SKY is able to offer a limited number of editorial placements in SKY NEWS and SKY SHOWBIZ ONLINE to talented students on courses aged 18 or over who wish to make a career in broadcast journalism. The scheme is open to first degree students and post-graduates determined to work in the broadcast industry – particularly online.
Placements can be arranged in various programme areas at the new Sky News Centre at Osterley, and in Sky Showbiz Online, based at nearby Great West House, in west London. There are also rare opportunities in regional bureaux. Most of the placement work involves research, planning and writing in the following areas:
* Sky News Online
* Sky News programmes, including weekend work
* Specialist areas such as Sky News Business and Sky News Sport
* Sky News Radio
* Five News.
* SkyNews.Com
* Sky Showbiz Online
Placements in other parts of Sky News might be available for suitable candidates, who indicate an interest in home affairs, world news, the environment or health and medicine.
Candidates for Online must be able to demonstrate a flair and commitment to on-line journalism and digital production techniques.
Candidates for Sky News Radio should ideally have some radio experience already, and provide an example of their voice.
Placements will normally last three weeks, and will be unpaid. Students are responsible for their own transport and accommodation arrangements.
If you want to apply, you should write to skynewswork@bskyb.com, with a full CV, and a 500- word thesis on 'Why Should Sky News (or Sky Showbiz Online) Offer Me a Placement?'
You should indicate where you’d like the placement – and why - and when you'd like it to happen; the more flexible the timing, the easier it will be fit in. Easter is very popular, and is booked well in advance.
Be aware that there are many more applications than Sky News can accommodate, and most candidates will be disappointed.
Preference will be given to candidates who can demonstrate a clear understanding of what’s happening in the world, and a keen commitment to journalism, in the form of quality freelance work or other work experience. We are particularly interested in students committed to multi-media news, with a thorough appreciation of online journalism.
Tuesday, 8 September 2009
Thursday, 27 August 2009
Journalism promo video
Sunday, 5 July 2009
SEO - Wikipedia is the way to go
I have added my feature writing and documentary making course to the subdomain: Feature writing course. Unlike my other teaching notes I have embedded a feature writing blog so that students can make comments and add examples. I have then carefully linked from Wikipedia to elements of the course. This will create traffic for the subdomain, though it creates no additional page rank unfortunately. What I am learning from the sub domain experiment is that Wikipedia will send about 100 times more traffic to the site than the university front page (that's no criticism of the university front page) and about 10 times as much than even google.
Our google SERP position is still not great. We have moved up from not being on the top 50 pages, to being on page two for "MA Journalism" (see" Page Result here. We have are oscillating between the top of page 2 and the bottom of page one for the less cpmpetitive BA Journalism term. We are dominant in Yahoo and Bing! - where Page Rank is apparently far laess of a factor.
The real discovery is the importance of Wikipedia.
I think we can quickly increase traffic by 10x or 100x by getting lecturers to add their teaching materials (or make new ones - eg video) and then linking to those from Wikipedia.
That is by far the easiest, cheapest and above all quickest way to increase traffic. Building google Page Rank is slower than I anticipated.
AND NOW A MOAN...
The university front page has only PR 6 for its front page (very low for a university). The attention at the moment seems to be going into the relative side issue of redesigning the university site - its look and functionality.
I have failed I think to get it across that the university's own web site is in fact only a tiny proportion of its total presence on the web - which consists of things like what is said about us in The Student Room, on blogs, on comparison sites and our presence on Wikipedia or You Tube or Flicker. In journalism the experiment has really demonstrated how the university central website is only a small proportion of that view of us on the web (even when people are searching Winchester University). When people are searching for subjects (well for journalism anyway).
We do need to add page rank and rank high rank page to the sub-domain to get to the top of google SERPS. My experience at Westminster was that having SERP=1 in google makes a dramatic difference in both traffic and applications.
It is depressing that we can't seem to send a text link from the PR 6 front page of the university site to the sub-domain - just for experimental purposes if nothing else. Other unis do it - such as Falmouth (a direct competitor). Fighting these people you have the sense of having your hands tied behind your back, because they have optimised their front page to PR8 and then share that down with courses they are trying to promote.
On the redesign the main functionality issue I think is to move away from dynamic templates, because at the moment the CMS uses 'dynamic' templates which are efficient for internal pages on an intranet; but can be discriminated against by search engines (especially Google) because the search engines can sometimes thing they are duplicate pages. This I think may account for why out of 200 pages google is only spidering about 120 pages on the sub-domain; because they are all on dynamic templates and google might think they are duplicates.
On the look of the site, that is not so important. It looks clean and professional at the moment, so given the many things that need attention (eg comprehensive DMOZ listing for faculties and courses) I would say that is less important than many. We do need to add video on the front page. We have to avoid an ego trip over having a snazzy front page, but which has no traffic to speak of. Many high ranking and high traffic pages have very simple design- Content is King (and functionality).
