Archive for the Education Tag

A new Scottish datablog (and a treemap in Liverpool)

The Scotsman has a newish data blog, set up (I’m rather proud to say) by one of my former PA/Telegraph trainees: Jennifer O’Mahony. This is particularly important as so much data covered in the ‘national’ press tends to be English-only due to devolution. The Department of Education, for example, only publishes English education data. If you want Scottish education data you need
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Why we shouldn’t be discouraging students from writing about students

I have a confession: I have never liked student projects aimed at students. They tend to betray a lazy approach to creativity: after all, what can be less imaginative than a project aimed at ‘people like me’? They also don’t generally develop the skills that journalism degrees aim for: original research, for example; flexibility in style; or an exploration of
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Local newspaper data journalism – school admissions in Birmingham

The Birmingham Mail has been trying its hand at data journalism with school admissions data. It’s a good place to start - the topic attracts a lot of interest (and so justifies the investment of time) while people tend to be interested in more than just who finishes top and bottom of the tables (justifying the choice of medium). The results are
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Teaching online journalism: classes as a narrative

For the last few years, I’ve had a problem. It’s a problem with deadlines, and momentum. Here’s how it goes: Every year, students in my undergraduate Online Journalism module run a live news website – Birmingham Recycled. Six weeks into the module, students have to submit a ‘snapshot’ portfolio for the first of 2 assignment deadlines… And this is where
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When the lack of comments damages your news brand

If you want to skip the background, go to the next subheading Last week the BBC Education website published a piece about a report into the use of technology by schoolchildren: “Tech addiction ‘harms learning’”: “Technology addiction among young people is having a disruptive effect on their learning, researchers have warned,” the intro led, before describing the results of the
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