What's this all about, anyway?
This is a course about mediamorphosis, the ongoing transformation of the traditional mass media. Newspapers, magazines, television and radio are converging to form a new, interactive, electronic medium that incorporates the greatest strengths of each, minimizes the weaknesses, and uses pixels instead of pulp to display the result.
Imagine a cell phone displaying something that looks like today's sports page, but you can click on the photo to see the full-motion video of the event, play it backward and forward in fast motion or slow. Then you click on a box score to find you have access to every statistic about every game ever played.
You can't read right now because you're driving? No problem, just tell the story to read itself to you. It's the depth, breadth and portability of newspapers wrapped up with the "take-me-there" ability of television and the ambience of radio. Pretty compelling, eh?
Some very smart people say it is a key point in the history and development of mankind, that the events unfolding before us daily will be as important to future generations as the invention of movable type, maybe even papyrus, was to us. Some still think it's all a crock, that "new media" are just a flash in the pan.
Only time will tell who is correct, but regardless of the long-term implications of mediamorphosis, it is happening. We're some distance away from the pocket-sized interactive newspaper described above, but it's happening, and it's happening fast.
What you will learn:
This course is designed to familiarize you with mediamorphosis and what it may mean for journalism and print and television journalists, advertising specialists, and public relations practitioners in the future. You will learn about commercial efforts to deliver news and information to consumers via computer in the past and the present, and you will learn how to use online resources in your everyday life, for research, business, pleasure and convenience and assess them professionally.This course incorporates significant content about building Web sites, but it is not a course solely about the Web. You will learn introductory Web design using Cascading Stylesheets, basic Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) and basic Photoshop. You will be able to create Web pages by hand as well as gather and edit sound. Since this is an introductory course, you will not be taught Flash, Javascript, CGI scripting or the like, although you are encouraged to experiment with them. See the labs page for more detail about specific skills.
This course is intended to be a lot of fun, but it is not an "easy" course. If you are looking for an easy "A," this probably is not the right place to find it. You will spend considerable time and effort on your Web projects and the course readings.
Do I have to be a computer nerd to pass?
This is a journalism course, not a computer-science class, and it is, therefore, not intended to be highly technical. You don't have to be able to spit out computer code at a moment's notice to do well in this class, but you do have to write some simple code. That is to say, the class is not highly technical, but it is not non technical either. If networks, Web sites, online services and the Internet are old hat to you, parts of the course may seem elementary. If you already are an accomplished, standards-compliant Web designer, you probably won't enjoy this class.But for those who are inexperienced but unafraid, it may be positively enlightening.Prerequisites:
Sophomore standing or permission from the instructor.There are no other prerequisites for Survey of Electronic Publishing or Communications on the Internet, but at least a minimal working knowledge of computers is strongly recommended. It is also recommended that students have enough background in mass communications to grasp the principles involved in creating and operating an online news service.
Students with disabilities:
The instructors will be happy to accomodate students with disabilities. Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students Office. The Dean of Students Office will provide documentation to the student, who must then provide this documentation to the instructors when requesting accommodation. Please expect to visit the instructor during office hours to discuss your needs.This syllabus, and all lectures, handouts and lab materials are the property of the instructors or the respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.