The document discusses the use of Adobe Spark to enhance news literacy among journalism students by creating engaging social video stories. It outlines an assignment where students produce short video slideshows of current events, helping them develop skills in news curation and social media engagement. The author reflects on student preferences for online communication and suggests evolving assessment methods to incorporate different social media platforms.

1. Leigh Wright
Murray State University
SparkingTheir Interest
BEA IGNITE

2. Sparking Their Interest
Using Adobe Spark to
teach news literacy
through social video
Leigh Landini Wright
Murray (Ky.) State University
You can find me at:
@leighlwright

3. Why news literacy?

4. Where do your students get their news?

5. ✖ 85 percent of millennials say keeping up
with the news is at least somewhat
important (CNN Newsource)

6. And yet when you ask a class …

7. So what’s a j-prof to
do?
Engage them in research, empower them to do news on
social video

8. Role of social video
✖ Facebook users consumed 100 millions
hours of video (Hootsuite, 2017)
✖ Tweets with videos are more likely to be
retweeted than tweets with photo only
(Twitter, 2017)
✖ Instagram videos for publishers produced
53 percent more engagement than photos
alone (Newswhip, 2017)

9. ✖ But let’s not intimidate beginning journalism
students with heavy gear. Enter video apps
with social media.

10. If you can’t beat them, join them …

11. Assignment for beginning newswriting class
✖ Use Adobe Spark video app (or the free
online site) to create social video stories
about current events.

12. ✖ Students had to create a
five-photo slideshow with
five news stories for the
week.
✖ Content, thus, was short
and snackable (generally
30-70 seconds).
✖ Embedded on class
Facebook page.

14. Examples
✖ https://spark.adobe.com/video/
12O56NKA4CC8C
✖ https://www.facebook.com/
lindsey.l.coleman/videos/
10211651271491719/

15. Skills gained
✖ Curation of news stories for social media.
✖ How to write to pic for broadcast.
✖ Become comfortable with the sound of
voice as a narrator.
✖ Know when/why/how to use a text overlay
for social media videos.
✖ Know how to share snackable social video
content.

16. Diversity and Inclusiveness
✖ Since Spark has
templates that can
used as text overlays,
international students
and a special-needs
student chose to do
SILENT videos.

17. Things I learned …
✖ Students don’t really
want to admit they
have a Facebook page.
✖ Students might want to
have separate
accounts for school or
warn family they have
to post for school.

18. Assessment

19. Changes for this year
✖ Mixture of silent/narrated videos with a well-
written and snappy FB post, not just the
video.
✖ Exploring moving to Instagram and/or
Twitter.
✖ Students need to communicate with each
other on social media via helpful comments.

20. Thanks!
Contact info:
You can find me at:
@leighlwright
ewright@murraystate.edu
216A Wilson Hall
Murray, KY 42071
270-809-4741