Eight scholastic media educators received $7,500 grants following their completion of the Oklahoma Scholastic Media (OSM) Initiative Summer Workshop July 22-26 at the University of Oklahoma Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication in Norman.

The educators wrote grant proposals in spring 2013, with the requirement that if received, the money will be used to start or improve a student online media news site.

“Online media is the present and the future,” said Melanie Wilderman, executive director of OSM and assistant professor of journalism. “It is important to get high school media publications online to help students develop a very important set of skills.”

Grant recipients include: Darla Tresner, Bartlesville High School and Bartlesville Mid-High; Lisa Snider, Duncan High School; Bailey McBride, Bishop Kelley High School; Kelli Taylor, Harding Charter Preparatory High School; Keely Cox represented Karen Beavers, Lawton High School; Sharon Bullard, Marlow High School; Deborah McGhee, Walters High School; and Donna Deaton, Wistor High School. McBride and Taylor were unable to attend the summer workshop, but as the grant stipulated they sent a representative. Spencer Macklin stood in for McBride, and Kristena Rudloff stood in for Taylor.

Sharon Bullard, adviser of the MHS exPRESS and the new online publication, Outlaw exPRESSions, is ready to tackle the new frontier of online journalism.

“This is completely new territory for me because my experience is in print. I got a lot of instruction and good ideas at the summer workshop I attended, so I am excited about getting started,” Bullard said.

Student editor, Tori Hack, is enthusiastic about the opportunities the grant provides for the Marlow High School Publication.

“I’m ready to explore the new options that are being made available to us through this grant. The opportunity to start an online publication is an enormous undertaking, but I know we can do it. The possibilities are endless,” Hack said.

Seven professionals and instructors with expertise in various media taught during the five-day workshop. Session topics included: how to start an online news site, creative design in online media, photography for the Web, incorporating social media in online news, improving sports coverage via the Web, writing tactics for online media, reporting with a smart phone, video and video editing for the Web, a day in the life of a media content provider, and law and ethics in online media. In addition, the participants were given a reporting assignment and asked to produce a converged media project for the Web. On the last day of the workshop each participant shared his or her project and discussed the successes and challenges.

“I was so impressed with all our participants. We threw a lot of new information at them in a short period of time, and they all produced a multimedia project by the end of the week. They have so many new skills now to take back to their students,” Wilderman said.

All eight participants completed the full workshop, and along with the grant, they will receive a free year of membership with OSM, a journalism education organization housed in the Gaylord College and designed to support and help improve middle school and high school media programs. Magazines, newspapers, online publications, video production programs, yearbooks, or any other high school media are eligible to belong to OSM.

 The grants are funded by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. The EEJF mission, according to its website, is “to invest in the future of journalism by building the ethics, skills and opportunities needed to advance principled, probing news and information.”The organization accomplishes this through contributions to media institutions and journalism schools nationwide in several areas including youth education.