INQUIRER.net unveils blog network

Finally, INQUIRER.net unveils its blog network. Joey Alarilla, our resident game editor/blogger, admits he is the guinea pig in this project ;-)

Again you might ask, why do we blog? For INQUIRER.net, it is about extending the conversation with our readers. We get a lot of feedback from readers everyday. We hope to engage readers in a more, well for lack of term, interactive conversation. I've also been blogging for close to 3 years now. It started when my youngest daughter was born. Somehow, my blog evolved from being an online diary of my daughter into something more personal. It currently features my musings on blogging, technology, journalism, and recently, politics (since I cover the elections).

The INQUIRER.net blogs network aims to be not just any blog network. We hope to use it to make news your news too. And as Joey says, we also hope to take advantage of today's technology and use it to keep the conversation going. Happy birthday INQUIRER.net blogs!!!

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By the way, INQUIRER.net is currently co-convenor of Media Nation, a gathering of different news organizations in the Philippines.

Cyberbaguioboy down?

I got a shocker this morning. I opened my cyberbaguioboy blog and found it was inaccessible. Hacked, I thought. Servers down? Yesterday it was still fine. I wish my postings are still intact. sigh.

Videos on-the-go

I'm now taking more videos using camera phones. This is a recent addition to my job as a technology reporter. While this technology has been around for some time, news organizations have not really used this innovation to do interviews and capture important events. This year, we have increasingly used video clips taken using a camera phone. The quality is not as good as broadcast TV. But it is good enough for viewing on YouTube, which has been the host of videos I send over to our editors.

Here's an example of a video I took while covering the Commission on Elections.

Students prefer Internet news: study

A recent report from the Carnegie-Knight Task Force at Harvard University has revealed that schools look up to Internet news as a mode of classroom instruction. Excerpt:

Internet-based news is trumping both television news and the daily newspaper as a mode of classroom instruction. Furthermore, national and international news sites, such as nytimes.com and bbc.com, are trumping local news sites in America’s schools. These conclusions stem from a recent national survey of 1,262 social studies, civics, and government teachers, who reported on their use of news in the classroom, including trends in their use of particular media.

For close to a year now, I've been studying my Masters in Journalism through an online medium of instruction. So far, learning and interaction are a lot better especially for working professionals like me. Online education or e-learning combined with traditional methods of teaching is increasingly being introduced in undergraduate schools. This recent survey shows students prefer to get their dose of news from the Internet, which is a lot more convenient and interactive. From my own experience, e-learning still requires discipline on the student's part. You still have to actively participate in discussions (through discussion boards), online chats, and group work. So it is really important that Philippine government should connect more schools to the Internet. I think once they're connected, students will find learning a lot more interesting.