On March 27, The University of Maryland (UMD) held J-Day, an annual tradition for high school journalism students in the state.
J-Day is a full-day learning experience at the Phillip Merrill College of Journalism at UMD, where students attend four different sessions of their choice.
Some options of sessions that students could pick to attend were “Appropriate uses of AI in journalism,” “Sports photography,” “Mobile Journalism,” “Yearbook design” and “Rights of the student press.”
The professors speaking at the sessions were Justin Rhodes (PBS News), Brian Cleveland (The Washington Post), Tara Boyle (Executive producer of the Hidden Brain podcast and radio show) and Talia Richman (Reporter covering schools in Montgomery County).
Linganore High School (LHS) students attended J-Day as a field trip. This educational experience for the Journalism class was an opportunity to gain more skills and resources for their writing and publishing.
Some of the sessions students had the option of picking from were the Studio Tour, Canva and Photography sessions.
In addition to the session rotations, students were allowed an opportunity for an hour-long lunch break, where they had freedom to purchase food from the college student center.
“I think it was very well organized,” freshman Anna Sophia Moura said, “I’m really glad we got to go on the field trip in general.”
The Studio Tour at J-Day was led by two juniors attending UMD and a part of the News Reporting Program. They showed us their “A-Studio,” “B-Studio” and Tech room.
It was very enjoyable to be able to see all of the different studios and important pieces to UMD’s news reporting field.
When asked what her favorite session was, sophomore, Izzy Tomasewski said “When we got to tour the news station and see all the behind the scenes cameras”
The tour guides explained how the recording studio at the UMD resembles recording studios from national television stations. It was an informative experience for students who learned that Phillip Merrill students get to experience the professionalism of being on popular broadcast television channels.
In the Canva session, the professor introduced the various tools available on the Canva app. Canva can help with all sorts of assignments in so many ways, such as creating posters, editing photos and making templates. Something learned in the session was you can make color palettes of 4 colors to then put to use with all of the other things in Canva.
Canva is mainly used for publication purposes, but LHS can find ways to incorporate it into the journalism class.
The photography session was all about how to do a photoshoot and what to pay attention to when taking photos.
Students that attended the class learned that in order to get the perfect photographs from a client, one has to prepare ideas of what one would like to do in advance. By doing this, the photographer is more professional, and can focus on other things more, like helping your client.
Helping nervous clients can be just as important as taking the pictures. By talking and connecting, the photographer can ease the subject into taking amazing pictures.
This can be applied in photography for taking cover photos. It is also good to advertise articles through social media.
Overall, J-Day was a very fun opportunity, and the students learned so many things in which they can apply to LHS journalism. Students should attend this event if they want to learn more useful things in which they can add to their journalism.
J-Day was really fun and enjoyable, and students at LHS should definitely go back given the opportunity.
