My week learning a new language: how to code

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Thibault J.

By Tessa Weinberg

Coding, HTML, CSS and JavaScript are just a few of the words that makes most traditional print journalists cringe. Just right-click and inspect the elements of any webpage and you can get a glimpse into the confusing strings of code that govern the site you’re using. One of the items on my summer bucket list is to grasp the basics of coding, in the hopes of one day building my own website. Over the course of a week I tried out two popular coding sites: Codecademy and Free Code Camp. Below I’ve included what I found to be some of the pros and cons of each as well as a little bit of what I learned along the way.

Expanding your podcast library

By Madison Feller

photo by zoomar, Flickr Creative Commons

When January 1st rolled around, I decided to make a New Year's resolution I would actually stick to: Be more informed. This meant I wouldn't just keep reading all of my go-to sites (TIME, The New Yorker), and I would start actively seeking out news I would previously ignore. (For me, this meant reading publications like The Wall Street Journal and Politico). But my favorite discovery in my quest to become more informed didn't come in an article or even a video. Instead, it came as a podcast.

5 tips for young journalists from J-School grads

By Ryan Levi

Wikimedia Commons image from user Mojourcomm

As part of my extensive summer reading list (highlights so far include Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams), I took a look through our Letters Home series, a collection of letters from J-School graduates to students currently studying at the finest journalism school in the world. Below are five big-picture takeaways from their letters.

Your Unofficial Summer Syllabus

By Kara Tabor

Creative Commons photo from Flickr user samantha celera

Ah, summer--it's the time when journalism students across the country exchange classes for internships, jobs, personal projects and (hopefully) some relaxation. It's also a great opportunity to get caught up on some of the extracurricular learning that tends to take the back burner during the academic year.

Depending on your commitments, summertime may be busy-time. However, even the most tightly scheduled students can squeeze in a few minutes here and there to dig into some new resources.

Four Mizzou courses outside the journalism school to hone your digital skills

By Andrew Gibson

Creative Commons photo from Flickr user nigelpepper

No matter what emphasis area you choose in the Missouri School of Journalism, you're going to walk away with some coveted digital skills.

Reporting classes teach you how to produce text, photos and videos for an online audience. In Multimedia Planning and Design (Journalism 4502), taught by Rob Weir, you learn how to build snazzy news websites using HTML5 and CSS3. And if you enroll in David Herzog's Computer-Assisted Reporting (Journalism 4430), you'll have no trouble using MySQL to find stories in data.

That said, as you register for summer and fall courses, consider looking away from the northeast corner of Francis Quadrangle if you want to bolster your digital skill set. The computer science and information technology departments, among others, offer a slew of courses worth working into your four-year plan.

Live event blog: Web design crash course with Rob Weir

By Cole Kennedy

The Palmer Room (RJI100) is filling up and we're getting ready to start our web design crash course with Rob Weir. Still time to come on down and learn the fundamentals, like typography, layout, and color scheme.

Rob's presentation is titled "Web design in 60 minutes," and we're excited to see what we can learn in an hour.

Rob is the director of digital development for the Columbia Missourian, so he takes care of all of the Missourian's technology.

The basics: web design is 95 percent typography. The other five percent is made up of:

• color, contrast, and balance
• presenting relevant information
• letting your content tell its own story

Three places journalism students can learn code this summer

By Elise Schmelzer

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Basic understanding of HTML and CSS coding are irreplaceable tools in any journalist's toolbox and a fantastic reason for employers to choose you above other qualified job candidates. Though the languages may seem a tangle of confusing letters and symbols, they can become a gateway to beautiful web pages and applications with a little work.

Though many universities offer classes in web coding, students don't always have the cash or time in their schedule to devote to an official class. Luckily, the Internet provides a wealth of options accessible without a university class. I've outlined some of the best below in no particular order. Each option has its own pros and cons, but all offer a path to coding literacy.

Resources to learn software and coding

By Ashley Crockett

Photo courtesy of Best PSD to HTML

Are you ready to take the first step in learning software and programming languages? If so, read on to learn how.

Classes

JOURN 4502
Multimedia Planning and Design
Learn to build websites using HTML5, XHTML, CSS3 and jQuery. Secretary Nicole Garner and I just completed this course and loved it. Rob Weir, the director of digital development for the Columbia Missourian, will teach the class in the spring. He starts by teaching the most basic tools, so his students can build beautiful websites by the end of the semester.

JOURN 4430
Computer-Assisted Reporting
Data journalism takes tons of information and breaks it down into bite-size pieces for people to understand. In CAR, students use everyday programs like Microsoft Access and Excel to turn data sets into stories. Students learn how to pull information from databases using Structured Query Language (SQL) as well as how to think critically when analyzing findings. CAR isn't just for investigative reporters: It offers a variety of skills every journalist can use.