A few weeks ago, I had the best and most productive class of my life.

I take a photography class in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications called Multimedia Storytelling. The goal of the class, in short, is to educate photographers in capturing video and audio, as well as still images. Students learn how to edit and combine these three disciplines, better preparing them to enter the ‘real world’ where these skills are highly valued in the burgeoning online journalism market.

On that merit alone, it’s a great class, but one particular lesson left me and my classmates amazed at how much we had learned. We began the class by watching ‘The Marlboro Marine,’ a multimedia production created by MediaStorm, and originally posted on The Los Angeles Times Web site. After watching the two-part story and its epilogue, we had a video conference with the producer of the video, and then a phone conference with the photographer whose images and audio had been used.

My entire class was awed at the ability we had to talk to these people. They were now not just names or bylines, but faces and voices to which we could relate, ask questions and learn from. This is how a class should be taught.

It’s sad that this was the first time technology had been used so fluidly in one of my classes, especially in a journalism school that aims to be on the cutting edge of its field.

My experiences with technology in Newhouse before my multimedia class were shoddy at best. I’ve had professors who couldn’t properly work projectors, e-mail or even the Internet. I’ve been taught on poorly designed software that’s not implemented in the real world (anyone who has had to use Soundslides knows what I mean), and I’ve met professors and students completely oblivious to the importance of technology in the field of journalism. A classmate in my Web design class asked how to open a link in a Web browser.

Until very recently, Newhouse was a very traditional communications school, and with the advent of Newhouse III and the sudden boom in online journalism over the past few years, the school has suddenly become a fish out of water trying to cope with the new pressures put on its graduates.

There is hope now. Newhouse is moving in the right direction, implementing multimedia, online projects and assignments in first-year level classes. The magazine, newspaper and online graduate program is the right idea, and most professors now seem to know the importance of the digital world.

But realizing and acting are different things. While I’m sure many professors have contacts in the field who could speak to their classes, few may know how to bring that person into the classroom at any time, through a video conference or even a simple chat room.

As a facet of progressing toward tech-savvy classes like the one I mentioned should be the norm and not the exception.

Students need to become comfortable with the tools they will use in the real world. Video classes should be part of the mandatory curriculum for photographers; likewise, newspaper and magazine majors should be taught how to use a digital voice recorder and edit the audio on a computer. Broadcast and television, radio and film students should be familiar not just with YouTube but with podcasting and Webcasting. Web design is beginning to be implemented as part of the graphic design curriculum, but in the future, it should be a goal that all freshmen students will learn basic HTML.

Professors need to be confident and comfortable with not only computers, but software and digital peripherals needed in their field. Just as most film professors need to know how to use a video camera, magazine and newspaper professors should know how to blog and how to present an audio interview to go along with their story online.

Maybe I’m exaggerating – as I’ve said, not all professors are ignorant to the digital world, and some are quite comfortable in it. And, of course, journalism and communications aren’t the only fields moving online; technology is an integral part of our culture now. I guess that’s why I find evolution even more crucial to the growth of Syracuse University.

A.J. Chavar is the editor in chief of The Daily Orange and doesn’t really know how to write. He just takes pictures of words he thinks are pretty.

Published on November 27, 2007 at 12:00 pm