My next big project

I have recently started to build a website for one of my classes. The professor asked me to build a Wiz website to present our class’s work to a large organization in January, which means it has to look as professional and be as interactive as possible.

One of the things I’ve learned about digital readers is that they like “distractions.” They love videos, social media plug-ins, photo galleries and interactive maps to name a few. Now that I am going into this project and starting to build the Wix website, I’m looking for different ways to present the class’s information and make it interactive.

Each student (including myself) has to write two to three stories on their assigned topic. This class is Community Journalism, so each student went out and shadowed a community newspaper. My job is to help them present their information in a way that engages the digital readers without it becoming too much or “information overload.”

One of the things I will make for our website is an interactive map. I’ll be using Google Tables to construct the map that will eventually go on our front page and help viewers see where each student went. My goal is to have the map set up so that a reader can click on any of the points on the map and see what newspaper is there, which student wrote about them and have their stories link from the map.

I’m excited to have this opportunity in this class because I love digital media. I’ve enjoyed using social media and having it tie into my stories, and I’ve built a website in the past for a multimedia story, but I am excited to create an interactive website. When it is complete, the work of 12 students and their coverage of 12 community newspapers will be displayed on a website as if it was a single feature story.

Within the next month, the website will be finished. I hope to post it (or at least link to it) on this website.