Online Media Writing Assignment

Just one short week ago, the students at Florida Southern College were given the opportunity of a lifetime. Jamie Tworkowski, founder of the ever popular non-profit organization To Write Love On Her Arms dedicated to help those struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide was January 26th convocation speaker.

To Write Love On Her Arms, or TWLOHA for short, started in Orlando, Florida in February 2006 when a friend of a friend came to Tworkowski looking for advice and looking for answers. Since then it has grown more than Tworkowski and his team could ever imagine. They started out just by making simple tee-shirts with there ever popular headline on the front and the story of the victim on the inside. The never expected the shirts to be sold and worn nationwide. In the past five years they have been able to respond to over 150,000 in 40 countries around the globe. They have also been able to raise millions of dollars to help fund many organizations such as the National Hopeline Network as well as the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to name a few.

"The speech this morning was absolutely amazing!"Nickolas Tsikuris said right after the event, "It was probably one of the best guest speakers Florida Southern has asked to speak in a long time"

Ashley Arcail described it as "one of the most inspiring events I've been to." Many students have been taking the time to thank them and it seems as though everyone you ask on campus has only positive things to say about the choice of speaker the college offered.

Not only did Tworkowski spend his morning sharing the story with the college, he too the time later in the evening to speak once more as well as bring Dustin Kensrue of the band Thrise to play a few songs.

After the show, Laken Darst had some pretty fun news, "I met him and gave him a hug! Too bad that I didnt tell him my name. Oh well, it was an awesome experience just to get to talk to him."

Needless to say that this months Convocation was a hit and a great way to start off the semester. From all of the students here at Florida Southern, thank you Jamie Tworkowski for sharing this success story and thank you FSC for giving us the opportunity.

More about the TWLOHA Organization

Where it all began

Renee's Story

Save a life, buy a shirt

Get involved

Practicum Final

This semester throughout all of my practicum hours I have learn a lot more than I normally would in previous semesters. I believe that a big part of that is due to the campus channel being moved over to the studio. Justin Bivens was able to teach me many things about how the channel worked as well as learning everything it took to make a successful channel run. There are so many components that go in to making things run smoothly and it really does take a lot of work. For all the other majors around campus that say Communications is a joke, I would like to challenge them to work in the studio for a day and see fully understand what it takes.

Working with Wellness TV as well as the Southern Sports Network has been a great experience in seeing how a show gets put together and how the different roles played a part in making it all look its best. I have learned a lot with having to piece together packages for Wellness TV as well as running a show for the Southern Sports Network. I'm really glad I had had enough experience to step up in Wellness TV and get the show completed when Consuleo was gone for so long. With the skills I learned working with the Southern Sports network, I hope to continue to use them whether it be to help Meghan Bragg with Southern Talk or Anna Biernbaum with the FSC TV News.

This year, practicum as well as my other broadcast classes has taught me a lot more then I expected. In my opinion, I was able to be a successful broadcast major and experience everything that I should have in my first 2 years as a practicum student. I can't wait to see how much farther I will progress and where my career choice will lead me later in life.

I began realizing that I picked the right major and career path as soon as I got started in my classes freshman year, but this year has made me realize it even more. I'm glad I was able to experience everything that I did throughout this department and I hope to continue learning and growing as a broadcast major for the rest of my time here at Florida Southern.

practicum Hours Dec 1-12

Wed Dec 1

4:30-6:00

There was another sports show. This time we interviewed Jackie from the women's soccer team, and I ran the teleprompter.

(1.5 hours)

Wed Dec 8

4:30-5:30

This was the last sports show of the semester, as well as Kevin's last show ever. We interviewed Jeb from the swim team. This was the only show that I have worked on that started on time and everyone was ready early.

(1 hour)

5:30-6:00

Maggie and I gave one last go at our Wellness TV package. We recorded one more standup for her and then edited it together for the final time.