Given all this the main thing the front page does for it accumulate Page Rank (not traffic). A text link from the front page to the sub-domain would lift the sub-domain's page rank (finding out empirically how much would in itself be a useful thing to do). The sub-domain has low page rank (two pages with PR2 and one page with PR1). A link from our only PR6 page would lift that I think (we could monitor the results).
Lastly on conversion we are getting enquiries now from the MA from abroad at about the rate of one a month - one from Russia, one from India. That's not bad given we have only SERP google page 2 and we are not listed in any comparison sites or on things like British Council lists of courses (due I suppose to the lack of a DMOZ listing, or a lack of UKPASS entry or up to date UCAS entries.
Lastly, lastly I have discovered that the university updates the UCAS content only once a year and that this happens in July, so you need to get busy with that now otherwise you might miss the boat. There seems to be no system whereby when a course is validated or revalidated that it get automatically listed by the university in UCAS or UKPASS which in my humble opinion is a systems problem which needs sorting out.
New marketing person is very switch on and I think has grasped the importance of UCAS in the context of basically no other visibility and I think getting it sorted. But there's more attention being given to the university site, it seems, than our presence on UCAS. That's like all the attention going on arranging flowers in the reception area of the building (granted it makes an impression on the visitors we have from time to time) - but at the same time ignoring a 2 minute slot on peak time ITV (which is roughly what the UCAS page is for is by way of metaphor).
Our google SERP position is still not great. We have moved up from not being on the top 50 pages, to being on page two for "MA Journalism" (see" Page Result here. We have are oscillating between the top of page 2 and the bottom of page one for the less cpmpetitive BA Journalism term. We are dominant in Yahoo and Bing! - where Page Rank is apparently far laess of a factor.
The real discovery is the importance of Wikipedia.
I think we can quickly increase traffic by 10x or 100x by getting lecturers to add their teaching materials (or make new ones - eg video) and then linking to those from Wikipedia.
That is by far the easiest, cheapest and above all quickest way to increase traffic. Building google Page Rank is slower than I anticipated.
AND NOW A MOAN...
The university front page has only PR 6 for its front page (very low for a university). The attention at the moment seems to be going into the relative side issue of redesigning the university site - its look and functionality.
I have failed I think to get it across that the university's own web site is in fact only a tiny proportion of its total presence on the web - which consists of things like what is said about us in The Student Room, on blogs, on comparison sites and our presence on Wikipedia or You Tube or Flicker. In journalism the experiment has really demonstrated how the university central website is only a small proportion of that view of us on the web (even when people are searching Winchester University). When people are searching for subjects (well for journalism anyway).
We do need to add page rank and rank high rank page to the sub-domain to get to the top of google SERPS. My experience at Westminster was that having SERP=1 in google makes a dramatic difference in both traffic and applications.
It is depressing that we can't seem to send a text link from the PR 6 front page of the university site to the sub-domain - just for experimental purposes if nothing else. Other unis do it - such as Falmouth (a direct competitor). Fighting these people you have the sense of having your hands tied behind your back, because they have optimised their front page to PR8 and then share that down with courses they are trying to promote.
On the redesign the main functionality issue I think is to move away from dynamic templates, because at the moment the CMS uses 'dynamic' templates which are efficient for internal pages on an intranet; but can be discriminated against by search engines (especially Google) because the search engines can sometimes thing they are duplicate pages. This I think may account for why out of 200 pages google is only spidering about 120 pages on the sub-domain; because they are all on dynamic templates and google might think they are duplicates.
On the look of the site, that is not so important. It looks clean and professional at the moment, so given the many things that need attention (eg comprehensive DMOZ listing for faculties and courses) I would say that is less important than many. We do need to add video on the front page. We have to avoid an ego trip over having a snazzy front page, but which has no traffic to speak of. Many high ranking and high traffic pages have very simple design- Content is King (and functionality).
Given all this the main thing the front page does for it accumulate Page Rank (not traffic). A text link from the front page to the sub-domain would lift the sub-domain's page rank (finding out empirically how much would in itself be a useful thing to do). The sub-domain has low page rank (two pages with PR2 and one page with PR1). A link from our only PR6 page would lift that I think (we could monitor the results).
Lastly on conversion we are getting enquiries now from the MA from abroad at about the rate of one a month - one from Russia, one from India. That's not bad given we have only SERP google page 2 and we are not listed in any comparison sites or on things like British Council lists of courses (due I suppose to the lack of a DMOZ listing, or a lack of UKPASS entry or up to date UCAS entries.
Lastly, lastly I have discovered that the university updates the UCAS content only once a year and that this happens in July, so you need to get busy with that now otherwise you might miss the boat. There seems to be no system whereby when a course is validated or revalidated that it get automatically listed by the university in UCAS or UKPASS which in my humble opinion is a systems problem which needs sorting out.
