By Mary Gabrielle Bautista
Last September 16 and 17, Malayan Colleges Laguna (MCL) hosted a Campus Journalism Workshop for the student-journalists of Southville-1 Elementary School, Cabuyao, Laguna. Southville-1 is an adopted school of MCL since 2007. The workshop was a joint project of the Community Service and Relations Office (CSRO), College of Arts and Science (CAS) and the Multimedia Communication Arts Society (MULTICA). Faculty members from MCL’s College of Arts and Science, and the College of Information Technology served as speakers for the sessions on writing, cartooning, photojournalism, and layouting – the basic tasks of each publication.
Writing was the main topic for the first day. The elementary school students were divided into two groups to attend the parallel workshops on News and Feature Writing. The students switched rooms at the end of each session to ensure that all participants have attended the two sessions. The News Writing session was facilitated by Prof. Hailey Ferrer of the CAS; and the Feature Writing session by Prof. Jhona Niem also from CAS.
After lunch break, sessions on Sports Writing and Writing in Filipino took place with Prof. Oliver Castillo and Dr. Elizabeth Nuncio facilitating the workshops respectively. During the sessions, students were able to tap into their creative juices in order to produce desirable written outputs.
The more visual aspect of journalism was the focus on the second day. Prof. Arnel Orda of the CAS facilitated the workshop on cartooning. This workshop had been exciting for the students, especially for those who were already well capable of drawing. Prof. Ma. Rovilla Sudaprasert was the facilitator of the workshop on Photojournalism, a topic made more exciting by the MMA students who were kind enough to let the kids touch their DSLRs. Everyone exerted effort to be able to capture the essence of photojournalism. The last topic was on lay-outing by Prof. Elenita Red, wherein their previous articles and artworks were used in the sample newspaper lay-outs.
Prof. James Ronald O. Mesina, director of the CSRO said that “this project is part of our advocacy for lifelong learning where we aid schools in promoting education so that in the long run, such learning could be transmitted to the other fragments of our society. The CSRO is very thankful to our faculty members who served as speakers, to our students particularly the MULTICA members headed by their president Amra Mahmood Sultana, and the Multimedia Arts program of the College of Arts and Science under the leadership of Prof. Joahna Eduarte (MMA Program Chair) and Dr. Joy Hofilena (CAS Dean). The CSRO looks forward to having meaningful partnership with these departments in the future”.
The workshop ended at around 5:00 PM with the awarding of certificates.
