Brazilian journalists can now apply for a new online course on Animation and Visualization of Data

The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas will be offering a four-week online course on “Interactive Journalism: Animation and Visualization of Data,” in Portuguese for Brazilian journalists from July 30, 2012 through August 24, 2012. The instructor will be Mariana Santos, motion and interaction designer at The Guardian.

This course is intended for designers, illustrators, journalists and developers who enjoy the creative part of the storytelling process.

Journalists who apply need at least one year minimum of experience working with Adobe Illustrator and / or Photoshop, and knowledge of Adobe After Effects will be useful, but not necessary, as journalists will learn how to use this software during the course.

Journalists from Brazil can apply to this course until July 20, 2012, by 5 p.m. (Austin, Texas time).

More details about the course can be found here.

The journalists accepted into the online course will pay a $60 administrative fee and a certificate of participation will be issued to those who comply with the course’s requirements.

This four-week online course will help journalists to learn how to communicate information through graphic representation, how to create data visualizations, and how to tell compelling stories via the visual.

Santos is a motion and interaction designer at The Guardian. She is part of the interactive team at the newspaper. She has a degree in communication design from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon. Prior to her work at The Guardian, she worked in animation and graphic design for several other media companies in Europe.

This online course is divided into weekly modules containing multimedia presentations and links to online resources. Most of the course activities can be followed in the days and times more appropriate to each student, and a live webinar will be held each week during the course. Exercises, online discussions and additional assignments will also be part of the curriculum. Participants can expect to spend 10-15 hours per week on the course.

The course will be taught using the Knight Center’s distance learning platform that has benefited more than 6,000 journalists from Latin American and the Caribbean, since it was created in the fall of 2003.

The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas was created in 2002 by Professor Rosental Alves at the University of Texas at Austin School of Journalism. It was created thanks to generous donation from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Center also receives contributions from other donors, including the Open Society Foundations and The University of Texas at Austin. The Center’s main goal is to help journalists in Latin American and the Caribbean improve the quality of journalism in their countries.