Quill and Scroll teams with SPJ to provide free training on Google tools for journalists

Google Tools and More for Your Classrooms and Newsrooms

Sign up today to take part in a training provided free by Quill and Scroll in partnership with the Society of Professional Journalists. The training is set for 2 to 4 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 23.

Learn about all of the free Google tools that can help your newsroom build interactive charts, maps, visualizations and more. This is a hands-on workshop, so be sure to bring your laptop and smartphone.

 Tools we’ll cover: Google Flourish, Google Dataset Search, Google Fact Check Explorer, Google Earth, MapChecking.com, Google Trends, MyMaps, Earth Engine Timelapse, data scraping with Google Sheets and more.

Any student or adviser at a Quill and Scroll charter school (check here to find out), or any Q&S member who has moved on to college and/or professional journalism is welcome to register using the form at the bottom of this page.

You may register as late as Tuesday, Sept. 22.

The Instructor — Mike Reilley

Mike is an SPJ digital trainer who has taught Google News Initiative tools to more than 6,500 journalists and educators in the past four years. He also is founder of and trainer in the Penny Press Digital LLC, a consulting and training company.

When he’s not doing trainings, he teaches data and multimedia journalism at the University of Illinois-Chicago, where he has been a full-time faculty member for five years.

A former reporter at the LA Times and web editor at the Chicago Tribune, Mike served for 13 years as a faculty member at Northwestern, Arizona State University and DePaul University, teaching digital journalism to hundreds of students and professional journalists.

He holds journalism degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (undergrad) and Northwestern University (masters). Mike founded and updates the research site The Journalist’s Toolbox (journaliststoolbox.org) for SPJ and runs the Chicago data site, The Red Line Project (redlineproject.org).

Twitter:@journtoolbox | Email: [email protected]

The Schedule (Times are Central Daylight)

2 p.m. to 3 p.m.: Google basics: Fact-Check Explorer, MapChecking.com, verification tools for photos and videos, Google Scholar for sourcing and Google Earth Timelapse and Google Earth measure tool. If time: Google Trends.

3 p.m. to 4 p.m.: Google Dataset Search, Google Public Data Explorer (focus on Census), scraping data with Google Sheets and other tools, Google Flourish for graphics and mapping. If time: Google MyMaps.