Will the real wolf spirit please step forward?

Bad news folks. The wolf creature is real. Here she is, howling at the moon with a night spirit on Halloween.

The wolf creature actually exists, or did on Halloween night, at least. She was my costume for The Portsmouth Halloween Parade. Instead of sketching a picture, I thought I'd post a shot of The Real Deal. I think the hairy legs in Bryan's drawing are much more menacing and I may work on that for next year, but as you can see, he did a great job depicting the beast.

Wolf Spirit Revealed

Clearly this is not nearly as impressive as the actual monster, but I tried to capture the fun attitude that the spirit had (as shown by the little smirk).  Well done!  I particularly enjoyed the dialogue between the two!

ECOMP 5004: Something wicked this way comes...just the beginning

From his tiny bed by the window, Lycaon heard the scratching at the closet door and knew it was time to face the inevitable. For a week, the creature had loped into his dreams, night after night, latched onto them with her fangs, and carried them into the realm of Nightmare. In his heart, he’d known she’d continue on until she reached his waking hours.

“Crrrrrrr,” went the door.

“Crrrrrrrrrr.”

And here she was.

In the moonlight he could see the beams on the closet bulge with each lunge, like the lungs of a wounded animal gasping for its last breathes.

Lycaon’s feet hit the warm, plush rug. Odd, he thought, that this cozy room, with his stuffed animals, "Toy Story" curtains and comforter-laden bed, might - no - did harbor a creature such as this.

In his mind’s eye he pictured her, half woman/half wolf, in her fur-trimmed coat - the delicate, feline skull, whiskers curled back around to her chin, a thick, white stole draping her human shoulders. It all belied the strength of her haunches, trimmed with razor-sharp claws, and the deathblow her fangs could render.

“Crrrrrrrr.” Another long scratch.

He heard the wood splinter.

Resigned to his fate, Lycaon padded across the room and reached for the door. Turning the knob, he could just make out a low rumbling. He wasn’t sure if it was a growl or a purr. The door was only just ajar when the light from her slanted yellow eyes cut the darkness. He could see her short pointy ears, standing erect, the white coat, open at the skirt, revealing the pale, white faces of dead – those she had last feasted upon – lining the hem just above her knee in a straight, expressionless line. Towering above him (as tall as his father, he thought) she gazed down. Her thin lips curled into a smile.

“You could have knocked,” Lycaon said dryly.

“Not part of my instincts,” she said, strutting from the closet and taking a seat on the edge of his bed. She crossed her furry, muscular legs, stretching her claws.

“Can I offer you a snack?” Lycaon lifted a tiny plate bearing a couple of leftover crackers drenched with peanut butter and held it out.

“No, thanks,” she purred. “I just ate,” and she gestured to one of the white faces in the row at her knee. As she did so, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror on the wall and gasped.

“What?” Lycaon asked.

She leapt up and strode directly to the glass.

“There’s two things wrong with this picture,” she sighed, more to herself then to the boy.

“One: I am not supposed to cast a reflection. Which is why I’m here seeking your help.” She turned now and looked him in the eye. She crinkled her pink nose, as if befuddled. She sniffed the air. Lycaon felt a bit awkward, so he asked a question with hopes it would divert her gaze.

“And the second?” he queried.

“Oh.” She turned back to the mirror and smoothed back the fur tufts protruding stiffly from her cheeks like a bed of nails. “I just licked my fur and I can’t do a thing with it.”

First impressions

I made my maiden voyage to Survey Monkey to create a quick quiz to help me gauge my students when they come back to school in the fall:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2JST762

Jon Stewart says education is no laughing matter

Here's a clip from The Daily Show. Jon Stewart interviews author Diane Ravitch about the state of schools and teachers today.

Reflection on completing the final project

Phew!

Well, maybe I should reflect a bit more...

Last year Rye Elementary students had the opportunity to not only join in a community service project to save a local lighthouse, but to learn about its history as well.  White Island Lighthouse and Lighthouse Kids added a new chapter to my local history curriculum that has caught the imaginations of my students and fostered more pride in their hometown.

