đź“… Winter 2022: Tuesdays 4-6 pm, Fisk 111
Are you looking to level up your skills? Or just trying to figure out where to start? Come to Open Lab! We sometimes have a bit of organized programming, but it’s mostly meant to be a place where you can work on self-paced tutorials and exercises, or maybe get together with a friend to work on a project. Or heck, even your data or coding homework
Help us build this resource: if you try things here, let us know if you like or hate them. If you find other things you think should be here, let us know!
Learn about telling stories with data
Learn about news product development
Learn the lingo (concepts and buzzwords)
Understand how the Internet works
Learn about Artificial Intelligence and Journalism
Why work on your project at Open Lab instead of in your dorm or apartment?
While many links in this guide are to things on the open web, a few are to resources Northwestern subscribes to. We recommend that you set up your access to these right away, both to be ready if we link to things in them, and also because there will be a lot more in them that could be great but we just haven’t found yet!
Guided tutorials are great, but there’s some kinds of learning that only come from trying to solve real problems and getting into and out of the inevitable jams that happen. We encourage students to pay attention to things they see on the web that they admire: sometimes you can make a good project out of trying to understand how those were made, even if you ultimately “break off” just a small part and work to understand that better. Or, here are some ideas: