Strengthening Community, Tips

Podcasts are audio or video programs you can subscribe to via the internet. They may be produced by individuals in their basements, community groups, or media conglomerates. Just about any topic that interests you will be represented by a podcast. If you subscribe to, say, "Health Politics with Dr. Mike Magee" you will automatically receive a weekly audio program on your computer. You'll need iTunes or some other free podcasting software on your computer to listen to the program, which you can do at any time that suits you. The Health Politics web page has instructions, as do many other podcast home pages.

The second National Summit for Community Wireless Networks will be held March 31-April 2, 2006 in Champaign-Urbana, IL. It's the largest gathering of community wireless networking developers, implementers and allies focused on building the alliance of technologists, policy experts, and implementers, and encouraging participants to discuss the great variety of challenges and opportunities facing the movement.

Learn about the collaboration styles of various ethnic and cultural groups from this online toolkit. "It offers resources that discuss barriers to cross-cultural collaboration and provide methods for assessing and improving communication patterns and cultural competence. Resources include: Stages of Intercultural Sensitivity, How to Use Comparisons of Cultural Patterns, Communication Patterns and Assumptions, Summary of Normative Communication Styles and Values, and Ten Myths That Prevent Collaboration Across Cultures." (Source: National Association of School Psychologists)

This federal web site has resources on physical fitness, nutrition, preventive care, and avoiding risky behavior. Follow the eight links with helpful descriptions to more government health sites.

Interactive narratives are informational and storytelling experiences designed and produced for the web. They leverage great design, visual journalism and rich-media content. There's a Weblog for folks who want to put up sites to share and discuss. A database of narratives and links and resources on producing Interactive Narratives and web design. From Hurricane Katrina diaries to newspaper stories online, you'll enjoy this only with a high speed connection.

Here's a great resource to help you address the health and development issues in your community. On the site you'll find guidelines, real-life examples, a trouble-shooting guide, and more. Pull-down menus are organized by under these topics: Learn a Skill, Plan the Work, Solve a Problem, Explore Best Processes and Practices, and Connect with Others.

Poynter On-line's columnist Thomas T. Huang writes about why it's important for each journalist to write a personal mission statement. "That might sound hokey or touchy-feely, but bear with me. Personal mission statements can drive us and affect how we conduct daily journalism. They can guide us through tough times." If your journalism practice could use a bit of inspiration, take a moment to read his entire column online.

J-Lab's new how-to site for community journalism is a companion to the New Voices citizen media initiative. J-Learning will cover Web hosting, HTML coding, digital photography, new media reporting and more.

PDFonline.com allows you to create PDF files from a wide variety of formats, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and JPEG files. Just attach a document by browsing to it on your local computer (PC or Mac), choose a file name for the new PDF and enter your e-mail address. Within minutes, you will receive your PDF file via e-mail. File sizes are restricted to 2MB. To reduce Spam, consider using a free Hotmail or Yahoo address just for this purpose.

The Alliance for Health Reform, a nonpartisan organization, has published a book especially for journalists, but of interest to any who want to know about health policy issues. Each chapter contains a long list of resources and plenty of story ideas. Available for download, in English and Spanish, as one large pdf file, or chapter-by-chapter.