Category: Online & social media

Getting started with online and socials

Photo by MockupEditor.com on Pexels.com

We’re going to build ourselves a WordPress site… starting NOW!

You’ll post all of your work throughout the semester onto this site, and it will become the basis of your professional portfolio.

As we go through these steps, sing out if you get stuck. There are also some good tutorials here, and on LinkedIn Learning.

Continue reading “Getting started with online and socials”

Week 12 (14/5): Creating an awesome portfolio (redux)

Street art in Reykjavik. Photo: Gerd Eichmann/ CC-BY-SA-4.0/Wikimedia Commons

There are two main reasons we ask you to build a WordPress site.

  1. WordPress is the CMS (content management system) used by most media companies – think Goat, Junkee, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review … and more. Knowing how to use WordPress means you have a big advantage over graduates that don’t know how
  2. When you fly the nest (leave us 😭) you will have an amazing portfolio of work to shop around to potential employers (or just to look back over and reminisce about how awesome it was and how good you are).
    TASK
  1. Make a list of the things you need to post on your WordPress site. Think about the stories you have written, audio stuff you’ve made, and any scripts, graphics, audiograms, videos, photos … anything! This list can also contain things you have made outside TAFE 😉
  2. Post your stuff. Videos and audio need to be hosted somewhere before you embed them in a post (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, Soundcloud)
  3. Do you have widgets on your WP?
  4. Do you have an About page?
  5. Have you changed your header image, or are you still using the photo WP gave you? (Change it, or remove it entirely)
  6. Have another look at the Categories in your menu. Are there any that are empty? Do you want to rethink your menu and categories?
  7. Are your social accounts (Twitter, Instagram in particular) linked to your WordPress site, and do they fit with your WordPress theme and design?
  8. Do you love your theme? If you don’t, you can change it without losing any of your work 😃

Remember: anything you do can be undone if you don’t like it. And ask me for help if you need it.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU’VE DONE ALL OF THE ABOVE
  1. Make something for radio – for either Reconciliation Week (important!); The Space Show; or Food (#hungry)
  2. Try one of the Quarantine Challenges – they’re fast and fun, and will fit your portfolio
  3. Journalism students: if you have stuff missing from your News Conference portfolio, get onto them. We also need a Good News bulletin (again!) this week, so if you haven’t done one, please do 🤗

 

Week 10 O&S (30/4): Choose your exercise

Today you will have another opportunity to choose what you do. In all three cases, it would be great to have the work completed by the end of class. So here goes:

  1. First priority: WordPress. If you don’t yet have content or widgets on your site, you will spend this morning in a workshop with me. You can also choose this option if you want to work on your WordPress, or need advice or help. Check the assessment brief to make sure you’re on track.
  2. Make a story that is timely (i.e. something happening in the world that is relevant to our audience’s interests), or that fits this week’s show theme, “home”. Your story can be written, audio, video, photos, or graphics (or something else you come up with!) It can be for any platform (Off Campus, TAFE Radio, our socials)
  3. Make something to promote the show. This will be for one (or all) of our social media platforms.

Whichever you choose, you must write a quick outline of what you plan to do before you do it, and be specific.

I will be creating some quiet rooms for people to break into so I can work with them on their ideas. As always, we value collaboration, so if you want to work with someone else, let me know.

We will stay in Zoom, in rooms. It makes it easier for me to facilitate if anyone needs advice, or if you want to show me what you’re doing.

UPLOADING:

Audio stories should be uploaded to the Future Shows folder in the Google Drive

Written stories can be submitted for Off Campus to the Stories folder

Socials stories will be by negotiation with me 🙂