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Photo by Gena Asher

IU's Danielle Rindler helps students work with the software in her Photoshop session. She and 13 other SPJ student members led a high school workshop at IUPUI recently.

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High school students in Indianapolis learned about multimedia, news writing, design and student publications leadership roles at a workshop conducted by journalists not too much older than they are.

The IU and IUPUI Society of Professional Journalists student chapters staged the workshop, a three-session series of 50-minute classes covering Photoshop and InDesign, story development, writing skills, and online and video storytelling, at the IUPUI campus April 29.

IUPUI senior and SPJ chapter president Tara Puckey had this event on her wish list for more than a year. She and her counterpart in Bloomington, junior MJ Slaby, finalized plans this spring.

“We enlisted Teresa White’s help to target schools to invite,” said Puckey. White is director of the High School Journalism Institute and a former high school publications adviser. The three visited with high school students and talked to advisers about what kinds of workshops to offer.

“Then we recruited our members to lead the workshops,” said Puckey.

Photo by Gena Asher

IUPUI student Rebekah Alva and Howe students Oksana Johnson and Elexis Smith celebrate solving a problem in one of the Photoshop sessions.

Ten students from Bloomington and four from IUPUI developed the hands-on sessions to teach Photoshop, Lightbox and other software tools. They also set up panels to discuss news writing, leadership and story development.

“One of the things that surprised me the most is how different their skills sets are,” said Puckey. Some students had never used programs such as Photoshop while others were proficient, for example.

Students from Broad Ripple High School, Arsenal Technical High School and Thomas Howe High School, all Indianapolis Public Schools, each attended three workshops in the morning. They could choose among four offerings in each of the three sessions, with some repeated at different times to accommodate their interests.

In the Photoshop class, Howe students Oksana Johnson and Elexis Smith compared their copies of their Howe yearbooks to what they were hearing about design.

“At our school, we are assigned pages and we have to do the writing, photos and layout for the entire page,” said Smith, who has been on the staff about a year. Johnson plans to work on the yearbook in the fall and wanted to learn more about working with photos.

Advisers said they wanted to ensure that each student attended a variety of workshops – and that all sat in on at least one writing session.

“They need to explore ways to generate good story ideas and they need to sharpen their writing skills,” said Michelle Schantz, former broadcast reporter, now TV production adviser at Broad Ripple. She said students intrigued by the nuts and bolts of video storytelling underestimate the importance of good writing skills necessary for their projects.

Photo by Gena Asher

IU junior Mary Kenney uses an IDS to demonstrate headline writing and placement during a session as freshman Celia Grundman (background) changed the views on the projector.

In one of the writing workshops, IU junior Mary Kenney and freshman Celia Grundman reviewed Associated Press style and grammar and punctuation with high schoolers.

“How many of you know about AP?” Kenney asked. When more than half of the 15 hands went up, she was impressed. “I didn’t know anything about it until college.”

College was on the minds of the high school students, who asked about the workings of college yearbooks and newspapers during leadership sessions. They wanted to know how to get involved (“Just jump in as soon as you get to campus,” advised Arbutus editor Chrissy Ashack) and the various roles they could play.

Over lunch, students chatted about college in general: how to apply, how to select a school, what daily life is like. Demystifying college journalism was one purpose of the day’s workshops, said White.

Another purpose is educating students on the importance of media and a free press in society. The Hoosier State Press Association provided lunch for the students as a show of support for this kind of education.

Photo by Gena Asher

IUPUI's Tara Puckey and IU's MJ Slaby worked over a year to pull together the workshop. Puckey is graduating, but Slaby already is refining the idea for next year.

“As part of its mission, the HSPA Foundation fosters public understanding of the role of a free press in society and enhances the ability of Indiana newspapers to fully educate and inform the public,” said HSPA director Karen Braeckel in an email. “We see educating young journalists as well as professionals important in both of these areas.”

Braeckel said the idea of college students providing the instruction appealed to her.

“Those who teach often learn as much as their students,” she said. “What a great experience for all the students who participated in the workshop."

While Puckey is graduating this spring, Slaby already is thinking ahead to the next workshops.

“I think we would do more new media sessions next time,” she said. “It was a lot of fun and we had a great time hanging out with the high school students.”

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