New marketing person is very switch on and I think has grasped the importance of UCAS in the context of basically no other visibility and I think getting it sorted. But there's more attention being given to the university site, it seems, than our presence on UCAS. That's like all the attention going on arranging flowers in the reception area of the building (granted it makes an impression on the visitors we have from time to time) - but at the same time ignoring a 2 minute slot on peak time ITV (which is roughly what the UCAS page is for is by way of metaphor).
Friday, 19 June 2009
From Graham - worth reading
Court allows journalist to defy order for notes
Friday, 19 June 2009
A Northern Ireland journalist won a significant legal battle yesterday against police attempts to obtain details of her confidential dealings with the Real IRA.
A judge ruled that the life of Suzanne Breen would be placed at risk if she was compelled to hand over material relating to the Real IRA killings of two soldiers near Belfast in March.
Journalists and human rights groups welcomed the judge's decision as significant to media freedom. Breen, the Belfast correspondent for the Dublin Sunday Tribune, had faced a prison sentence of up to five years if, as she vowed, she defied a court order to hand over information.
Police wanted to examine her computer, telephones, notes and all other material relating to stories that she wrote about the Real IRA in the wake of the murders of Sappers Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar outside the Massereene army barracks in Antrim.
She said yesterday: "Today is a great victory for me and for the Tribune, but it's also a victory for journalists across Ireland and Britain and elsewhere around the world."
She had told an earlier hearing that the dissident republicans would regard any co-operation by her with the authorities as an "act of collaboration" with the security forces.
A campaign in support of her case attracted support from prominent journalists, academics and others and hundreds signed a petition organised by the National Union of Journalists.
In his judgment, the Recorder of Belfast, Judge Burgess, said there was a strong public interest in bringing the killers to justice, but he had to consider seriously the existence of a real risk to Breen's life.
He described the Real IRA as a "ruthless and murderous group of people" who, if Breen handed over material, would treat her as "as a legitimate target with the murderous consequences that could and may well follow".
The judge said that while the material that Breen held was likely to be of substantial value to the police investigation, he had to place considerable weight on the protection of life.
He said it would "be close to inconceivable as to how she, and potentially her family, could be protected."
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
I've updated my personal website
I've updated my website, but it is not indexed in google yet - see http://www.horrie.com. I have used some more advanced flash on this site. The idea is to build it up so that it can deliver yet more traffic and page rank by linking to the Winchester Journalism site and other Uni sites.
I've embedded the website on this messageboard using the embed code discussed below:
I've embedded the website on this messageboard using the embed code discussed below:
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Using blog as a messageboard - on journalism sub-domain
I have discussed that you can strip down a Google 'blogger' blog using its simple dashboard menu commands so that you can use it as a messageboard. All you do is embed the blogger URL on any HTML page - and there you have a fully functioning content management system without having to set up a database or do any of the that server-side stuff.
Here's the HTML code.
So if you ever get access to the www.winchester.ac.uk server (maybe just to update course details) then you can embed a message board with all your own protocols and user policies. Of course you and the university have full liability for anything said. But this is a very quick and easy way to rig up a CMS, certainly.
Obviously the window containing the messageboard would be a lot wider when you use a university website template. It is plenty wide enough.
Here's the HTML code.
So if you ever get access to the www.winchester.ac.uk server (maybe just to update course details) then you can embed a message board with all your own protocols and user policies. Of course you and the university have full liability for anything said. But this is a very quick and easy way to rig up a CMS, certainly.
Obviously the window containing the messageboard would be a lot wider when you use a university website template. It is plenty wide enough.
Big update on the journalism sub-domain
Added a lot of content to the journalism sub-domain. Could do with more contributors on this blog. All my law teaching notes are up there now, and I cross linked to these from Wikipedia. So you write some notes on for example Freedom of Speech and then you find the relevant page on Wikipedia and link from Wikipedia to your page. This works like a treat and sends up to ten people a day to the sub-domain - from America as well as the UK and a smattering of other countries. It shows how materials that are on the LN don't do much good beyond the the existing students. If you put these notes up in public you still do the same job, but you also get potential recruits, research collaborators and - sometimes - constructive criticism that you can use to improve and update your work. Check it out on Winchester Journalism
Beyond this does anybody have journalism-related notes that I can use on the site. The more pages with unique and good quality content, the better.
Beyond this does anybody have journalism-related notes that I can use on the site. The more pages with unique and good quality content, the better.
Monday, 25 May 2009
Notes on Search Engine Optimisation
The journalism subdomain has gone very well.
There's some notes here if anyone wants to do the same.
There's not much impact on recruitment yet - but I think it will transform out position. We should start to rank No 1 google on about July 1st - but that is not really the recruiting season. We've really missed the MA recruiting season for this year; but we should storm it with BA (though they use UCAS and referral sites likje the Times league tables and so on more than google searches I think). We should start I suppose start picking up MA recrutiment applications for December onwards. Many will be international.
