Students from across the state traveled to the University of Mississippi Thursday for the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association’s annual fall workshop where knowledge and collaboration intersected for the benefit of high school journalism.

MSPA Director R.J. Morgan said this year’s workshop was attended by more than 315 students and there will be another workshop next week at the University of Southern Mississippi.

“This was another record crowd for us at a Fall Workshop, and that’s a credit to the advisers for getting the kids here,” he said.

Morgan said classes offered ranged from executing yearbook themes and covering high school sports to selling ads and perfecting on-camera personas.

“The smartphone photography and the hype video sessions went over really well, and that’s what we want,” he said. “We want to keep being innovative and keep giving these kids some new tools to take advantage of. There’s a lot of things these kids can do today that are amazing.”

Oxford High School junior Drake Logan said this was his second year to attend one of the fall workshops.

“We went to Straight to the Source,” he said. “He talked about how to formulate feature stories, who to talk to about certain types of stories and how to write things that are current, nearby and appealing to people.”

Logan, the opinions editor for his school’s newspaper, The Charger, said he thinks the fall workshops are helpful for a number of reasons.

“I think they kind of open your eyes to a different angle and a different way of looking at things because you’re around other people from other schools,” he said. “You know, when you’re discussing in class, you can get different ideas from different publications and get some depth to what you do.”

First-time attendee Austin Wilkins, a sophomore from Madison Central High School, learned skills he’ll be able to take back and apply to his school’s yearbook.

“We learned to start planning ahead of time and to get a good look at our dates,” he said. “We also need to find the right people to get information from and get different points of view, like maybe a senior, a teacher and a volunteer.”

Yearbook staffer Maegan Whittington, a junior from West Union Attendance Center, attended a session on smartphone photography.

“We learned how to edit pictures better,” she said. “He told us to download some apps like Snapseed and Adobe Photoshop, and he taught us focus on shapes, colors and tones.”

The session included a break where students went out and shot their own photos using the skills they had just learned, Whittington said.

“When we got back, we used the apps he told us to download to edit the photos,” she said. “I learned a lot, and I’m looking forward to coming back next year.”