Typically I start lecture with the reminder of “Please turn off and store your cell phone.”

But today, I asked the students in my 8th-period lecture to get out their cell phones. As you can see, everyone has one.

We’d started class with a discussion of what they’d learned from the panel of editors who spoke to class on Tuesday, from the advisory council panels held on campus yesterday, and from the College’s Job & Internship Fair today (for those who had attended the advisory council panels or job fair).

One of the themes: The importance of having abilities in more than one media platform/having multimedia skills. A student who shared that advice from the Public Relations Advisory Council panel said that she was very concerned about not having multimedia skills.

That’s when I told them to get out their cell phones. All of them have multimedia skills in terms of being consumers — texting and taking photos with their phones, having Facebook pages and posting regularly, and downloading music to their iPods and mp3 players. Now they need to be thinking of how those same platforms can be used by the media and by them as future media interns and employees.

In terms of not having multimedia skills to include on their resumes, I told the class that they’d feel better in just over a week, as all of them will have a blog. Right now, only about five percent of the class does. Blogging is the writing assignment for next week.