Kent State University - School of Journalism and Mass Communication
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
| The
long anticipated renovation of Kent State University's Franklin
Hall is finally finished.
Even as JMC students and faculty began making Franklin Hall their new home, electrical contractors were putting the finishing touches on the 20,000 sq. ft high-tech addition to the building. The addition to the 81-year-old Franklin Hall houses a fully equipped HD television production studio, a 150-seat interactive auditorium and lecture hall, and a converged student media newsroom. Dozens of mulitmedia-capable classrooms open onto the muted gray hallways, equipped with rows of shiny new Macs, camcorders, podcast stations and digital projectors, all linked through a central network. In the two-story open foyer of Franklin Hall an array of plasma video screens covers two walls, wired to broadcast live content originating anywhere in the building. Opposite, a modest display cabinet holds a few artifacts from previous generations of KSU journalism students: old typewriters, scrapbooks, a wooden linotype case. The glass-enclosed Hirsch Lab overlooks this mini-museum. Down the hall a two story glass think-tank serves as
a conference room. |
Transparency is built into Franklin Hall. And so are the ideas of flexibility, interactivity, convergence and collaboration. At the new JMC, they're not just teaching concepts, they're part of the physical structure. On this site you'll find six examples of how Franklin Hall is an extension of how Kent JMC approaches teaching and learning for the 21st century: •Gannett Collaborative Classroom •TV2 Studio and Broadcast Control Room •Carl E. Hirsch Media Convergence Laboratory •FirstEnergy Interactive Auditorium Welcome to a new era in journalism education at Kent State University. --Jeff St.Clair, for The Co-Lab |