Describe your most rewarding learning experience

The National Institute for the Study of Organizational Development (NISOD) has announced an essay contest for community college students. Describe your most rewarding learning experience with a faculty, staff or administrator at your college. You could win up to $1,000!

Full details and contest rules in the link.

http://www.nisod.org/student_essay/

Submission Deadline

November 8, 2010  (Midnight–Central Standard Time)

Essay Topic

Describe your most rewarding learning experience with a faculty, staff, or administrator at your college.

$3,000+ in Prizes

$1,000 to the Student Author $1,000 to the Faculty/Staff/Administrator Featured in the Essay Complimentary 2011–2012 NISOD Membership to the Student’s College ($1,000 value) Click here for a list of additional prizes

7 Essential Skills You Didn't Learn in College

7 Essential Skills You Didn't Learn in College
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/PeoDifR2X2I/

Shared via Pulse

"There are more writing opportunities than ever, but they require skills that Strunk and White never dreamed of. This course will teach you how to Photoshop images to create a narrative, edit a 20-second YouTube video, compress your thoughts into 140 characters (or clarify them into a PowerPoint presentation that won’t put your audience to sleep), write a wiki entry that encourages other people to edit and adapt it, and ensure your work goes viral, turning readers into vectors for your ideas."

If this sounds a bit familiar to some of you, it's because this hypothetical course in Wired - Writing for New Forms - tracks pretty much point for point my NET225S Writing for Electronic Media course.

Pumpkin Patch

Tipp City mum festival.

--Brad

Video: The Future of the Book. on Vimeo

The Future of the Book. on Vimeo

(Sent from Flipboard)

Make your website mobile-friendly

Developer_World posts an excellent tutorial for making your website mobile-friendly.

If you're not thinking about a mobile audience yet, bookmark this article - you will be eventually!

Disclaimer: this body is artificially thin

When does fashion photography cross the line from "enhancement" to "harm"? That's the question officials in Britain will take up in October when they call for fashion photogs to take a light hand on the airbrushing, claiming that the wispy models seen in fashion mags and elsewhere represent body types that are unusual, unhealthy and unattainable by most women.

Now the British government is taking up their cause. Next month, officials are sitting down with advertisers, fashion editors and health experts to discuss how to curb the practice of airbrushing and promote body confidence among girls and women. If the campaigners get their way, fashion ads and magazines in Britain may soon have to label retouched photos to warn people that the perfect bodies they see are but digital fantasies. 

Read through to the article and tell me what you think.

Assignment - Writing With Keywords for Search Engine Optimization

A new assignment has been posted to Blackboard:

Search Engine Optimization is the process of maximizing your site’s chances of appearing at or near the top of searches in services such as Google. While no single strategy can guarantee best results, there are a few things you can do when writing copy for your site to improve your search results.

Please read the Mashable article to get an appreciation for how intricate this process can be. Then, on the blog site you set up for this class, create a new entry. In that new entry, write a brief description of one of the following topics for a hypothetical website (you may need to do some research, and if you want to choose your own topic, please clear it with me first via email):

• Your site is a review site of the week’s best new independent music;
• Your site is to help publicize a Farmer’s Market/Food Co-Op in your community;
• Your site is for collectors of antique bicycles
• Your site promotes a “green” lifestyle

Write an appropriate blog title with keywords. Include keywords in your entry’s tags. Write about 3-4 paragraphs (approximate) using appropriate keywords in the text.

When you have completed your entry, post it to your blog, and create a second entry. In the second entry, explain how you determined what SEO keywords you would emphasize. Test your keywords by searching for them in Google and link to the top three search results. Do your keywords seem to be directing searchers to the appropriate topic? If not, why not?

Google Docs editing coming to iPad

Finally! Geez!

Google Docs editing coming to iPad
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/09/20/google-docs-editing-coming-to-ipad/

Shared via Pulse

WOW! Try This! Interactive movie based on you!

Arcade Fire and filmmaker Chris Milk have created an experimental web-based film called "The Wilderness Downtown" that uses HTML5, Google Maps and Streetview to incorporate scenes from an address you enter into a multi-windowed web video.

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

The display of interactive elements and how they draw you into the video are stunning - and frankly a bit spooky. It's processor intensive, so use your best hardware and broadband, but definitely try it for yourself.

Ebert, film and blogging

Roger Ebert raises the bar on film criticism and the blog publishing form in a stunningly beautiful and insightful review of Werner Herzog's documentary 3D film "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" from the Toronto International Film Festival.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/09/shadows_on_the_walls_of_our_ca.html

Ebert draws from his vast knowledge of film craft to weave a story of filmmaking, human origins, and why art matters.