General Information

• Prerequisite knowledge: None needed but knowledge of HTML will help.
• Course Duration: 4 weeks.
• Commitment: 2 - 5 hours per week.
• Further Newscoop courses are planned: "$gimme for Beginners" & "Newscoop Xtra".
• Proposed course start date: 05/11/11.

Course Outline

Week 1:

What is a news website?
Explore news site essentials and good site design.
Learning objectives:

• Structure (headlines, articles, archives)
• Content (text, image, audio, video)
• Social tools (blogs, social media, sharing)
• Revenue (paywalls, subscribers, advertising)

Challange:

• Find & collect examples of well designed news sites
• Comment on your examples and those of your piers

Week 2:

What is Newscoop?
Learning objectives:

• Introduction to the CMS
• Articles
• Images
• Topics
• Comments

Challenge:

• Create an article
• Comment on your article and those of your piers

Week 3:

More Newscoop features
Learning objectives:

• Issues
• Sections
• Languages

Challenge:

• Create an Issue with Sections
• Comment on your Issue and those of your piers

Week 4:

Designing and planning a site
Learning objectives:

• Publications
• Turning your idea into a publication
• Planning your workflow
• Structuring your content
• The basic idea of themes

Challenge:

• Create a publication
• Comment on your publication and those of your piers?