ALBANY, Ore. — Students in Rob Priewe’s News Reporting and Writing class at Linn-Benton Community College embarked on a bold new adventure this week, creating blogs that they will use during the term to share their thoughts about journalism, writing, current events and … whatever.
It’s the first time LBCC journalism students have used blogs as part of their curriculum, Priewe noted after class Friday.
“I’m excited to see where this experiment takes us,” he said.
Student blogs come on the heels of the student newspaper, The Commuter, launching a new Web site over the summer. Both projects fit into the larger goal of better preparing young journalists for careers in the fast-changing media, Priewe said.
He’s got 12 students in his News Reporting class, which meets three times a week on the Albany campus. While the students are very familiar with MySpace, Facebook and other aspects of the Internet, most of them are new to blogging.
That didn’t deter them, however, from jumping right into it with their first posts. Some of the students commented on their first week of classes, while another offered an opinion about whiny sports fans. One student even had a comment quickly turn up from afar, making the students even more curious about the medium.
“We’re still working on some of the ground rules,” Priewe noted. For now, the mantra is simply “don’t post anything you wouldn’t want your mother to read.”
Check out the “JN216 Blogs” to the right, and you can see for yourself what the students come up with.
(Photo credit: “STS115: Moments into the Launch of Atlantis” by mocr, courtesy of Flickr.com)
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