With the school semester winding down, our digital journalism class was tasked with one last assignment. Our third video slideshow has been completed! This time our slideshow focuses on Julie Esteves, the bilingual co-director of the Children's Outing Association. We followed her around at a Family Gathering Night for the HIPPY Program.

For this part of the project, I took photos, along with my partner Liz, and edited the final audio for the slideshow. I wrote the first draft for our 500 word story, which was edited by Liz, and we both worked hard in Marquette University's Wakerly Center to put all the pieces together.

I hope you enjoy.

Christmas is less than three weeks away, and winter break for college students like myself less than two weeks away. And with Christmas just around the corner, New Year's isn't much farther down the line. CNN.com recently highlighted an article on their homepage revisiting the major news stories of 2011 that dominated the headlines.

Scrolling through the article brings back to memory how many events have happened this year, from the devastating earthquakes in Japan to the end of a ten year hunt to find Osama Bin Laden, to the killing of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The article covers multiple other news stories, providing links to CNN.com's coverage with every one of them.

CNN.com also offers an interactive graphic that allows you to choose from the top 20 news stories of the last 12 months and customize your top ten. People can submit their choices and view the results of others' choices.

Reviewing all of the major news stories and just how complex they are reminded me just how daunting a task it is for CNN.com to cover so many stories with in-depth quality. And with CNN recently cutting 50 staffers, that task will prove even more difficult, as 2012 is sure to be just as exciting.

The CNN.com article ends with this: Jobs died of pancreatic cancer in October. His final words, according to his sister, were "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow!" Fitting words for 2011.

For my latest blog posting, I decided to take a look at CNN Heroes. CNN Heroes is a project CNN has undertaken to shine the spotlight on America's often unsung heroes.

CNN.com currently has 10 CNN Heroes finalists, and people who register with CNN.com (which also allows you to fill out iReports) can vote for who they think should win the award of CNN Hero of the Year.

CNN.com put together a nice multimedia package to cover their heroes, including photos, videos, graphics, and articles. CNN will also be airing a special, CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute, December 11th at 7p.m. The CNN Heroes fall into various categories: community crusaders, championing children, medical marvels, defending the planet. 

CNN has narrowed their heroes down to the top ten, all of whom are either community crusaders or championing children heroes.

CNN Heroes is definitely a nice project by CNN, offering some good hearty news, when many of my blog postings have covered CNN.com's coverage of negative news such as the deaths of Steve Jobs and Andy Rooney, and CNN.com's home page has been covered in recent weeks with reports of sexual exploitation of children by two assistant college coaches. The project also gives some well-deserved attention to people who are devoting their time and energy to helping others and trying to make the world a better place to live in.