Final project Outline-Sights around Lyndonville

For our team's final project, we will be visiting various locations around the town of Lyndonville. These locations will be the town's "hot spots", places that people frequent on a regular basis. We will combine the storytelling mediums of interactive Google maps and a video presentation.

We will interview students at LSC to get their thoughts on what they like to do with their life outside of Lyndon State, specifically asking them why they go to these "hot spots".

Lyndon State has a unique set of program offerings

Lyndon is a rare example of a college that is in the middle of nowhere but has strong programs that attract students from across the country. The television studies department, soon to become electronic journalism arts, is one of the few professional programs that draw these students.
Aaron Kormos, a sophomore at Lyndon, transferred here from the University of Connecticut at the start of this year to pursue his degree in TVS. Going into his freshman year at UConn, he was undecided as to which major he would choose. After taking a few general education courses, Kormos decided the path he wanted to follow was a concentration in television production. UConn did not offer this degree, so the college search began again for Kormos, this time as a transfer student.
Kormos found advice in his friend Tyler who was a student at Lyndon at the time. Tyler recommended LSC to him because it is one of a select group of colleges in the country to offer this program. Kormos decided that Lyndon appeared to be the right place for him. Kormos says he is quite pleased with the small class sizes and personable relationships he has with his professors.
One of those professors, Meaghan Meachem, a graduate of LSC, has similar feelings about the college. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Television Studies, and finished her education by receiving a master’s degree in Web communication.
Meachem has now returned to Lyndon as a member of the faculty. This is her second year as a professor here and she decided to make her return to the campus because of her familiarity with the school and love for the TVS program.
Television Studies is not the only professional program that excites students about the college. The Atmospheric Science major also brings students into the school from across the country. One freshman this year, Meaghan Fried, made the trek from the state of Montana to attend this education institution.
The ATM department is considered one of the best in the country, and the school’s student chapter of the American Meteorological Society consistently wins chapter of the year for their work putting on the Northeastern Storm Conference.
The Exercise Science department is another one of the strong and unique offerings at Lyndon. Exercise Science was recently certified by CAAHAP (the commission on accreditation of allied health programs) and NSCA (The National Strength and Conditioning association). LSC is one of only five colleges in the country to have both certifications for their exercise science program.
In spite of Lyndon’s small size and relative lack of recognition from people outside of the area as a high quality college, students are frequently pleased with their experience there.

Good and bad use of video online

Good: Boston Herald

The Boston Herald competes with the Boston globe as Boston's two largest newspapers and I would say the herald does a better job than the Globe. The Herald has its own video section readily accessible from the homepage. The video quality looked almost amateurish, with the few videos I sampled all having a first shot describing what the video is. However, I can look past this flaw and was pleased with the way they organized the video content.

Bad: Boston Globe

The Boston globe seemed to lack a video section, which made locating video content a bit of a challenge. I only found video when I looked at a story, and even then it was not immediately clear what the video content was, I first thought it was a photo. After clicking on a few video tabs I eventually found a multimedia page with several videos. Honestly, the video quality seemed similar to the Herald, the biggest problem with the globe is if I cannot locate the videos, I can not view them!

Critique of iReport.com

I think that for the post part, iReport is easy to use although I wish the videos were broken down into category, such as science, entertainment, etc. I do like the fact that they have tabs for the "newsiest", "most commented on" etc. because that helps the readers find iReports they are likely interested in based on audio-visual projects that others viewed or commented on.

I came across a few interesting ones, especially one that was most commented on, titled "Blessing of the bikes". A CNN user was out riding his bike in a park in New York city and stumbled upon a group of cyclists entering a church and found out they were getting their bikes blessed in a yearly tradition. This story definitely had the oddity factor and as such was vetted by CNN.

However, I did find that most of the videos and slideshows were boring. I came across many that seemed to be advertisements, and others that plainly did not capture my interest.

I quickly noticed that most of the videos recently aired on CNN were related to the Polish tragedy over the past weekend in which the president and several other high ranking members were killed in a plane crash in Russia while on their way to commemorate another tragedy. CNN typically places an emphasis on world news, and as such I think any story that has a world wide angle to it would be aired. Of course, CNN seemed to use only high quality, professional-looking work for the air, as one would expect.

CNN critique

Cnn.com is obviously a world-class website and a go-to source for all forms of media communication. I love the website and think it is a great place to get news. My only suggestion about the site is their articles are sometimes so detailed or take on only one part of a story, the reader loses track of the story's main issue. CNN.com does a awesome job of balancing serious articles with articles that have some level of curiosity interest or trivial draw. They appear to do an excellent job covering all stories, from politics to entertainment.

Critique of Slideshows and galleries

The first slide show I examined for this assignment was one from WBZ-4. Here the news station features photos from a flooding rainstorm and damaging windstorm early last week in the Boston area. The slideshow does not focus on one particular aspect of the storm, but rather features all of its effects. The photos are from various communities and show flooded rivers, streets, washed out railroad tracks, and ocean waves crashing over sea-walls.

http://wbztv.com/slideshows/weekend.rain.storm.20.1560453.html

The second slide show I found, this one with sound, is coverage by the LA times of the devastating Haitian earthquake last month. This footage and audio was high impact for the viewer. The slideshow featured a reporter talking about conditions at a makeshift hospital in Haiti while raw audio of chilling screams of pain played behind his voice. The slideshow captures the harsh reality for the injured and is displays several particularly gruesome pictures of the wounded.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-haiti-loomis1-ss,0,266018.htmlstory

The photo gallery I found was from national geographic, showing various toxic chemicals and their disposal. One aspect of this photo gallery that I found interesting was national geographic included "photo fast facts", showing what time of day the photo was taken, what type of camera was used, etc.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0207/feature1/zoom4.html

Which does a better job?

I think the slideshows and photo galleries do serve a function as a storytelling tool, however they have a very limited use. Slideshows are good in the sense that the viewer does not need to spend nearly as much time viewing it as they would reading an article. Many people who have only a limited interest in a story will just look at the picture on the page and the caption and move on. I prefer slideshows to photo galleries because of the ease of use. Rather than actually clicking through the photos, slideshows will usually scroll threw the photos for you. Of course, the drawback to slideshows is the viewer does not have the option to only view the photos in which they are interested.

What difference does sound make?

The sound makes the slideshow much more engaging for the viewer. For one thing, having audio in addition to pictures engages two of your senses(audio and visual) as opposed to just one or the other, with a podcast or pictures.

Laxing till the sun goes down-Critic podcast

Here is the second-ever LSC sports podcast. This week I featured the Lyndon State Lacrosse team's coach, Tim Tierney, incoming freshman star Taylor Strout, and senior captain Chris Mansour. Enjoy!