Data Module Fall 2014
| Monday Section | Thursday Section | |
|---|---|---|
| 9 AM to 12:50 PM | 9 AM to 12:50 PM | |
| Room 436 (Adam Glenn) | Room 438 (Jeremy Caplan) | |
| Assignments | Assignments |
Class Website: http://amandabee.github.io/fundamentals-of-interactive
Class Mopad: http://etherpad.mozilla.org/fundamentals
amanda.hickman@journalism.cuny.edu
Office: 419i
Hours: http://piratepad.net/amandahickman
Phone: 917/655-2579
Tumblr: http://jour72312.tumblr.com/
Course objectives
This ten week module will introduce you to a variety of interactive storytelling forms and will combine storytelling skills, especially creating content appropriate to the form, with fundamental technical skills that will serve as the foundation for your interactive work at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.
Course outcomes
We’re going to cover four story forms that we think touch on a range of skills you can use throughout your career. Sometimes this class will feel like a whirlwind, and you won’t have a chance to perfect every story you produce. That’s okay! If you want to build on what you learn this semester, take newsgames or data visualization or take advantage of coaching to incorporate these into your stories in other classes. Students will leave this module with experience:
Students will also have experience telling meaningful and complete stories in interactive formats where space is at a premium.
| Form | Pitch | Due | Revision |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slideshow | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 12 |
| Map | Week 8 | Week 9,10 | Week 13 |
| Quiz | Week 9 | Week 11 | Week 14 |
| Chart | Week 10 | Week 12 | Week 15 |
Your work for this class should be your own original reporting. However, if you’ve done reporting for another class that you’d like to expand on in an interactive project, we encourage you to return to stories you know well.
Every story you produce for our class should include clear source information for any data or images that you did not produce yourself.
Remember: titles and captions are part of your story. Work is not complete without them.
Amanda Hickman works at the intersection of journalism and civic engagement, and values reporting that makes it easier for individuals to participate in democratic processes. As program director at DocumentCloud, she helped reporters around the world analyze, annotate, and publish primary source documents. Amanda managed development of a series of games about public policy issues as Gotham Gazette‘s director of technology. She has spent more than a decade reporting on local and international events and working directly with community based organizations to understand, and draw their membership into, the political process. Amanda has taught at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, NYU’s Gallatin School and CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.
It is a serious ethical violation to take any material created by another person and represent it as your own original work. Any such plagiarism will result in serious disciplinary action, possibly including dismissal from the CUNY J-School. Plagiarism may involve copying text from a book or magazine without attributing the source, or lifting words, code, photographs, videos, or other materials from the Internet and attempting to pass them off as your own. Please ask the instructor if you have any questions about how to distinguish between acceptable research and plagiarism.
In addition to being a serious academic issue, copyright is a serious legal issue.
Never “lift” or “borrow” or “appropriate” or “repurpose” graphics, audio, or code without both permission and attribution. This guidance applies to scripts, audio, video clips, programs, photos, drawings, and other images, and it includes images found online and in books.
Create your own graphics, seek out images that are in the public domain or shared via a creative commons license that allows derivative works, or use images from the AP Photo Bank or which the school has obtained licensing.
If you’re repurposing code, be sure to keep the original licensing intact. If you’re not sure how to credit code, ask.
The exception to this rule is fair use: if your story is about the image itself, it is often acceptable to reproduce the image. If you want to better understand fair use, the Citizen Media Law Project is an excellent resource. </a>
When in doubt: ask.
Deadlines are real: we plan lessons around the assumption that you will have pitches to workshop when pitches are due. If you don’t, it disrupts the whole class. So deadlines should not be missed without exceptionally good reason, and your instructor should always be notified in advance.
If you’re stumped or stuck or worried that you are falling behind, talk to me. I can help get you caught up and unstuck.
Participation and attendance required and are important to your success in the class.
Please be on time for class and back to class from breaks. Repeated tardiness will result in a reduction of grade in participation.
We will begin meeting on Week 6 of the semester. Please come to class Week 6 with Filezilla, TextWrangler and Mou installed on your computer. All three are available free of charge.
Discussion: Welcome. Slideshows and what makes them work. Pre-pitch possible slideshows.
Hands-on: make a basic HTML page in bootstrap and upload it to Digital Storage.
Homework: make a new page called “week6.html”. On that page, describe your slideshow pitch. Use 2-3 paragraphs and at least one anchor tag. Your first draft will be due Week 8!
Due: Slideshow pitches, URL for HTML excercise.
Discussion: Who has ideas for stories down the line? Are they interesting? What would make them interesting. You should be looking ahead!
Maps and mapping – how to make a map that tells a story.
Hands on: Pivot tables to summarize data, HTML and FTP Review
Homework: Post the first draft of your slidshow on Digital Storage (name it “slideshow_draft.html”); Post a map pitch on Digital Storage (name it “map_pitch.html”); Use pivot tables to summarize data.
Due: Draft of slideshow, Map pitches, 311 pivot table exercise
Discussion: Ideas for stories down the line? Keep looking ahead! What makes a quiz work as a story? Making games fun.
Hands on: Making a map in CartoDB
Homework: Post the first draft of your map (map_draft.html) and a pitch for a quiz based story (quiz_pitch.html) on digital storage.
Due: Map draft on CartoDB, Quiz pitches
Homework: Post the first draft of your quiz (quiz_draft.html) and a pitch for a chart based story (chart_pitch.html)
Due: Draft map, Revised quiz pitch, rough chart pitches
Hands on: Making our first quiz using the Mother Jones framework.
Discussion: Storytelling through charts; what makes a chart-based story complete?
Homework: Post the first draft of your quiz (quiz_draft.html) and a pitch for your chart (chart_pitch.html)
Due: Draft Quiz, Chart pitch
Discussion: Reviewing chart based stories.
Hands on: Digging into highcharts: Starting a chart in JS Fiddle; Using Mr Data Converter
Discussion: Back to the beginning – what stands out in the slideshows we filed Week 8?
Hands on: Troubleshooting slideshows; using Excel formulas
Homework: Post the first draft of your chart (chart_draft.html) and your quiz pitch (quiz_pitch.html). Come in with a well thought out idea for a chart-based story.
Due: Draft Chart, Slideshow revision
Discussion: What stands out in the maps we filed week 9?
Due: Map revision
Discussion: Maps from week 5, what would make those stronger?
Hands on: Troubleshooting map problems.
Due: Chart Revision NOTE THIS IS A SYLLABUS CHANGE
Hands on: Troubleshooting chart problems; getting more out of excel
Due: Optional: Quiz revision