The Power of Technology

Nicole Austin
Team Howard University

Mac Notebooks sat atop the tables in the the conference room designated for the Talents and Tools workshop - "This is Serious! Developing Information Toys and News Games".

Attendee's listened intently as they took advantage of the availability of the free wi-fi offered at the ASNE convention . The "information highway" ran parallel to the information given.

Nora Paul, director of the institute for new media studies at the University of Minnesota and Joshua Hatch, interactive director for USA Today led the discussion.

In the 50 minute seminar they touched on: interactive news games, geared towards making news fun;the use of maps to locate homicides and airport reliability, among other things and web tools like dmTools and Dabble.

The crowd non-verbally interacted with both Paul and Hatch during their respective lectures, but more focus was given to Paul's final slide. He demonstrated a unique web device, instituted by USA Today, used to find deceased soldiers by name, age, race, gender and marital status.