iOgrapher gives students a handle on creating stories with the iPad Mini

Daniela Gonzalez, a member of the Sentinel staff, focuses her iOgrapher/iPad Mini unit at a World Cup crowd in San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza during NBTB’s 2014 session. Fitting the iPad Mini into the iOgrapher unit gave students a handle on shoots.

Every year, we do our best to put great tools into the hands of great students who want to tell stories and need to be able to tell them in the ways we want to read, see and hear them.

Because our students are doing real stories on the Stanford campus every day, plus heading into San Francisco on reporting trips, we want to know that they have the technology as well as the skills and creativity to get the stories they want.

This year, the iOgrapher — an unassuming red plastic case that acts as a durable frame for the iPad Mini, and gives students a better, safer and easier way to take photos and videos with their tablets — has been a hit with campers and team leaders.

“I think that the most beneficial part was that it stabilized the videos, because normally when you’re just carrying an iPad by itself, the human body is naturally not stable, and shaky,” said Casey Miller, editor-in-chief of a multimedia feature package on the Ukraine, which students compiled after a visit to the International Reporters & Editors Conference in San Francisco on Friday, June 27.

“Additionally, this tool is unlike any other iPad accessory that I’ve ever seen, because it allows multiple other pieces to be attached, such as a microphone and a light — anything can be attached to these. And yet they’re so small and compact,” Miller said.

Like NBTB, iOgrapher is part of the world of scholastic journalism. Chief executive, inventor and founder David Basulto is the media arts and animation instructor at award-winning San Marino High School in southern California.