We weren’t able to post the packages yet, so I don’t have a link to the video. But this is the text from our project.

African-American Churches: Mis-heard Messages
By CHER PHILLIPS and BRITTANY RAJCHEL
One of 15 traditional black churches in Gainesville, Fla., deals with stigmas of racism and misunderstanding, while their real message remains buried in daily services, Bible studies and community outreach – not in the speeches and press statements of the politically active.
Jesus People Life-Changing Church, 800 N.W. 39th Ave., has about 350 black parishioners who continue on learning about life and ignoring the very public outcry about issues that won’t ever enter the walls of their community. Why? The church is above it. In fact, it doesn’t have anything to do with it at all, says their pastor, Horace L. Mingo.

When I wrote the wrap-up for the first toolkit class, I thought that it would have been helpful to take the class again when newspaper had a better idea of how they wanted to cover producing the work we did with Soundslides.

I feel the same way about video. Only, I would have to add that I think perhaps this class is too far ahead of the professional learning curve.

I feel like there were many practices in this class that were not reflective of regular newsroom practice, and I am not sure how helpful they will be in producing short news videos for web packages for a newspaper. I am not sure that the emphasis on documentary film making and broadcast news styles will serve online journalists. I simply do not think the documentary film making methods is appropriate for producing news.

The methods we used in this class took so long to create so little that I simply can not see print journalists adapting these practices.

As for what I will use again, I will probably play around with shooting some video for work (current not journalism) and machinama. I will put the 5-shot method to use in this, though. I’ve also started playing with video streaming. Most of this is this for fun though. I can’t see being able to tell any future employer I am good enough at this to produce serious journalism. In many ways, this class felt like it was trying to present the print equivalent of a senior capstone course to students who hadn’t taken MMC2100.

I *still* am not comfortable with the equipment. It scares the crap out of me. And people who are afraid of their cameras (or any type of electronics) don’t take great footage. That is just it, practice with something like this goes far. We needed more of that.

I like that my college wants to be on the cutting edge, or some people working their want to be on the cutting edge of what the profession is doing, but it’s frustrating to be a student in that space.

This will not make me very popular. But then I never really cared about that. Why start now?

I was incredibly disappointed in the my journalism school’s computer equipment and the limited access to the Interactive Media Lab. The master’s students studying online media (enrolled in a practical class that term or not) should have full access AT ALL TIMES to the equipment provided here. We should have had it back in September. I know that I could have used this lab instead of spending my own money on things for my McIntosh blog when I was keeping it up.

Instead, this seems to be being used exclusively to what end … I can’t really tell. My god, during one of the few days our class met in there, the folks (not our class) were playing Guitar Hero while we worked.

I know Mindy tried hard to provide us with what we needed, and it was very frustrating to not have things work properly because of aged and outdated computer labs. In context, this is even more frustrating having the knowledge that just across the building Guitar Hero is taking priority over the content of the courses in my master’s program. And I like computer games. But come on. Get serious here.

Let me be clear: this last point is no reflection on Mindy. This is a reflection on the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Florida.