed a student from our college multimedia program and together we learned Premiere Pro and editing and compression. I learned as much, if not more, from him as he did from me. He became our multimedia director.
Our first multimedia story was real trial and error but the same photojournalist, two years later, produced his first multimedia story from start to finish with great results because he had worked with and learned from other journalists who also took the time to experiment with new forms of storytelling.
So, find students who aren’t afraid to try new things, and jump in with both feet. And learn alongside them. You don’t have to be an expert yourself to get started.
