RobQuig

Azamat Kalmurzayev drawing up plans for Team JMastr.

As each team of students showed off the functionality and designs of their creations, the other students and the instructors looked on in awe. One team has an App Store-quality design. Another has a working prototype. More than one team dreams of making it big. 

On Saturday, April 27, the five teams that are part of a new journalism course at the University of Texas at Austin will show off their creations to the public during Demo Day. The goal is to have the apps in the Apple App Store by then, though even if they don’t get that far, the public will undoubtedly be impressed by the hard work and ingenuity that the students will display.

Among the apps the students are working on: 

* An iPad app that will pull in your Facebook photos and allow you to create fun scrapbooks.

* An app for music lovers to share photos from live events.

* An app that will help you find things to do during Austin’s Formula One race week.

* An app to help journalism students who are trying to learn AP Style.

* An app that aggregates local, social news for select cities (with more to come).

The teams, which are a mix of computer science and journalism students, are building the apps from scratch, using Objective C and XCode, and they are also required to write, shoot video and use social media to promote and explain their apps and their work. The links in the bullet points above go to the teams’ Facebook pages. Please like them. I do.

The Demo Day is free and open to the public, and we encourage anyone interested to come see what they have created (RSVP, please). We have a distinguished panel of judges lined up for the Demo Day, including:

* Debbie Hiott, editor of the Austin American-Statesman

* Carmen Cano, general manager for digital at the Dallas Morning News

* Rodney Gibbs, chief innovations officer at the Texas Tribune

* Glenn Frankel, director of the UT School of Journalism

* Gerald Bailey, founder of Snakehead Software

* Christopher Visit, co-owner of Frank + Victor Design

The course is being taught by UT’s Robert Quigley and Austin entrepreneur Joshua McClure. The TA is Lewis Knight.

A special thanks to Oliva Hayes, Joey Marburger and Jeff Linwood for generously offering their expertise and guidance to our class.

All, I got ahead of myself - the next live chat will be Friday, Feb. 22 at 1:30 p.m. 

- RQ

When I left the Austin American-Statesman for the University of Texas, I wanted to teach a social media class in a way that would produce highly engaged journalists who had fun with social media.

Three semesters in, there’s no doubt the students enjoy it, and they are learning to use these platforms as two-way communication channels, something that professional journalists often miss. 

The students are working on a news network I created that allows them to work as real social media editors - the Social News Network. Although I created the network, it is all theirs. Working in shifts, they choose all stories and write all the tweets, Facebook and Tumblr posts and Pinterest pins. They are given guidance and coaching from me but they are otherwise independent in this online-taught class. They use a back-channel Facebook group to share challenges, answer each other’s questions and celebrate successes. It’s a lively class, proving that online classes do not have to be dry.

I had so much fun interacting with the Austin community when I was social media editor at the Statesman. I hope these students carry some of the lessons I learned and all of that fun I had into tomorrow’s newsrooms.

Please follow their work and interact with them:

News: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr

Sports: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr

Entertainment: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr

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