In terms of the faculty as a whole and the department, the fact that I have build a number of high page rank pages is a big advantage because I can place to media, film pages once they are created (partic with their own sub-domains). Links from the carefully ranked and indexed journalism pages will immediately push other media pages up the search engines. Then they in return link back to journalism and every one wins...
... except our rivals.
It is a shame we/I did not get busy with this earlier in the year, but I was preoccupied with a series of internal problems, all now largely settled. So I am on the attack and looking for internal allies who also want to do SEO.
There's a new online marketing person in place, and I wonder what they will be like. Possibly they will ease the decision making in the senior management group and give backing to course level and department level sub domains and SEO.
It will take years - decades - for Winchester to become number one in many fields - but this is something where we can become the best in the world literally in weeks or months, so we should do it.
For the SEO blog see
http://journalism.winchester.ac.uk/?page=170
SEO Blog
There's some notes here if anyone wants to do the same.
There's not much impact on recruitment yet - but I think it will transform out position. We should start to rank No 1 google on about July 1st - but that is not really the recruiting season. We've really missed the MA recruiting season for this year; but we should storm it with BA (though they use UCAS and referral sites likje the Times league tables and so on more than google searches I think). We should start I suppose start picking up MA recrutiment applications for December onwards. Many will be international.
In terms of the faculty as a whole and the department, the fact that I have build a number of high page rank pages is a big advantage because I can place to media, film pages once they are created (partic with their own sub-domains). Links from the carefully ranked and indexed journalism pages will immediately push other media pages up the search engines. Then they in return link back to journalism and every one wins...
... except our rivals.
It is a shame we/I did not get busy with this earlier in the year, but I was preoccupied with a series of internal problems, all now largely settled. So I am on the attack and looking for internal allies who also want to do SEO.
There's a new online marketing person in place, and I wonder what they will be like. Possibly they will ease the decision making in the senior management group and give backing to course level and department level sub domains and SEO.
It will take years - decades - for Winchester to become number one in many fields - but this is something where we can become the best in the world literally in weeks or months, so we should do it.
For the SEO blog see
http://journalism.winchester.ac.uk/?page=170
SEO Blog
Friday, 8 May 2009
iMade at Barton Pevrill last night
The National Diploma students (plus the AS Film and Media students) organised their own summer show at Barton Pevrill College last night. The School sponsored the show and I went along to represent the inhuman face of the department. I left with the distinct impression that the National Diploma students are going to arrive at university with very good production skills and may well get frustrated in their first year. Some were producing their own digital animation to quite a high standard. And yet, the AS film and media students were inevitably far behind in terms of camera craft, editing, sound, etc. Of course, many of the later will be looking for theory rather than production based programmes but I reckon it is going to be quite a challenge to meet the needs of pretty sophisticated OCR ND students on the one hand and students with less well developed production skills on the other.
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
What future for Combined Studies?
As we all know the acadeic structure working party is continuing to review the existing structures in the university - calendar, terms, etc. But one quite likely consequence which may be confirmed before the end of the year is a radical pruning of combined options and a switch to particular 'named' degree combinations which become in effect single honours pathways e.g. film and english to be treated as if it was a s/h programme. We may well be asked to nominate our preferred combinations before the endof the year. What do we think of this development. there are some very good 'rational' reasons for doing this and, indeed, most of the sector has already embarked on this approach. But before I left DMU in 2004 numerous s/h programmes folded through the 'unintended consequence' of this. Not that history always repeats itself!
Saturday, 25 April 2009
Spam
Sorry - I should not have used the term spam in the post below this - even jokingly. Seriously we must not spam, evcer. It doesn;t work for us and it could get us penalised by the search engines who can detect it now.
Just spamming these links to the new journalism sub-domain. Every little bit of back-linking I have discovered helps raise page rank. If you transfer these links on to your Blog Roll Paul then that is even better because everytime the blog is updated the the links are republished and are recounted as Page Rank.
Have have been in darlkened room for a month doing Search Engone Optimisation (great results will post later) so that journalism courses (experiment) return much higher on search engines. I have dioscoverd that relatively small groups of croiss linking bloggers (so long as the crosss links are or a proper purpose and not just hype) can have a dramatic impact on the rank of page to which those blogs point, especially viz-a-viz our rivals.
Anyway this probably sound like gobble-degook if you could post any or all of the attached links to the front page or blogrill of this page, or any other blogs colleagues might have, then that will help.
As I say I will explain late if you like.
THE LINKS
Winchester Journalism
Winchester MA Journalism
Winchester BA Journalism
Winchester International Journalism
BJTC
Winchester Studios and Facilities
Winchester Lecturers
Post hem whereever you legitimately can (Do not spam them on sites created just for the purpose of creating links - that is a waste of time and can be penalised by Google.
Have have been in darlkened room for a month doing Search Engone Optimisation (great results will post later) so that journalism courses (experiment) return much higher on search engines. I have dioscoverd that relatively small groups of croiss linking bloggers (so long as the crosss links are or a proper purpose and not just hype) can have a dramatic impact on the rank of page to which those blogs point, especially viz-a-viz our rivals.
Anyway this probably sound like gobble-degook if you could post any or all of the attached links to the front page or blogrill of this page, or any other blogs colleagues might have, then that will help.
As I say I will explain late if you like.
THE LINKS
Winchester Journalism
Winchester MA Journalism
Winchester BA Journalism
Winchester International Journalism
BJTC
Winchester Studios and Facilities
Winchester Lecturers
Post hem whereever you legitimately can (Do not spam them on sites created just for the purpose of creating links - that is a waste of time and can be penalised by Google.
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
New Promo Video for Winchester
This is up on YouTube let me know if anyone wants to use it. All images and music cleared. I am very excited that search terms like "where can I do a magazine journalism course" are returning on the first page of the Yahoo and MSN search engines now. Still waiting for Google to index the pages, then we should be much more visible for journalism at least. I can show others how to do the same. Blogging is a key part of it though, and if we have active blogs (it doesn't matter if on Google or your own server) and these are updated regularly then this really helps direct searchers to our courses and to our research.
I think it would be a very good idea to have a Film and Media School day in the studio making a load of little video clips which we can put on YouTube for the time being, waiting for the day when we will be able to put them on the university site or on course level CMS
I think admin should do this too - with briefings that can be there over the summer about various things... the regultions, plagiarism regulations... whatever. We just get people to read these things to the camera and everything becomes more student-friendly and modern-looking.
The Tyranny of PowerPoint is over and" it is all about Video now" as they say.
Here's the YouTube thing anyway:
Sunday, 12 April 2009
Lnks and web visibility
I have added some content to the new journalism website and the main point of this post is to add a link to it. The university has only 160 links in to the whole university site - so every link counts. If you have a blog or a facebook account or anything at all please link both to the university main site and to the journalism sub-domain. It all makes a difference. If we coud get all staff and students to link to the site(s) then that would male a big difference to web visibility = number of applicants = quality of what we do.
Saturday, 11 April 2009
500 hit aweek for Basingstoke Bison
Flipping heck the student coverage if Basingstoke Ice Hockey is getting 500 hits a week, per item. That's 10s of thousands hits a year with our name on it and bringing traffic to our site.
SEE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ejdePsm
Note the hit counter - 500 in a week.
The point is that we just need to do similar with the Bishop of Winchester on a regular basis and put it on youtube (if we can't put it on the university site).
Any ideas about how to progress the religious broadcasting issue. Paul are you saying you are going to organise this - your last post not very clear - talked about selling DVDs of wedding at the Cathedral or something, wrong end of the swtick, If Basingstoke Bison has got 500 fans a week, Bushop of winchester has far more (difficult though it is for non believer such as myself to understand!).
SEE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ejdePsm
Note the hit counter - 500 in a week.
The point is that we just need to do similar with the Bishop of Winchester on a regular basis and put it on youtube (if we can't put it on the university site).
Any ideas about how to progress the religious broadcasting issue. Paul are you saying you are going to organise this - your last post not very clear - talked about selling DVDs of wedding at the Cathedral or something, wrong end of the swtick, If Basingstoke Bison has got 500 fans a week, Bushop of winchester has far more (difficult though it is for non believer such as myself to understand!).
We are bleeding to death because we are invisible
I am having a boring and frustrating easter doing SEO. Everywhere you turn on the internet we are completely invisible and yet all our rivals are there like a rash. The lastest example is Digg. I found there were NO REFERENCES AT ALL TO Winchester on Digg! let alone the more obscure things. I have now put up our first link from Digg. It will help speed up the indexing of the new journalism sub-domain. Please visit it. I also suggest that everyone uses Digg to distribute their lectures or video or whatever you are putting on your blog. If it is any good (ie of interest to other academics, students) then it will get searched and linked to. This will increase the total links to the site (we have only 160 links to the entire Winchester Website - compared to 1,000 for say portsmouth; 10,000 for City University; 50,000 for MIT). It is not surprising that no body has heard of us and that we have such tiny numbers of applicants from anywhere not in passing trade distance of Southampton. Every link got for any subjects - film studies, media production - raises the page ranking for everything else so this is pre-eminently a case for concerted action at the level of the department and school. At the next departmental meeting can we get Keithetr there because I think he is taking on a link role. Also maybe sort out a strategy for the department as well. I don't ebven have the URLs of everyone's personal blogs or websites (apart from Angus at Setanta and Brian at the BBC). If everyone just linked their blogs in a systematic fashion, that would be a start.
Thursday, 9 April 2009
Thoughts about Programme Structures and Stuff
One of the advantages of this kind of blog is that it is located in a kind of liminal no-man's land which is not quite 'official' and therefore allows a bit of speculative thinking which might not be so appropriate in an official forum. So here are some thoughts that come from nowhere except my speculative hunches about where the institution is likely to be heading. As we know, there is a cross university working group currently examining programme structures and the curriculum. My guess is that when it eventually reports, it will suggest a radical overhaul of the existing frameworks.
