Poet Ponders the Digital

In the last few days, I have noticed what might be called an "explosion" of activity on the forums for my writing class. With 23 students, these where the statistics: Thursday: 56 new posts. Friday: 246 new posts. Saturday: 100+ new posts. After you scroll through the posts, reading them or not, Moodle marks the posts as read. This means that each night's posts were counted separately. I make that distinction because WebCT didn't take the same approach -- some posts I had read would remain marked "new" for several days. What leads to twelve discussion threads being so active? I'm not sure but I am going to explain what I do. It should be noted that I use online spaces for every class, so students always have access to materials. However, I do not use the online spaces for instruction when a course is not specifically online. The current course is traditional and the forums are mainly to help students discuss assignments. 1) I set "weekly...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley May 2010 Issue April 1, 2010 Capturing Memories: Comparing Photo Printers Every spring my wife and I head out in the Jeep with our camera bags packed, in pursuit of wildflowers and waterfalls. She is a serious amateur photographer with a good digital SLR camera, an assortment of lenses and filters, and a tripod I get to carry when we hike. The resulting pictures are often spectacular on screen. If only the printed versions of the photos were as stunning. But, the reality is that most printers are designed for affordable printing, which is quite different from printing archival-quality photographs. Small office inkjet and laser printers were never intended for serious photographers. Realizing we need a true film-quality printer, I spent the last few months researching printing technologies and reading printer reviews. In the end, we went to a local camera store and compared color and black-and-white photo prints with our own eyes. Dye-Sublimati...