The time to choose a final project for our Worldwide Web class coincided with the time I started working to create more opportunities for our school and this nonprofit to work together.  Hence, my project to build a new website for Lighthouse Kids was born. Here’s the finished product: http://www.lighthousekidsnh.org/

My other entries here have shed light on my goal and the process, but now that Weebly and I have finished the site, I can see why “Time” magazine rated it one of the 50 best of the year in 2007 after its debut.

A seal sunbathes on the boat winch at White Island.

Using its widget-style format, I was able to create pages with only a few clicks by dragging and dropping different page elements - such as images, text, and a slideshow - onto a page and then filling in the content.

Because building the site is made simple, I was able to concentrate on content, which consisted of editing and consolidating information and photos from the existing Lighthouse Kids website. Working closely with the non-profit’s founder, Sue Reynolds, I was able to design an 11-page site to meet their needs, which the current – and expensive – service they were using, did not.

Sorting through the CDs of old pictures then adding them to iPhoto to touch them up was time-consuming but interesting. There were kinks in this process – for example the pictures where labeled in such a way that iPhoto would not recognize them, so they all had to be re-named, and my iPhoto disc reached capacity in the middle of the process – but everything came together in the end. I decided to use just a handful of those pictures because many of the kids' photos were outdated and images were repetitious. I showcased them via a slideshow format.

Weebly Pros: There were dozens of templates to choose from. Also, Weebly lets you create a standing header, then sample how it would look in some of your favorite page designs – just like trying on a dress before you choose to buy it.

The building blocks of the website, mainly text and photos, could be re-arranged in a snap. Photos were also easily uploaded and resized.

I upgraded to Weebly Pro for 1 year for under $50, giving me the ability to create up to 10 websites, and, most importantly for Lighthouse Kids, eliminating a “Create a free website with Weebly” tagline at the bottom of each page. (If I wasn’t doing this for Lighthouse Kids, I would have lived w/ the tagline – that’s the only advertising on this free site.)

Weebly also provides the ability to add blog pages and e-commerce shopping carts. Lighthouse Kids was not interested in the blog – they want control over all the content at this time - but they would like to develop the shopping cart in the future, selling lighthouse related items to raise funds for its maintenance.

Weebly Cons: Photos can’t be dropped into and wrapped around text. This is a basic need for most page designers, so I can’t figure out the rationale behind it.  Using small chunks of the two-column format is a way to get around that design hurdle, but it requires more steps and breaking up text.

The “Create a free Website…” tagline could seem unprofessional to some.

Even though there are a lot of templates, I’d like to see more page design widgets for greater flexibility, like boxed sidebars, or quarter column design.

Getting published:

Weebly gives you 3 options for domain names. You can pick a sub-domain name. You can register a new domain name. Or, if you already own a domain name, you can configure it to point to their name servers. Lighthouse Kids wanted to see the site up and running before switching over to lighthousekids.com, so I bought the domain name lighthousekidsnh.org through Weebly, which was pricy, $40 a year, but I bit the bullet for the sake of getting it done, and keeping everything in the Weebly world for now.

The Powers That Be at Weebly told me it could take up to two weeks for Google to recognize my domain name, so to amp that up I followed their search engine recognition advice at http://kb.weebly.com/webmaster-tools.html. Now it should just be a matter of days.

My students will be using this site as part of a WebQuest in the near future and I’m hoping they find it easy to navigate and pleasant on the eye. I also hope it feeds into their sense of responsibility to preserve the elements of their community that make it special.

Rocking out: Using tech tools beyond the classroom

I was asked to send some pictures of local musicians performing during the year 2010 to a producer who is making a short video for a local show we put on each year at The Music Hall in Portsmouth called The Spotlight Awards. (It's a combination Grammys/Oscars to celebrate and cultivate the arts community here.) I had a bunch so I sent them via a music video on Animoto. A big thanks to Chad - who introduced me to this super simple, handy and fun site. Click here if you'd like to see the video: