Sample CustomCurric

SUMMARY:

Beth,

based on your responses to our consultation survey, we recommend theKnowledgewebb lessons listed below. We know that you

ʼ

re interested in learning to create multimediaelements to support your journalism and that you

ʼ

re eager to stay on top of digital trends. We stronglyrecommend that you dedicate at least an hour every day for the next few weeks to mastering these self-directed lessons. In addition, we

ʼ

re including some outside sites for you to explore to gain some insightinto marketing new websites.

EXPERTS FOR Beth:Amy Webb

and

Joshua Hatch

are the Knowledgewebb Experts would be perfect for you. Amy hasworked on a lot of startup sites and has her ﬁnger on the pulse of emerging technology. Joshua has spentmuch of his career as a multimedia producer and supervisor. Both host live chats throughout the month.You may also try

Tom Kennedy

, who is an award-winning video producer and photographer. All threehave experience with multimedia and social media.

Direct Contact Information:

Amy Webb

""

xxxxx@xxxxxxxxx.comJoshua Hatch

"

xxxxx@xxxxxxxxx.comTom Kennedy

"

xxxxx@xxxxxxxxx.comPlease check our

online calendar

or your Knowledgewebb member newsletter to ﬁnd their chatschedules. You can also post any questions to our Community Discussion Forums and get help from theentire Knowledgewebb membership!

RECOMMENDED TOOLS:

Beth, based on our consultation with you, we think that you

ʼ

re probably in need of some new equipment andsoftware. In your case, we recommend that you look at PCs instead of Macs, because a PC will ﬁt in betterwith your existing hardware both at home and at work. We also recommend that you update to Windows 7and that you make sure that your virus protection software is up-to-date.At some point, you

ʼ

ll need to consider purchasing Adobe CS5. Since you

ʼ

re an adjunct faculty member ofIndiana University, you qualify for an education discount. You canlearn more here. At the very least, youneed Photoshop and Illustrator to create the multimedia packages you told us about. Adobe lets you trybefore you buy, so we encourage you to download and use the free 30-day versions of CS5 ﬁrst toexperiment and play.

RECOMMENDED LESSONS:

Beth, we recommend that you start with the Knowledgewebb lessons listedbelow as soon as possible. As you can see, many of them concern site development, content managementsystems and multimedia use. This should provide you with site and tech ideas - and you

ʼ

ll ﬁnd plenty ofopportunities to practice what you

ʼ

re learning.

•50 Ways to Bling Out Your Blog.

In this lesson, we'll offer 50 hints and tips to improve your blog'svisibility, grow your audience and deliver fantastic content to those who want it most.

•FTP Basics.

Learn how to manage photo archives and more.

•Getting Started With Wikis.

Wikis are useful for organizing information between groups of people,whether they work together in the same ofﬁce or remotely in different cities.

•3 Tools to Make Interactive Maps.

Learn three innovative mapping tools to help you createinteractive experiences for your website.

•Introduction to Google Maps

and

Advanced Google Maps.•What

ʼ

s an API?

You

ʼ

ll learn about Web APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, which will helpoyu to create applications for Twitter and Facebook.

•Planning Your First Multimedia Story.

This will be a great refresher for you, and it also includes astoryboard worksheet.In addition, we recommend that you complete the

Special Six-Part Series: Your First Website Project.

To stay on top of tech trends, which you mentioned was an important part of your work as a teacher, westrongly recommend that you follow our Good Stuff blog and that you also check in throughout the week tosee which new tools and websites we

ʼ

re featuring on the Good Stuff: Tech to Try section ofKnowledgewebb.Lastly, any of the live chats with Amy Webb would be a great place to ask speciﬁc questions aboutadvanced technology trends and speciﬁc multimedia ideas.For a complete schedule, please see:http://knowledgewebb.net/calendar.

RECOMMENDED SOCIAL MEDIA:

Beth, based on your interests and goals, the following Twitter, blog,podcast and other resources should inspire and engage you while you learn.We know that you currently use Google Reader. We strongly recommend that you commit to visiting eitherGoogle Reader or an alternative. Since you

ʼ

re primarily a PC user, try getting started with FeedDemon 3For Windows (http://www.newsgator.com/individuals/feeddemon/default.aspx). To subscribe to one of thefeeds, simply look for the littleRSS icon which will be listed either in the top of your browser

ʼ

s window orsomewhere on the page. Icons may vary, so we

ʼ

ve listed a few examples below:

TWITTER:

We strongly recommend that you use Twitter. First, take both of our Twitter lessons. Then followthefollowing people. Keepin mind that you can also aggregate tweets using RSS - each user account is also RSS enabled. Just go to twitter.com/USERNAME and look for the RSS icon.@webbmedia @mashable @10000Words @GoogleCode @Techmeme @google @hgse@TechCrunch @IJNet @NeimanLab @Gartner_Inc @steverubelStudy the way these people are tweeting. It

ʼ

s okay to follow them without divulging information aboutyourself. You

ʼ

ll ﬁnd them informative, but also try to learn from how they

ʼ

re using Twitter. When do theytweet? What are they tweeting? Why are they tweeting? Etc.Also look at services such as TweetDeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com), SocialOomph (http:// www.socialoomph.com) and this tool that will display real-time Twitter results inside of Google:http://bit.ly/ uGNOG.

BLOGS

•ReadWriteWeb:http://www.readwriteweb.com/ •Mashable:http://mashable.com •10000 Words:http://www.10000words.net •Duct Tape Marketing:http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/ •Steve Rubel

ʼ

s Lifestream:http://www.steverubel.com/ •Lifehacker:http://www.lifehacker.com•Download Squad:http://www.downloadsquad.com/