Technological advancements of the past few decades have fundamentally changed the social culture of learning. Mobile phones, personal computers, wireless Internet, satellite TV and radio, mp3 players, DVDs, smartphones — these innovations have changed the way people live and the way society interacts. With this change comes a responsibility for educators to adapt teaching methods and incorporate new technology into the classroom as a means of improving the educational experience.
As part of PBS’ “App Days” we’re working to craft an application that can query and return data from OpenCalais, the Reuters semantic web service. It’s returns may not be perfect, but the natural language analysis is impressive and its ability to catalog proper nouns will provide a huge leg-up for APs and PAs in producer shops around the country.
If we can pull this off, transcripts and bodies of text can best used to augment editorially chosen keywords and attributes, such as in the Bill Moyers example above.
JIM LEHRER: People often ask me if there are guidelines in our practice of what I like to call MacNeil/Lehrer journalism. Well, yes, there are. And here they are:* Do nothing I cannot defend.
* Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me.
* Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story.
* Assume the viewer is as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am.
* Assume the same about all people on whom I report.
* Assume personal lives are a private matter, until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise.
* Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories, and clearly label everything.
* Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes, except on rare and monumental occasions.
* No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously.
* And, finally, I am not in the entertainment business.
Here is how I closed a speech about our changes to our PBS stations family last spring:
“We really are the fortunate ones in the current tumultuous world of journalism right now. When we wake up in the morning, we only have to decide what the news is and how we are going to cover it. We never have to decide who we are and why we are there.”
That is the way it has been for these nearly 35 years. And that’s the way it will be forever. And for the NewsHour, there will always be a forever.
There may be no more common sticking point in working the incredibly talented, smart, and opinionated producers at PBS is notion of the “related link.” It has surpassed the realm of web UX and taken on an almost mythical quality – the peg on which the editorial gods shall hang their hats, shall we say.
But for all the admitted pain it has caused with some projects, I must admit that I, too, am a firm believer in the role of the humble link, even when paired with video, the most attention-demanding activity online.
The typically fantastic On The Media covered the phenomenon of “cyberchondria” this week. That is, the pernicious tendency to “escalate” one’s web-enabled self diagnosis of what, from a clinical perspective, are trivial health issues.
In telling a story on the state of nuclear proliferation, I wanted to approach the subject from several different angles. First, I wanted to address the international rhetoric supporting arms control and nuclear weapons abolition. This was well suited to a map projection, which provides snapshot of how many regions, countries, and leaders are involved in the issue and how global the verbal consensus is on the issue.
Taking these quotes, I wanted to juxtapose them against both contemporary briefs of how different nations’ policies are being enacted and how this is indicative either potential hope or status quo in actually approaching a world without WMD. In researching the background of the major nations involved in international diplomacy around the issue (DPRK, India, and Pakistan are not signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty) it was clear that the rhetoric could not match actual spending and weapons deployments.
Lastly, the timeline is an amazingly effective storying telling toll because it so easily allows you to present multidimensional to the user through a intuitive interface. The timeline tells the story of the major arms treaties since 1945 and juxtaposes them with weapons levels of the USSR and US. From watching the animation, the user will find that clearly some treaties were effective and delivered quickly and some were ineffective to say the least.
The overall picture I hope to provide is one that examines the state of our nuclear-armed world in an engaging way that inspires the user to dig into the contemporary politics, historical questions, or strategic questions around the issue.
I'm a digital strategist and producer for PBS.org. My career started in broadcast convergence, media theory, and web development and my work has widened to include journalism, content development and a wide range of new media competencies. I'm also an M.A. candidate in the Interactive Journalism and Public Affairs program at American University. I received my B.A. from Carleton College in Art History and Cinema Studies. You can learn more about me in my resume.
