Jon, Jenny, Vadim, Cory – Thanks for commenting!
Jenny, your solution with the portable hard drive sounds like it would eat a lot of class time. I hate the idea that I would have to spend 20-40 minutes in class just on file uploading!
Vadim and Cory – You are correct, they are new at all this, and that accounts in part for their greenness in storytelling. But I think also they are confused by learning the straight news formats and then trying to adapt to visual storytelling, which is more of a narrative style. Inverted pyramid is not the same “shape” as beginning-middle-end.
That probably brings us back to the use of examples — we have to show them final products that succeed in telling the story well.
One thing spans all our classes, early and late — students often do inadequate reporting. They do one stinking interview and then turn in a story. The good students learn fast that more reporting results in a better story (and a better grade). But the lazy ones keep on whining about their bad grades, when it’s clear as day that they did very little legwork.