Several things may happen. Firstly, I reckon the 30 credit double module will become standard currency. Would that allow us to offer "double double" 60 credit modules in some instances? Secondly, I reckon there will be a strong push to reduce the number of combined permutations currently offered as 'pick and mix'. We may well be asked to identify specified combinations which in effect are treated as single honours degrees (eg. English and Media Studies, Journalism and Film Studies, etc.) with a clear rationale and sense of programme identity. And thirdly, we may well be encouraged to use this 'opportunity' to make adjustments to assessment in order to free up more staff time for other things such as research. Fourthly, we might see 'de-semesterisation' coming along and a return to the traditional 3 term year which is where I started in 1852.
So three distinct developments may mesh together to produce a rather new environment with some potential dangers but also perhaps some good opportunities. Over-assessment is a problem across the sector and if we avoided the temptation to double up assessments as we switch to 30 credit modules we might really save some more time for other staff activities such as research. Big double modules running through the academic year might encourage students to actually read for their disciplilne rather than just for assessments? But, on the other hand, all this was introduced at my old university back in the early 2000s and the dismantling of the combined pick and mix structure triggered a series of programme closures because certain programmes depended very heavily upon recruiting small numbers of students across a very wide range of permutations.
It might be an idea for programme teams to begin to think about what they would like their programmes to look like in a new 30 credit regime. And would you want to lighten the assessment loads to free up staff time?
Several things may happen. Firstly, I reckon the 30 credit double module will become standard currency. Would that allow us to offer "double double" 60 credit modules in some instances? Secondly, I reckon there will be a strong push to reduce the number of combined permutations currently offered as 'pick and mix'. We may well be asked to identify specified combinations which in effect are treated as single honours degrees (eg. English and Media Studies, Journalism and Film Studies, etc.) with a clear rationale and sense of programme identity. And thirdly, we may well be encouraged to use this 'opportunity' to make adjustments to assessment in order to free up more staff time for other things such as research. Fourthly, we might see 'de-semesterisation' coming along and a return to the traditional 3 term year which is where I started in 1852.
So three distinct developments may mesh together to produce a rather new environment with some potential dangers but also perhaps some good opportunities. Over-assessment is a problem across the sector and if we avoided the temptation to double up assessments as we switch to 30 credit modules we might really save some more time for other staff activities such as research. Big double modules running through the academic year might encourage students to actually read for their disciplilne rather than just for assessments? But, on the other hand, all this was introduced at my old university back in the early 2000s and the dismantling of the combined pick and mix structure triggered a series of programme closures because certain programmes depended very heavily upon recruiting small numbers of students across a very wide range of permutations.
It might be an idea for programme teams to begin to think about what they would like their programmes to look like in a new 30 credit regime. And would you want to lighten the assessment loads to free up staff time?
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Monday, 6 April 2009
Welcome Eylem
Welcome Eylem - it's good that it's not just the four of us now. But where are the others? Perhaps blogging isn't the way forward for them? Perhaps we could use Facebook?
or Twitter?
or Twitter?
The Screening Room - continuing saga
the story of the Film Studies / FCT screening room continues. Thanks to the tightfistedness of your HoS there is probably enough money in the School budget to fit out a basic screening room in terms of sound and blackout. However, there is no way that we would have enough alone to pay for tiered seating and the creation of a cinema style environment. But the Dean has recently taken this cause up and seems to want to bid for this project in the coming captital bids round and he has asked me to come up with some suggestions for alternative rooms to TAB 116 because he thinks the sound leaking through the walls into other rooms is a probelem. this leaves us with some dilemmas. Do we try to find an alternative room? I can't think of anything really suitable except possibly the lecture theatre in HJB. This is a horrible room but it does have tiered seats and would be easy to black out. Secondly, while it would be great to successfully bid for a capital sum to fund the project fully leaving the School budget looking slightly more healthy, if the bid fails then we are back to square one with less time to get anything done before the next recruitment round. any views or suggestions for alternatives to TAB 116?
REligious Broadcasting (practical)
Given the research specialism in religion and the cathedral (being our logo, etc). We should launch a course (MA?) in religious broadcasting. The output of this would be activity from the Cathedral plus other faiths. We could webcast that and it would bring a lof of traffic to the site, and therefore links and therefore recruits.
I looked and some of the video about the cathedral gets 10,000s of hits. A Songs of Praise from the Cathedral got 100,000 hits in a year;l (but it was dsone as a very clasy BBC outside broacast).
I thyink the religious material is a goldmine and could at last make us visible on the interemt. I mentioned it to Alasdair Spark and he seemed interested.
Any ideas.
I looked and some of the video about the cathedral gets 10,000s of hits. A Songs of Praise from the Cathedral got 100,000 hits in a year;l (but it was dsone as a very clasy BBC outside broacast).
