This is my third year attending the University of Florida, and let me say that out of all the courses I have taken, Journalists Toolkit was one of, if not, the best. I am honestly stunned at how much I learned in just 13 weeks.
I became better at picture taking as we learned the basics of photography. Being exposed to Audacity in this class, I found out that editing audio is much easier than I thought. Seeing the final product on soundslides was also fun and exciting to me and to my friends who viewed my projects online. Also, the final part of the class on HTML and CSS refreshed my memories of Web design.
There is no doubt that I have enhanced my technical and practical skills, but the most important thing that I can take from this class is the art of story-telling. This course has challenged my comfort zone, and made me think outside the box to come up with stories that truly mean something. I am really proud of the three soundslides I made so far. Yes, many of the pictures looked good and most of the audio sounded clear, but the topics of the stories were what made the soundslides interesting and worthwhile.
I loved this course and can’t wait to start Toolkit2 next semester.
Eisa Al Nashmi 