What was among the most important lessons I learned after spending a week brainstorming about convergence issues with 16 other college educators?

We are not alone.

Those of us who spent more than a year developing a program to teach students at the Annenberg School of Journalism how to produce stories across print, broadcast and online platforms often felt that way.

That changed after I participated in a new ?Convergence for College Educators? seminar offered earlier this month by The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which focused on the growth of converged newsrooms, the skills graduates will need to enter the workplace, and the best converged journalism practices.

		?In my opinion, multiple-platform journalism programs may unknowingly perpetuate professional biases unless they seek geeks who will provide balance and fresh perspective to the mix.?

Just as important, educators also got a chance to discuss the potential roadblocks to changing our schools? curriculums, some of which have been in place for decades. These obstacles range from unsupportive faculty and resentful students to major budget crunches and a lack of classroom equipment, space, and course materials.

This willingness to honestly share our experiences, both good and bad, and to help each other find solutions for our own unique challenges, was for me the highlight of the week at Poynter. Despite the pressures we all may feel, there are educators all around the world ready to listen, commiserate, and offer advice.

At Annenberg I was part of a group that created a new Convergence Core Curriculum, which was launched last semester. The Core is spread across three semesters, beginning with News Writing, then Reporting, and Production.

Each class in the Core is team-taught by three instructors. Students, for instance, take newspaper writing on Monday; television and radio writing on Wednesday; and online writing on Friday. The schedule is repeated for Reporting and Production in the subsequent semesters.

How has the Core worked so far? Far better than anyone would have expected, given the chaos of last semester. There are many elements of the program that need to be overhauled. Fortunately, my Poynter experience proved that there are many different approaches to the teaching of convergence.

Educators who are dealing with convergence in the classroom, or starting to think about it, should keep the following in mind:

1. Define ?convergence? for faculty and students.

Many people confuse the word ?convergence? with media monopolization. What convergence really involves, however, is cooperation among print, broadcast and Web journalists to produce the best story possible using a variety of delivery systems to reach the widest possible audience. 

For example, broadcasters often have far more material than they can actually use on TV. Some of that visual and audio material could be placed on the Web. Similarly, newspaper reporters who also face space limitations could use the Web to offer more documents, maps, weblogs, chats, Q&As, video and photo galleries and other interactive elements.

Dr. Jerry Zurek, department chair and professor of English and Communication at Cabrini College in Radnor, Pa., said ?students must learn the strengths of each  medium for telling a story and that the interaction of media across several platforms or upon the Web together can have a greater impact than any single medium.? 

2. Emphasize shared journalistic values. 
 
As Dr. Lillian Dunlap and Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute discussed during the seminar, cross-platform storytelling shares the same journalistic values as other forms of journalism, including the responsibility to act as a watchdog, to seek the truth and tell it as fully as possible, to connect with the audience, and to present information in a compelling way.

Debora Wenger, an associate professor of media convergence at Virginia Commonwealth University?s School of Mass Communication in Richmond, Va., said convergence can enhance our ability to preserve these and other journalistic values.

?If our fundamental goal is to provide people with the information they need to be self-governing, than convergence allows people to access that information in the medium they find most appealing or accessible,? she said. ?Let?s face it -- there are people who will never read the local newspaper who watch a local TV newscast several times a week or go online daily.?

3. Don?t try to create ?Super Reporters.?

Some veteran journalism instructors and even students may feel threatened by cross-platform journalism, fearing that trying to teach or learn about it will dilute the ?basics? of good writing, reporting, and ethics, and fail to provide the depth needed to succeed in any one medium.

Most educators at Poynter agreed that, as Wenger said, a ?sense of collaboration and exposure to what?s possible in multi-media reporting is far more important than creating ?Super Reporters? that excel across all platforms equally.? 

Remember that no matter what medium students want to work in, good writing is paramount. ?If journalism programs do nothing more than ramp up their writing intensive courses and set higher writing standards for their graduates, they will be doing something to help prepare students for a converged media world,? said Wenger.

4. Educators must continue to learn new skills. 

Dr. Edgar Huang, an assistant professor in the Journalism Studies Program at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg, said educators must be motivated enough to leave our comfort zones and learn things we are unfamiliar with so that we can teach convergence more effectively. 

?With specialization, each of us can contribute to the teaching, but I am afraid that our compartmentalized knowledge about a specific medium will pass on a compartmentalized picture of media convergence to our students,? he said.

?Before we can equip students with the ability to conduct reporting across platforms, we the professors should learn how to write and produce across platforms and practice what we preach,? said Huang. ?We gain confidence from what we do and not from what we say.?

5. ?Seek Geeks.? 

Most media educators have years of experience in the profession, usually in one medium, said Dr. David R. Thompson of the Department of Communication Arts at Loras  College in Dubuque, Iowa.  Now, it's time to think cross-platform -- some combination of print, broadcast, and online ? as well as emerging formats, such as PDAs, cell phones, and vehicle-based information retrieval systems.

To properly teach across all platforms, Thompson said schools need to ?seek geeks,? or ?edgy thinkers? who are often missing from the academic mix. They may not have professional media experience, but they are experts at finding, gathering, processing, and distributing information quickly.

?In my opinion, multiple-platform journalism programs may unknowingly perpetuate professional biases unless they seek geeks who will provide balance and fresh perspective to the mix,? he said. ?They can help build bridges across platforms. They are ?multi-mediators.??

6. ?Slowing down to speed up.?

This term, coined by Dr. Jimmy Gentry, dean of the William Allen White School of Mass Communication and Journalism at the University of Kansas, means it?s vitally important to build a solid foundation for what educators plan to do first before changing the curriculum. 

The process should begin with discussion about why change should be considered, values and how any change is congruent with those values, and setting of specific goals. It also should involve as many people as possible in the process, and have key people committed to it. 

?Once you have a solid foundation, I have found it much easier to move ahead,? said Gentry. 

?However, don't use ?slowing down to speed up? as an excuse to dither. It is my perception that most academic cultures are really good at dithering and not very good at making positive progress toward goals. Someone needs to ?drive? the process, to keep pushing, firmly but gently,  to keep things moving ahead,? he said. 

Laura Casta?eda, an assistant professor of journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. She can be reached at lcastane@usc.edu.