The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports that nearly 70 percent of high schoolers don’t get enough shuteye on school nights. And when they don’t, they’re more likely than their well-rested counterparts to drink and smoke, be couch potatoes, frequently drink soda and even contemplate suicide.

The online news site California Watch quotes a CDC scientist who says that sleep is no luxury and that parents should understand that sleeping and laziness aren’t equivalent.

So what’s the situation at your school? Is lack a sleep a factor in the classroom? Do students nod off because they didn’t get enough zzzzz’s, not because the lecture was a bore? With a few interviews, you could have great local angles to this important and interesting story.

See the California Watch story here and the study here.

The national survey – the fourth since 2004 – was conducted by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which aims to improve journalism as a way of fostering democracy.

Among the major findings:

• The more that students use social media, the more likely they are to support free expression.
• Students and teachers alike are more supportive of the First Amendment than in Knight’s three previous surveys, though the gains are greater among students.
• Teachers are far less likely than students to agree that students “should be allowed to report controversial issues in their student newspapers without the approval of school authorities.”
• Teachers are more likely to think that social media has been harmful rather than helpful when it comes to student learning.
• The overwhelming majority of teachers think it’s “very important for high schools to teach students how to assess the truthfulness of information that they get online.”

The survey was conducted between April and June of this year. The accuracy of results for student responses is plus or minus 1 percent; for teachers, fewer of whom were polled, it is plus or minus 3.5 percent.

For more information on the Knight Foundation, go to http://www.knightfoundation.org/.

This summer I attended the Reynolds High School Journalism Institute at the University of Nevada, Reno. Together 34 journalism teachers selected from almost 90 applicants nationwide spent two weeks learning from media professionals and each other about producing publications online. The YouBet Gazette can be found at http://reynoldsreno.ning.com/. With the increasing pace and growth in social media, it became a perfect opportunity to sharpen skills on interfacing with technology and developing ways to use that with students.

We teachers were lucky to be under the tutelage of Karl Grubaugh, the Dow Jones Journalism Teacher of the Year and adviser for Granite Bay High School Gazette in Cameron Park, Calif. His publication is nationally recognized, and I plan to implement many of his instructional and organizational methods in my writing classes. I remain available to share any materials and links with our staff this year.

Sofia Denise Marie Close

Allow me to share a few of my favorites: David Calvert, who specializes in corporate and editorial journalism and is a visual storyteller in Reno; Dori Maynard’s Fault Lines Project, which examines content through racial, gender, geographical and age perspectives; Frank LoMonte, director of Student Press Law Center, who explained and defended California Ed Code 48907, and Frank X. Mullen, an historian who reports for the Reno Gazette and broke the story on the Fallon cancer cluster.

Certainly we can agree today, in this fast-moving world and with the wide availability of many tools for communication, that things are changing. Todd Felts, director of graduate studies and assistant professor at Reynolds,  said, “Social media is being meta-noid.”

Students who write clearly and coherently on non-fiction topics have an advantage both in academics and employment. See this website for the benefits for students when learning journalism: http://www.jideas.org/naa_dvorak.php.

Dean Bill Winter told us we didn’t have to give up two weeks of our summer to go to Nevada, but we did because we want to better serve our students. “If it’s good for kids…”

Because it’s good for kids, we need a strong journalism program. Because it’s good for kids, we need an online newspaper. See what we have so far at http://www.pantherspresent.webs.com/

Social responsibility clearly comes to the forefront in the conversation regarding how we as a society engage in communication through media and the practice of democracy.

Time moves on and so human habits and our dependency on tools to further improve our lifestyles changes frequently. The formulation of social norms and values keeps evolving as new technology emerges; yet, a basic economic principle of demand therefore supply continues.

What responsibilities do the media producers and presenters have to promote and preserve the ideals of democracy? If the public demands that they do, then when they don’t why is there no public outcry?

We need to question the direction media takes the audience in the instantaneous sharing of worldwide information. Today most people sustain their identities and communicate broadly through Internet, smartphones, networking, and simultaneous broadcasting. The leadership within the newsroom should sustain the highest standards to uphold truth with integrity therefore transferring honesty to the public domain. Tolerance plays a reverent part in this conversation since truth through discretion means everybody sees and values differently, and that’s democratic.

We teachers of social media and journalism have to meet the youth in their arena and hold the conversation with them about questioning and improving upon their habits in communication to facilitate equity. It’s not about me but the responsibility holds for all of us. We are challenged by convenience, instant gratification and greed. A moral stamp of approval is needed on every journalist’s forehead to guarantee commitment to informing honestly. News and social media impact the world significantly. People can ask the questions and demand the truth. Until we do, the supply will remain biased, projected and not free. Let public debate renew the purpose of media to inform honestly.

Sofia Close teaches 11th- and 12th-graders in Expository Reading and Writing. Other duties include Senior Project and The Panther Presents news publication. Her students are concurrently enrolled in classes at Contra Costa College.

It’s time to go online.

Don’t panic. It’s not that hard. Plenty have others have plowed the same ground, and the Journalism Education Association has cultivated the best of what they’ve learned.

At last year’s conference in Anaheim, JEA’s Digital Media Committee resolved to create a guide for high school media programs. Aaron Manfull, the committee chair, said they reviewed more than 300 posts on the JEA listserv, synthesizing the best of the bunch into 13 categories:

Planning, platform, curriculum, social media, staff structure/planning, advertising, content, comments, Google Docs, law and ethics, publicity/marketing, analytics and tools.

The result is a trove of practical information that will take you from start to finish.

To get going, click on this link.

For perhaps the first time, the state has accurate figures on graduation and dropout rates at the school, district, county and statewide levels. That means student journalists can do groundbreaking stories on how well their schools do compared to other local schools and schools elsewhere.

Results are broken down by race, gender, grade and program, giving reporters a chance to look beneath the surface.

Across California, the dropout rate for the 2009-10 year was nearly one in five. Did your school do better or worse? What programs, if any, do school officials have in place to improve the numbers? Why are dropout rates important to educational success?

For an overview story on the figures, check out this San Francisco Chronicle story. The state’s press release is here. And the starting point for looking up statistics on your school, district or county is here.

Need help navigating the numbers? We’re glad to point the way. Just click on the “contact us” link on the Caljournalism home page.

Just email Steve O’Donoghue at the California Scholastic Journalism Initiative. Put “free curriculum” in the subject line and your name, school, and email address in the body.

In return, Steve will answer back with a link to a Dropbox folder full of Word, Powerpoint and PDF files.

Steve’s email (written out to foil spammers): steveod at pacbell dot net

The report is an outgrowth of a report six years earlier by the Carnegie Corporation and Knight Foundation that posed a series of questions about how well major J-schools were prepared to meet the needs of the news industry. Since then digital technology has wrought major changes in journalism and the schools have been under great pressure to adapt.

The new report attempts to measure the changes and forecast the future of journalism education.

Other schools examined are Arizona State University, Columbia University; University of Maryland, University of Missouri, University of Nebraska, University of North Carolina, Northwestern University, Syracuse University and University of Texas at Austin.

Josh Wolf, who served seven months in federal prison in 2007 for refusing to reveal sources during a protest in San Francisco, was accused of trespassing during his coverage of the Berkeley protest. Scheduled to receive his master’s degree in journalism, Wolf said he would not graduate if he did not complete the essay, according to the Contra Costa Times.

Read the full story here.