The PRINCIPLES OF NEWSPAPER WRITING course at the University of Mary Washington was designed to marry old-school in-depth reporting and new-school digital technology. In other words, journalistic tradition in modern form. The instructor, Michael McCarthy, assigned three teams of students a “beat” — or a specific area of news coverage — and asked them to use their own research, creativity and initiative to develop Web-based special reports. With four to five students on each team, they had all semester to report on their topics, conduct interviews, and gather data and design their pages.

To portray with some depth the university’s chase for reaccreditation, what students do with their free time, and what happens to students after graduation, the class worked on three beats and completed these reports.

Dr. Scanlon’s course Women and Modernism requires students to give a presentation during the semester, however, there’s a twist.  These presentations are recorded and put up on the course website for all to hear.

After listening to a presentation on Women’s Fashion and Cross-Dressing in the Modernist Era, I have to say I’m glad that this is a course requirement.  Not only does this help students in the course figure out how to use new technology for educational purposes, it also allows those who are thinking about taking the course get a sneak peek at the topics studied throughout the semester.

I highly enjoyed these presentations and I hope this becomes a new trend for professors to follow.

UMW Geography professor Donald Rallis has an amazing two-part blog post about the relationship of the protest movements in Manama, Bahrain and Richmond, Virginia (part 1, part 2). Having been in both places recently, professor Rallis starts to triangulate the relationship amongst geography, protest movements, and the struggle for Free Speech in public spaces. Professor Rallis not only shares an amazing reading of the role of geography in these movements but shares images and video he took of the movements.