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Training 2.0 (part 2): Cool ideas, not all about training

Debbie Wolfe of the St. Petersburg Times won the award for best idea at the three-day Best Practices for Newsroom Training session I attended at the Poynter Institute. In three minutes (many participants presented in two minutes or less), she demonstrated a nifty piece of software called SnagIt, which allows you to capture the action on your computer screen and make little movies out of it.

It’s a great tool for training, especially if you’re trying to teach someone a new piece of software. Instead of screenshots in a handout that say “click on the box in the upper right-hand corner,” you can produce short “movies” that allows the viewer to watch exactly where the cursor goes on the screen to activate a desired action. All this, and it’s only $40.

Here’s a quick look at some of the other cool ideas from the session:

The Florida Times-Union has built Databank and it’s driving a ton of traffic on it web site. The newspaper is using a product called Caspio and it sounds like anyone who wants to get into this sort of thing ought to check it out.

Several offered documentation for skills and standards at newspapers for such things as video planning, writing captions, how to blog, going from columnist to video pundit, rewriting for the Web and podcast 101.

Evelyn Hsu recommended that newspapers conduct a brown-bag lunch with a venture capitalist to learn how the money guys view audience, content and publishing in this ever-changing landscape.

And my favorite: The Tulsa World hired a local company to fly a remote control helicopter, outfitted with a digital video camera, over the golf course where the PGA was making a tour stop. This allowed the newspaper to produce rich “flyover” views of each of the golf course with its comprehensive coverage of the tournament.

Posted by MarkBriggs on Monday, September 10, 2007
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