I have to admit, I had mixed emotions about teaching a high school journalism camp this summer.

Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching, but I just wasn’t sure how to approach the subject of new media with high school students. I went into the first session on Sunday night with one thing to say, New Media = Multimedia = On demand, 24/7/365. That’s all. That’s all I had. I figured I could sorta wing it from there. After all, new media changes so fast that I didn’t want to prepare a four-day lecture that was only going to be old before I got to Tuesday night.

Thank goodness I had five bright, motivated and flexible students. These five hit the ground running and never looked back. They didn’t doubt me or new media. Awesome. And, they were funny too.

So, we put together this blog called The Hills. I had them read a couple of articles and react to them in their posts. They also created audio and video podcasts. Really, their talent and their drive amazed me. It confirmed my belief that this next generation of journalists is going to come to college ready to kiss arse and take names. Our future is not so grim. We will have a whole new kind of journalist and it will be our job to guide them ethically and morally as they break through the rules of traditional journalism.

My spirit has been restored, and I will return to the Multimedia Newsroom on Monday refreshed and eager to begin planning for the fall semester.

Pictures from KJI summer camp will be posted to my Flickr account soon.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post