Suppl_eMINTS

A Busy Week to Come

Geesh! I have not been posting here very often. That’s about to change. The week ahead brings with it many, many events…for me at least.

Monday:

We have our all-day website work…er…day…all…um…day long. (Sorry for the redundancy.) The goal is to have every-one’s website ready to post with all the pages and links set up. There is no set agenda except to work on our sites. This has me so excited that I’ve finally updated my site. I also plan on figuring out drop down menus for the few people who have inquired about them. If you have any other skills or features you’d like covered, post it on the comments of this blog or ask me during the session. Angie, the woman from the module cover, will be there through the morning to assist. Ruth may stop in as well.

Tuesday-Wednesday:

I will not be out to your schools since I have a conference presentation on which to work (more on that later) and to visit two university classes in order to present on blogging. One class is a Web 2.0 writing course taught by my wife’s colleague, Donna. The Wednesday class is actually at Ohio State-Marion. I’ll be talking to my friend Ben’s first-year writing class via iChat on the same topic. My mentioning this is to demonstrate the direction writing at the college level is heading. Your work with eMINTS in using technology in your classrooms will have effects on your students’ future academic endeavors!

Thursday-Friday:

The eMINTS Winter Conference takes place over two days. This is a conference you all attend in your second year in eMINTS. Some of you may even be inclined to present…nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

I was volunteer…I mean, I offered up my services to present on classroom blogging. The hope is that the bandwidth at our conference’s hotel will hold up so that 44-46 people will be able to read and comment on a blog I’m setting up just for the conference. If all goes well, I will have to do very little talking, the participants will experience blogging, guide their own learning, and start their own blogs.

If you are interested in the blogging going on in my session, check here later in the week.

Besides updating my website, I have reorganized my del.icio.us account to include bundles of the tags. Bundles are one way to better organize your bookmarks. It’s sort of like grouping your bookmarks into multiple folders tagged with a theme and then grouping those folders again in multiple folders. It should make my del.icio.us account easier to navigate.

The week is going to end with a weekend long film festival here in Columbia. True/False features documentary films from all over the world that cover a wide range of topics from issues of globalization to teenage angst. My wife and I plan to attend 14 films! I should be ready to get back to the calm serenity of classroom visits and training sessions on March 4th.

More Creating & Editing Digital Images

After Monday’s training session, I felt that there were some holes in the content and instruction I provided. In keeping with the purpose of this blog which is to supplement your trainings, I am providing the following links for you refer as you prepare your images for our website building day.

For basic information about Adobe Fireworks, go here. You can check for updates as well as search the help topics. The help portion of the website as well as online manuals can be accessed here. Boston College has made a useful tutorial website complete with basic instructions and screen shots. Just click here. The secrets behind the vector and bitmap images can be easily explained in Sue Chastain’s article on the subject here. SmartWebby provides some useful tips and tricks at this location. SmartWebby also provides some fantastic design tutorials here. There are also some video tutorials at this site where you can sign up for a free thirty-day trial.

I know that some of you have not had the opportunity to search for right clip art for your sites. Remember that my boss (Stephanie Bengston) has a vast list of resources that should now be filter-proof…at least in Wellsville.

In the meantime, keep working on your images and graphics. They will be needed for next Wednesday’s all-day session.