CAR Conference: Preliminary Mini-Boot Camp Schedule

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For CAR beginners, special morning panels will be coordinated with hands-on classes in the afternoon. The combination will give participants a mini-boot camp experience with plenty of opportunity to apply what they learn to reporting and writing news stories. Beginners' track participants are automatically signed up for the following classes, following the IRE and NICAR boot camp curriculum. This will offer 10 hours of hands-on instruction in Internet, spreadsheets and database management. The 36 participants will be divided into two teams: Red Team and Green Team.

This schedule is subject to change. Please check back for the latest information.

Choose to see the schedule for a particular day or scroll down to see the whole schedule:


Friday
Time Panel or Hands-On Class
8:30-8:50 a.m. Preview and how to get the most out of this conference
9-10:10 a.m. Internet 101: Finding and searching effectively online
10:20-11:30 a.m. Internet 202: The invisible Web and other secrets of online world
2-3:10 p.m. Excel 1: Performing simple calculations and sorting
3:20-4:30 p.m. Excel 2: Calculating ratios and rates in Excel
4:40-5:50 p.m. Importing data into Excel
6-7:20 p.m. Open Lab; review the day's exercises, Q&A, Web sites and search techniques (RED TEAM)
Saturday
Time Panel or Hands-On Class
9-10:10 a.m. Main Street: Making CAR work at smaller news organizations
Secrets Revealed: Great federal datasets you may be missing
10:20-11:30 a.m. 1984 and its sequels: Electronic information - open records laws and negotiations to get data
11:40 a.m.-12:50 p.m. The Magician: Doing quick CAR stories from simple applications and tools
2-3:10 p.m. Moving into Access: Learn filtering with Excel, an introduction to filtering with Access
3:20-4:30 p.m. Access 2: Summarizing databases with counting and summing
4:40-5:50 p.m. Access 3: How to join tables, matching information from file to another
6-7:20 p.m. Open Lab; review the day's exercises, Q&A, Web sites and search techniques (GREEN TEAM)
Sunday
Time Panel or Hands-On Class
9-10:10 a.m. Build your own database: The ins and outs of how to structure and maintain a database you create.
10:20-11:30 a.m. A final Q&A session, exercise, and how to take it all home.