Quillstress

Website Session- July 10^th   (posted when I come back to civilization again.)

Well, this was probably the most frustrating session for me…even without counting my near terminal sunburn not allowing me think in more than two sentence bursts all day!   The presenters need to understand that when you asked us to “dream” on paper about what our class websites would look like and do…    well, um…  I write FANTASY.   I dream really BIG and in full vistas…and then all I could do with my limited palette of skills was…boxes.  Mind you, I could do nearly anything with those boxes by the end of the session and had I been a little less stinging and grumpy  (I’m blaming the sun again.) I would have noticed how much I was really learning.  With a good long edit session between NVU and Photoshop I should, in fact, be able to do most of what I envisioned.  (I’ll worry about mastering Flash another day.)  I’m now thinking about the possibilities of adding audio and video and playing with “cutting out” my own buttons for things.  I’ve been playing in the editor for hours.

What I really found amazing was the ease of actually “publishing” the site once it was complete.   I had always imagined it was at least as complicated as managing a blog, but not so at all.  The design itself (and all that linking and folder shuffling) is the thing that takes the time and that actually is a lot of fun once you start getting a feel for the design software.

(Just an aside, these workshops are really turning me into a web tutorial junkie!)

So, once again, I say  “naner naner naaaneeer…(how do you spell that?)”  to anyone who didn’t attend.   Silly you, you could have had a web realm of your own if you’d come.    ; )

Now I need to head back to Lake Michigan…and if you seeing anything crawling into the Professional Digital Portfolio sessions next week looking like a very large charcoal briquette, never fear…it’s just me.

Well, I finally have these blogs disentangled from each other, so back to business. Friday was the RCWP Homecoming day, and as a member of the “digital” writing marathon I joined Troy in playing with my new web skills by putting together a “Guess Where? Lansing” group on Flickr. Troy chauffered and we got some great shots of places around town to upload to the site. For my writing for this day (and every other this summer), hop over to Quillstress Write (you can get there from my links too). That’s where my writing and other “creative products” will go for perusal and comment if you so desire. In the meantime, I was marveling at the interativity of all these programs and features we’ve been exploring…i’ve got so many quick buttons on my brower’s tool bar it’s starting to look like the command and control panel on the space shuttle! ; ) I’m hoping to get down to some serious writing over the vaction weekend, but we’re not heading to Lake Michigan until the next week…so I have to wait to get my “place” pictures then. I have been reading from the postings by my fellow RCWPers and finding all sorts of things to think and talk about, so thanks all.

Well, what can I say about today except wahoo!

I have a blog, writing journal, wiki, photo manager, and feed aggregator (read blog subscription organizer) all in one…well, mostly one.   Unbelievable what Troy can do with just a day and a bunch of teachers on laptops.   Here I was trying to figure out how many blog accounts I was going to need just to keep myself organized through the summer’s workshops and other fun and it’s all done!

Yes, we discussed blogging; what it was and what it’s becoming.   We talked about the concerns and challenges of students, parents, administrators, and school policies against breathing of unfiltered cyberspace.   But, every concern paled next to the awesome POSSIBILITIES.   (That and the aforementioned miracle of techy architecting that Troy manged to lead us through so expertly.)   I had a lot of fun.   There are so many ideas running through my head about how I would love to use all of this in building a forum and audience for young writers…and the next moment I’m thinking about what intelligent and savvy consumers of media we need to be teaching our students to be out there in the Real World.   Needless to say, I’ll be off on a long Explore with all the tools we gathered together during this session. If you haven’t come to the workshops yet, whether you’re a TC, a pre-service teacher, or a veteran classroom curmudgeon, you MUST pick up a form or log in to the RCWP website and sign yourself up.   The only thing you’ll have to regret is the addiction to caffeine and refined sugar! = )

But, if you absolutely can’t make it here, check out the RCWP wiki (for the session notes and all of the great links our instructors guided us through) and the blog (for pod and vod casts created during the workshops…Myra and Dean did a fantastic job).

I encountered a problem with my blogspot blog (Quillstress beta, shall we say?) that wouldn’t allow me to cut and paste. As this is an insurmountable complication for one with a claustrophobic fear of writing in small boxes, that site has fallen to the demolition crew. What follows are the two posts I made about the RCWP Technology Workshops on that site. Sorry for any confusion.

RCWP Summer Insanity (8:36PM Monday, June 26th)

Well, it’s begun. Today marks the beginning of not only the RCWP Writing Marathon, but my own personal marathon summer. As there is little chance I’ll be seen outside the writing center I am already making plans to corner the market on sunless tanner. (Just a friendly little warning to any who frequent the local Rite Aid expecting to find same…)

I’m afraid this blog space is going to have a bit of a split personality as a result, though. I’d like to save my musings on the workshops and other programs I participate in as well as putting my own writing out for critique or comment. Perhaps I need two blogs. LOL! I’ll try to make it easier to follow two threads on one blog by prefacing my responses to the workshops with “RCWP”. Hopefully that will be enough to make this space navigable.

For starters, I participated in the Publishing Student Writing workshop devoted to Zines and let me say to those who missed it… = P What were you thinking?! It was fantastic. Provided with a history of Zines that was easily “crusiable” on the web (and several dozen really fascinating examples to explore), we launched into a discussion of how students use them now, how teachers could use them to publish student writing, and all the digital (as well as “paperback”) publishing conventions that define Zines. We then spent the afternoon experimenting with tools and techniques for publishing them ourselves. My brain hurts. So much great information and if I spend the rest of the summer just following all the links and leads we received I will be a web publishing pundit by August!

Over lunch I sat in on the Book Club and we discussed the phenomenon that was and is “The Simpsons” as well as what role the show had in shaping media and culture for our students. We talked about the pros and cons of teaching from various episodes; for their possibilities in teaching satire and “cultural” commentary, allusions and cultural literacy, and the concepts of parody as seen in the episodes devoted to literature and movies (i.e. The Raven, Streetcar Named Desire, etc). What I found most revealing was how easily a group of teachers could discuss episodes…seems we’ve all seen those we wanted to reference. I’ve been wondering since if perhaps “our” generation is “The Simpsons” generation and the students now are the “South Park” generation. (Lord help us.) All in all, a very interesting and energetic discussion!

RCWP Podcasting Workshop (4:39PM Tuesday, June 27th)

Most excellent, Guru Troy! Wow, and to think how little I knew this morning. We spent the morning being consumers of podcasts and by 4:30 the participants had “published” our own to the RCWP blog. Many thanks to our guinea pigs Maxi and Melissa for their time in answering our questions and kudos galore to Bev for all her work. I sort of “played” my way through the second half while she did the heavy lifting. Audacity is so much fun and I’m easily distracted. ; )

Unfortunately I could not also move the comments I received. (Thanks Troy)

meyerisland blog » Blog Archive » Webcast Academy

Check out this great link from Mr. Meyer…our webcasting media master!

The title of this blog? LOL  All punning aside, I often feel like a quill user in a cyberspace environment…but I feel sure the RCWP summer workshops are going to remedy that!