Introducing the social media treasure hunt

Concerned that journalists spend too much time behind their desks in the virtual world.

Well Paul Bradshaw is as well so much so that he has devised a Social Media Treasure Hunt for students on his online journalism course.

The game says Paul will

* Get them meeting people in person rather than virtually – a much more effective way of building social capital

* Get them away from a desk. It seems to me that most people approach online journalism as a deskbound job – actually, it opens up enormous opportunities for production on the move: moblogging, liveblogging, photoblogging

* Get them to open their eyes, ears and noses. These students have spent 18 months learning how to be journalists – looking for angles, structuring a story. Now I’m asking them to unlearn some of that when they approach a blog: put out unfinished material; observations; raw material. Sharing – not processing. That can be a hard habit to get into.

Read more about the rules here