Board member blog post: Women and technology – Some Resources

By Sandra Fish, JAWS Board Member

Next to JAWS CAMP, my favorite conference is NICAR, Investigative Reporters & Editors’ annual National Institute on Computer Assisted Reporting’s geeky weekend.

One of the highlights this year was Saturday’s night’s “Women in CAR” dinner, where 40 women got together at a Louisville, Ky., restaurant. Former JAWS board member Jennifer LaFleur of ProPublica helped put the dinner together and recalled one year when fewer than 10 women attended a similar NICAR dinner. That so many of us got together this year is a great sign that women journalists are getting more involved in technology.

Next year, NICAR will be in Baltimore – it’s a great opportunity to learn about using data in stories, with plenty of hands-on training.

But there are other resources out there for women looking for tech training, too.

I subscribe to daily emails from Skillcrush, as well as their Twitter account. They’re offering online classes on building portfolio sites, HTML, CSS and more for $125 per class.

The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas offers a series of free MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) for journalists. I recently took their introduction to info graphics and visualization class, and it was really informative. The deadline for the next course is past, but keep an eye on their page for future classes.

CodeAcademy  offers free, self-paced tutorials on HTML/CSS, PHP, JavaScript, Python, Ruby and more.

Code With Me is offering two-day workshops on HTML, CSS and JavaScript with lots of hands-on help. Their next workshop is in Portland in early May.

Lisa Williams, a Knight News Challenge winner, is collecting resources on programming at her Tumblr, Life & Code. She organized a great session on women, code and the future at the recent National Conference for Media Reform.

As we prepare for October’s CAMP, we’re creating a menu of technology training aimed at beginners through more advanced skills, including group sessions and one-on-one tutorials.

These are just a few of the resources I like – do you have others? Share them in the comments!