Conestoga College and its journalism faculty are pleased to welcome more than 70 new journalists-in-training who have registered for the 2011 academic year. The Journalism Print and Journalism Broadcast programs will be operating at capacity again this fall, while the New Media: Convergence program, launched last year, continues to experience growth.
Orientation for students in the two diploma programs is Monday, Aug. 29. Activities begin in the college’s Recreation Centre at 9 a.m., after which a program-specific orientation session will take place on the Doon campus in Room 2A621. Orientation for students in the postgraduate New Media program takes place Tuesday, Aug. 30, at 5 p.m. in the Doon campus’s Blue Room, to be followed by a program-specific session in Room 2E27.
Orientation sessions generally deal with the state of the journalism industry today, faculty introductions, some mixer exercises and a discussion concerning what additional equipment and resources, in addition to prescribed textbooks, students should expect to purchase during the school year.
Here’s a summary of the purchases that journalism students generally find useful and necessary:
• Textbooks are carefully chosen for their durability and usefulness. Faculty make every effort to keep book lists short — we don’t believe in asking students to buy books they won’t use or will use only occasionally. So if a textbook appears on a course list, students can count on the fact it’ll be put to good use. Among the essentials for any journalism student or professional working in Canada today in the Canadian Press Stylebook and its companion, the CP Caps and Spelling booklet. Both are staples on the desks of Canadian journalists across the country.
• An external hard drive with storage capacity of at least 100 GB (low-end external hard drives these days typically start with storage capacities of around 320 MB, so even these economical models will be sufficient). As a multimedia journalist-in-training, you’ll be shooting video and recording audio; these drives give you a portable place to store your raw files for editing and your finished files for submission to your instructors. One caution here: Look for a drive that is USB-powered, rather than one that requires you to plug it into a separate outlet. It’s not pretty when 35 students are all looking for power outlets at the same time.
• A USB flash drive (also called a jump drive or thumb drive) will allow you to easily transfer and store smaller files, such as class notes, from classroom desktop computers to your personal devices. Every classroom to which you’ll be assigned has a complete set of PC or Mac desktop computers — bringing a laptop to college each day isn’t necessary, though some students prefer using their own equipment. Many students find it easier to take notes on school equipment during lectures and labs, then transfer files to a flash drive for easy storage.
• A digital audio recorder is a must-have piece of equipment for the Broadcast Technology course, as well as the Research and Interviewing course. The exact make and model aren’t that important — must be sure that you’re able to transfer your digital audio recordings to a computer, either via a cable or a memory card. Be sure your machine has both “line in” and “line out” jacks. Your Broadcast Technology professor, Tim Goebel, may have more precise instructions, so it might be wise to wait until after a discussion with him. The Zoom line of recorders, such as the Zoom H2 and Zoom H1 (pictured) are durable professional-grade devices that produce broadcast-quality sound.
• A digital SLR camera (DSLR) will be a requirement in the winter semester for diploma students and is strongly encouraged for students in the postgraduate New Media program as well. The brand or model number isn’t important, but the camera must be a DSLR. It’s also important for students to have the camera’s instruction booklet or manual handy. Course instructors can’t familiarize themselves with every camera on the market, so be prepared to do some research and reading about the camera you want to use. If price isn’t a big consideration, choose a DSLR that also shoots video — your journalistic options, down the road, will be much greater.
Finally, students should be sure to get their college email accounts properly configured and to communicate with faculty using these accounts. Wireless Internet access is available across the Doon campus for personal devices such as smart phones and laptops.
