Steinhardt Blogs Offer Window Into Student Experience
By Timothy Farrell
This fall, the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development added a new tool to attract prospective students to its programs: student blogs. Seven undergraduate and graduate students from various departments within the school are blogging about life at NYU. The blogs are hosted on the Steinhardt site http://steinhardt. nyu.edu/blogs/students.
“Our hope in creating the student blogs is to provide a unique window into the day-to-day experience of NYU Steinhardt students—from midterms and papers to social life and experiencing the city itself as a campus,” says Lindsay Wright, Steinhardt’s assistant dean for planning and communication. “Official publications offer one view of the school. But prospective students appreciate hearing an unvarnished, unscripted take on the School that a blog provides.”
Last spring, Steinhardt’s marketing and Web development staff accepted applications from students for the position of Steinhardt blogger. Students were offered their choice of electronic gadgets, including BlackBerrys, Panasonic digital camcorders, or Sony digital cameras, in return for a commitment to post at least one blog entry each week.
Although many NYU students maintain their own individual blogs, Steinhardt is the first school at NYU to host a collection of student blogs on its homepage. Weblogs, or blogs, are online journals that offer opinion, commentary, and other content, in addition to links to news sources, entertainment sites, and other blogs. A growing number of other schools, including Hamilton College and MIT, feature student blogs on their home pages.
The students attended an orientation session at the start of the semester to learn how to use their new equipment and how to post their blog entries. They also received instruction on issues of copyright to help them navigate the tricky world of intellectual property.
“We wanted the students to make informed decisions about the kind of content they can safely post to their blog,” says Wright.
Students describe all aspects of NYU life on their blogs, from descriptions of coursework and student teaching to accounts of their weekend activities and travels. The blogs, wholly designed and maintained by the students, feature numerous video clips, digital pictures, and links to other sites.
Jessica Jinn, a sophomore in the department of media, culture, and communication, appreciates the platform that the blog gives her.
“It’s nice to have a medium to communicate on a larger scale,” says Jinn. Titled “The East Coast Ramblings of a West Coast Girl,” her blog features descriptions of her explorations around the city, as well as short videos and hand-drawn cartoons. Jinn looks forward to blogging about her experience at NYU in Paris, where she will study next semester.