I thyink the religious material is a goldmine and could at last make us visible on the interemt. I mentioned it to Alasdair Spark and he seemed interested.
Any ideas.
Saturday, 4 April 2009
How to correct our very low web visibility - get links to religious programmes. Its a niche market, but a good one and very international
Excellent L+T event this week can be springboard to create more give away content which will build links. Follow up with target for content creation (eg 'career tips' videos filmed nicely in the studio for each subject) and target for gertting links in. Must overtake Portsmouth on number of links (1,000) asap.
Trump card could be web-casting Cathedral services - possible massive traffic and links in for Xmas, Easter services and talks from the Bishop. Would get thousands of links-in possibly. Premium sites like BBC and churches and embassies around the world would link to that.
This bit of video done at the cathedral has already got ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND VIEWS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3mKkLMzLpc
Its a winner. RE department staff students could easily be trained up to film and upload to something like mogulous. We could start with the actual Easter service, if we can get filming rights. I would be happy to do the first one. I am not a believer meself like, but I imagine Easter service in catherdral v.interesting premium cultural event with nice music, triffic costumes, etc.
Seriously we would get tons of links and traffic for that.
Desmond Tutu would watch it.
Let's do it.
Also - a case for Don's OB truck, eventually. In the meantime we could film it very low-fi and upload it later (not live) because religious people and music fans will search for this type of material out of real time.
I probably have not spotted the downside, but it coudl give us huge traffic for little effort and has other institutional, education benefits.
Yrs Chris Horrie
Trump card could be web-casting Cathedral services - possible massive traffic and links in for Xmas, Easter services and talks from the Bishop. Would get thousands of links-in possibly. Premium sites like BBC and churches and embassies around the world would link to that.
This bit of video done at the cathedral has already got ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND VIEWS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3mKkLMzLpc
Its a winner. RE department staff students could easily be trained up to film and upload to something like mogulous. We could start with the actual Easter service, if we can get filming rights. I would be happy to do the first one. I am not a believer meself like, but I imagine Easter service in catherdral v.interesting premium cultural event with nice music, triffic costumes, etc.
Seriously we would get tons of links and traffic for that.
Desmond Tutu would watch it.
Let's do it.
Also - a case for Don's OB truck, eventually. In the meantime we could film it very low-fi and upload it later (not live) because religious people and music fans will search for this type of material out of real time.
I probably have not spotted the downside, but it coudl give us huge traffic for little effort and has other institutional, education benefits.
Yrs Chris Horrie
Friday, 3 April 2009
Screen South Education Hub Meeting
I went to the SS Education hub on Wednesday. Alison Dilnutt (SS) provided a useful update on various sources of funding that we might tap. In particular the next round of Mediabox bids could be of interest. Mediabox funds projects involving 13-19 year olds. But there could be opportunities for our students to work with the 'yoof' in developing projects. Last time around film was favoured but significantly the next round of bids will prioritise multimedia ideas so there could be possibilities for students on both MP and DDM. Our students might get quite a lot out of working with 13-19 year olds on mm projects particularly if they are thinking about teaching etc.
Other key 'tings include 'On the Lot' - a fund for six apprenticeships in sound recording, camera craft, studio liaison, motion capture, and editing at Pinewood /Shepperton. Candidates must have HE or FE qualification. We should promote this with our students asap as the closing date is very soon.
there's other stuff too so get in touch if you want more info.
Other key 'tings include 'On the Lot' - a fund for six apprenticeships in sound recording, camera craft, studio liaison, motion capture, and editing at Pinewood /Shepperton. Candidates must have HE or FE qualification. We should promote this with our students asap as the closing date is very soon.
there's other stuff too so get in touch if you want more info.
Thursday, 2 April 2009
Ian Anderson - (ex) Editor of BBC Breakfast
I have just been to the pub with Ian Anderson who for many years was the editor of BBC Breakfast. He's very keen to do one off lecturer about TV news. We can use him a bit on Journalism next year. Is he any ghood on media courses, or other courses as a guest lecture. The funny thing is that there is not really much of a slot other than 'graduate careers' where we could plug him in.
Who's it for?
I have a little cartoon comment on my office door about blogs... but I'm not unsupportive. I think this is a good idea if people get involved. I tried this with Media Production staff ( it's at http://mpstaff.blogspot.com/?zx=27b5b579d9f1ffe9 ) but no-one looked at it so it remains with two posts on it and has lain dormant since August.
But who is this for? Is it staff or students? (just so we don't put any real nude photos of ourselves on it ).
Media Studies 2.0 sound s fun but we should be up to about 3.6 by now and Jill won't allow an order for Lego.
But who is this for? Is it staff or students? (just so we don't put any real nude photos of ourselves on it ).
Media Studies 2.0 sound s fun but we should be up to about 3.6 by now and Jill won't allow an order for Lego.