(30 min)

TOTAL: 3 hours

Practicum Hours Nov 17-30

Fri Nv 19

12:00-2:00

Maggie and I decided to get some of our editing done for our WTV package on desserts. We had an idea of how it was going to be put together and we had shot it accordingly. It took a little while to figure out how to get it to look good with no jump cuts, but we finally figured it out.

(2 hours)

Sat Nov 20

3:30-6:00

Maggie and I got together one last time today to finish up the editing for our package. It took some time to get it perfect.

(2.5 hours)

Mon Nov 22

4:30-5:00

At our last WTV meeting of the semester, Consuelo just wanted to thank us all for our hard work and talked about what will be different next semester with the show.

(30 min)

TOTAL: 5 hours

Practicum Hours Nov 10-16

Wed Nov 1o

11:30-12:30

One of the packages for the next WTV show was revised, so that meant that the anchor shoot also had to be revised. I met up with Meghan and Shauna again and we re-shot the anchor stand-ups.

(1 hour)

4:30-8:30

Practicum had gotten out early so I headed over to the studio to wait for the sports show to start. Anna and I were bored and Bivens was already messing with the campus channel so we decided to ask him how exactly it works. We found some music CD's and he explained to us that they were for then the powerpoint runs but he never got around to uploading them all. We decided to help him out but had to wait till after the sports show. The sports show got started and I worked one of the camera's. We had one of the women's soccer players as the interviewee and she seemed a bit nervous. Once the show was over, Anna and I got right back to work with Bivens. We finished up the dozens of CD's that needed uploading, and he even took the time to show us the map of the school with a clear label of the campus channel.

(4 hours)

Mon Nov 15

4:15-5:00

We shot the Holiday goodbye for Wellness TV, it took a few tries but we finally got it down. Since everyone was there, we decided to have our meeting outside right there where we filmed.

(45 min)

Tues Nov 16

12:45-1:45

Maggie and I met up at the wellness center and decided to get part of our package done for the last WTV episode of the semester. We set up our camera outside the greek quad and asked people if we could interview them. We gave them options of classic holiday desserts and asked them if they could tell us what they thought had the most calories.

(1 hour)

TOTAL: 6 hours 45 min

Practicum Hours Nov 3-9

Wed Nov 3

12:30-1:00

Maggie and I had a few questions about the Oscar competition, so we decided to meet with Dr. Bradford and see if she could help us out a bit. She was able to answer our questions as well as show us some videos of past winners. We were able to com up with a few small ideas that we will hopefully build on.

(30 min)

5:30-6:00

Wellness TV set up the anchor shoot for today and Consuelo had asked me to help shoot it. I met up with Megan Bragg and Shannah in the office and we decided on where to actually shoot the standups in the different places.

(30 min)

Mon Nov 8

4:30-5:00

We had one of the last Wellness tv meetings of the semester. Consuelo was able to come and we were all happy to see her. We discussed how there was only going to be one more show for the semester and ideas on the packages that will be shown. Maggie and I were assigned to the Healthy Eating about what kinds of holiday desserts would be better than others.

(30 min)

Tues Nov 9

4:00-5:00

Maggie and I met up and started researching out WTV topic of healthy holiday desserts. WE put the foods into groups and looked up the average calories of each. From there we narrowed it down to the most common and most popular desserts for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays

(1 hour)

5:00-5:30

Since Maggie and I were already together, we decided to take a little bit of time to brainstorm some more ideas. We googled articles about this years Oscars to see what has been talked about so far and tried to figure a way to incorporate it into our script idea.

(30 min)

TOTAL: 3 hours

Practicum Hours Oct 27-Nov 2

Mon Nov 1

4:30-5:15

Maggie and I are interested in submitting a video for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards contest. We got together and started planning on how we would go about this. We came up with small things such as where we would shoot the video as well as what we could wear. We carefully read over the rules but we have a few questions as to how we should go about writing the script so we are planning on meeting with Dr. Bradford on Wednesday at 12:30 if she is free :)

(45 min)