Jtm-sv-bio-Darcy-Greene
Web page for bio related projects: http://darcy-stuff.blogspot.com/
Darcy Drew Greene is an Associate Professor in the School of Journalism at Michigan State University (MSU) with a focus on visual journalism. She has worked as a graphic designer and documentary photographer. She is passionate about multimedia storytelling and the many ways in which information can be shared over the web.
She has an M.F.A. in Graphic Design from Michigan State University and a B.A. in Speech Communication from the University of Washington.
She is a principal in the Communication Technology Laboratory where she has created major multimedia projects including, Completing A Life, a web site dealing with end-of-life issues. For the past thirteen years she has been a co-advisor to the MSU affiliate of the international Society for News Design (SND). She is a past board member of the organization and currently serves as a judge for its Best of Multimedia contest. During alternate summers she directs Photo Communication in the U.K. and Czech Republic, a Journalism course offered through MSU’s Study Abroad Program.
Two of my interests in news tools comes from exploring Serious Games and from a Knight Challenge grant that I worked on last year. Serious Games: I am eager to learn more about what participants are doing with serious games designed to engage readers in hard news. Readers understand complex stories on the web in multiple ways using words, hyperlinks, photos, graphics, video/audio and animation. Engaging a reader in a game, making decisions based on facts could bring story understanding to a new level. Knight Challenge grant: This past summer I worked with students and faculty from seven universities on a Knight Challenge grant to develop new ideas for engaging communities in news. In October, 2007, the group presented three projects to the Online News Association annual meeting in Toronto. (MediaGiraffe has posted audio and video stories of the projects on their Web site.)
http://newshare.typepad.com/mediagiraffe/2007/10/audio-students-.html http://newshare.typepad.com/mediagiraffe/2007/10/video-students-.html
The process, based on the concept of “Creation Nets” developed by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown, was almost more exciting than the product. Three diverse groups of students were chosen with attention to both the results of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator tests and geographical location. Faculty served as mentors and not as decision makers. I worked with Charlotte-Anne Lucas from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV). Our selected students were from St. Michael’s College in Vermont, Ithaca College, Univ. of Western Kentucky, Michigan State Univ., Univ. of Kansas and UNLV. How to communicate regularly across time zones with limited resources was the first problem to solve. The students researched Web 2.0 apps and decided on Skype for our weekly meetings. We also used Google Groups and Docs as well as blogs.
They explored and reported on many social networking, media sharing and news organizing sites to understand what exists and to see what is missing. They saw a need for people to tell collaborative stories about their communities not only in words but in still photo, video and audio as well. They developed their collaborative idea and called it Tandem after the multi-person bicycle.
Educators are struggling with curriculum trying to decide what changes to make to meet the demands of the new journalist in this time of transformation of journalism. What is the basic core? What is necessary now? In 5 – 10 years? What role does content play with this emphasis on technology? What does it mean to be “good enough?”