This blog is a good idea
This blog is an excellent idea. I will tell all the students in journalism to link to it. It should be easy to get them to look at it since there is a clearly non-faked picture of the great leader in the nude. I also attach a video for the 'postmodernism' theory course we will be running on the new journalism course next year in the hope that people might want to do one or two of these lectures, so that it does not become just a course in contemporary Horrism-Thorntonism and that this can at least be converted into something like Radical Mortimerist Multiple-Episimologicalism. It uses a non-copyright promo of a geoffrey reggio movie and has a spelling mistake in it.
Film Festival
For more than eighteen months a shadowy group has been meeting in hidden away parts of the campus, such as John Pett's office, to develop the idea of the Winchester International Film Festival: the City as a Screen. We now have some money from the Creative Campus (Cultural Olympiad) fund and strong support, warm words, (and as yet no money) from Screen South. The idea is that we invite short film submissions to competitive categories including 'documentary', 'drama', 'experimental', 'animation' and '14-19 young film makers'. However, we want to engage the public of Winchester by screening the entries ahead of mainstream films in places around the city where there is some kind of connection between the film and the location ( I Confess at the Cathedral, Walk the Line at the prison, Brief Encounter at the station, etc. - just exemplars). We have most of the locations 'signed up' which actually do include the Cathedral, the open spaces around the Westgate and the City Museum, the Discovery Centre, the Great Hall, a couple of pubs and wine bars, etc.
Suggestions for judges, master class celebs, offers of help, etc. warmly welcomed.
Suggestions for judges, master class celebs, offers of help, etc. warmly welcomed.
So finally ... what's going on? Programmes
The BA Journalism was recently re-written to better cater for single honours and joint students and has now been approved. The MA Digital Media Practice is brought to validation on 23rd April and the MA Journalism on May 20th. Next year there are plans to write a single honours BA FCT, an MA Radio Production, possibly an MA Television Studio Production, and for the planning to be undertaken for an MA route for BA Media Studies students. Anyone interested n these developments - get in touch!
BA Media Studies and BA Film Studies are due for re-approval next year. We need to start meeting and planning for these programme re-writes. Whose interested in the Media Studies 2.0 debate? Is Gauntlett a genius or a ... er ... not a genius?
BA Media Studies and BA Film Studies are due for re-approval next year. We need to start meeting and planning for these programme re-writes. Whose interested in the Media Studies 2.0 debate? Is Gauntlett a genius or a ... er ... not a genius?
Staffing - the story so far
Difficult to encapsulate everything that has happened that everyone should know about since the beginning of the year in just one blog. However, one thing that has been playing on my mind is the point that we have appointed more new staff in 2008-09 than ever before but have not really had a chance to introduce them all because not all staff attend School meetings and one member of staff joined in mid-semester. So although most of you will have met most of these new members of staff and, indeed, taught with them, sat in meetings with them, wept with them and shed blood with them, for the record out nerw members of staff are:
Brian Thornton: Lecturer in Journalism (joined in September from BBC Newsnight)
Anthony Greenbank: Lecturer in Television Studio Production (joined in September fresh from the industry)
Tony Leigh: Programme Leader for FCT (joined in November from Reigate School of Art)
Corin Pritchard: Media Technician (joined in December from freelance work including music video production in Liverpool)
And in addition Dr Marcus Leeming (Trinity College Wales) will join us in September 09 to lead the BA Media Studies programme.
Brian Thornton: Lecturer in Journalism (joined in September from BBC Newsnight)
Anthony Greenbank: Lecturer in Television Studio Production (joined in September fresh from the industry)
Tony Leigh: Programme Leader for FCT (joined in November from Reigate School of Art)
Corin Pritchard: Media Technician (joined in December from freelance work including music video production in Liverpool)
And in addition Dr Marcus Leeming (Trinity College Wales) will join us in September 09 to lead the BA Media Studies programme.
Why a School Blog?
Ever thought your HoD was a remote figure who never darkened your office or classroom door? Ever wondered what was going on in the School of Media and Film because departmental meetings only ever get called twice or three times a year and the School Committee doesn't filter information down very effectively? Ever wondered what was happening on a weekly basis or suspected that stuff was happening that you might be interested in but was not being consulted about? Ever thought that there was a gap in your life where a wise and benevolent leader could explain the meaning of life to you?
Then think again. Here is a School of Media and Film blog that aims to try to bridge the communication and information gap in the School. For a long time I've been thinking that we should either have a School newsletter for staff (and perhaps students) or more whole School meetings. But then I thought it might be easier to have a blog where issues and developments can be posted as they emerge.
The only probelm is that there is quite a lot to catch up...next post.
Then think again. Here is a School of Media and Film blog that aims to try to bridge the communication and information gap in the School. For a long time I've been thinking that we should either have a School newsletter for staff (and perhaps students) or more whole School meetings. But then I thought it might be easier to have a blog where issues and developments can be posted as they emerge.
The only probelm is that there is quite a lot to catch up...next post.
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