You can’t beat this for a Michigan State University J-School skills class: Students in JRN 472 and JRN 872 this fall will learn to shoot video from an unmanned aircraft that they fly.
That’s part of the fall environmental journalism class where students will also learn to turn satellite images into news stories and experiment with other unusual tools for reporting on the environment. They’ll do all that fun stuff to produce professional quality stories for the J-School’s award-winning Great Lakes Echo.
You don’t have to be part of the environmental journalism program to take this class. You don’t even have to be a science nerd. The pre-requisite is JRN 200 or equivalent or special waiver from the instructor. What you really need is a sense of adventure and a desire to push the journalistic frontier.
The course examines the legal and ethical issues of drone journalism. It looks at other civilian applications of these aircraft that are emerging news stories.
Check out this story produced by University of Missouri students. Or how about this?
This is a small class so enroll quickly if you want to get one of the limited seats.
Questions? Contact David Poulson, the associate director of MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at poulsondavid@gmail.com or 517 432 5417