Classroom Publishing: Issuu.com saves the day!

How does a student newspaper take the prospect of NO MONEY and turn it into an opportunity?

I’ll do my best to make this story short. I’m a student teacher this year at an Oregon high school that is preparing for drastic budget cuts. As such, the budget is nearly gone for production of the student newspaper that I’m helping advise. My mentor teacher and her students were trying not to succumb to doom and gloom, and we started looking for ways to turn this change into an opportunity.

So, again, how does a student newspaper take the prospect of NO MONEY and turn it into an opportunity? First, all of the students agreed to start hustling advertising sales, which is new and kind of scary for a lot of them, but puts them in a situation that is no different than any professional news publication. Second, we started considering affordable (or free!) options for developing an online presence for the newspaper, just in case there were times when we wouldn’t be able to pay for paper publication.

Two years ago a pair of students started developing a website for this paper, and it’s getting close to being ready for launch. But that process is always more complicated than anyone wants it to be. So while that’s in the works, we were looking for free online publishing options. A blog would be the first logical choice, but the school district has blocked any and all social media sites, including blogs. So that was out.

After a bit more digging, I found Issuu.com through an association of journalism teachers in Virginia. Issuu.com is a free (or $20/month for extra features) site that lets you upload just about any kind of document so it can turn into a shiny, almost magical online magazine. The results have a very iPad-y vibe, even when you’re not looking at them on an iPad.

When my mentor teacher and I showed the Issuu.com demo video to our students this week, they were absolutely enchanted. There were pockets of exclamation around the room that were so encouraging: “We could do new issues whenever we want! … We could publish photo spreads in color! … We can put hyperlinks in the stories! … We could link to it on Facebook! … It’s like Christmas morning! … It’s going to make all our dreams come true!”

So our student production manager decided to test the site by uploading files from the students’ most recent issue from December. He showed us the results yesterday and I heard gasps and “wow!” across the classroom. When he finished the demonstration, we actually burst into applause.

We’re planning to use Issuu.com while the newspaper transitions to online publishing, and it’s likely we’ll continue using it even after the paper’s full website is launched. We like it that much. I particularly like that it still leaves room for students to practice page design while incorporating web elements such as embedded video functions (hopefully this will make for a good match with our upcoming use of SchoolTube.com). The students like it because they will be able to share it in school assemblies and recruitment presentations, they will be able to link to it on their social media sites at home, their parents will be able to email it to their friends, the school will be able to link to it on its website, and the students will be able to say on their resumes and college applications that they were part of their school’s first-ever online news publication.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking of using Issuu.com for my upcoming school presentations and reports, and ideas are brewing for ways to use the site for my creative writing. I am continually excited and amazed by all of the free or low-cost tools available to us on the web. Our opportunities are nearly limitless at this point. Doom and gloom, be gone!

Classroom Publishing: Books, blogs and beyond

Right now I’m in conversation with teachers about turning their fourth-grade students into members of an elementary school newspaper staff. The 9- and 10-year-olds would be responsible for interviewing each other, writing stories, editing each other’s work and establishing the design concepts for a quarterly publication. There’s a method to this madness, I promise.

Classroom publishing was the theme for this fall’s Wordstock for Teachers conference in Portland, and I was fortunate to assist with a workshop conducted by the Classroom Publishing team from Ooligan Press at Portland State University. The key concept from this workshop was that there are lessons all through the publishing process that translate to multiple content areas and skill sets. Here is a breakdown of the Ooligan workshop:

Acquisitions

• Before you do anything, identify your publishing intent and audience. This will help get students invested in the project and help your team shape its style, voice and format.
• “The content and the form of expressing it need to match.”
• Students can evaluate potential content for their publications by using criteria that they have established themselves. In turn, they learn to look at their own work more objectively.
• The process of acquisitions helps students understand how literary anthologies and textbooks are put together, and makes assignments involving bibliographies, quotes and citations much more relevant to students.

Editing

• It’s easy to get stuck at this stage if you don’t have a clear plan.
• Emphasize to students early on that revising is a necessity in the writing process, not a punishment. Remind them that their work is worth revising.
• Developmental editing is the first round, and involves looking at the foundations of each piece and the way it is constructed.
• Copy-editing is what we usually think of when we hear the word “editing.” It involves checking for grammar and spelling.
• Make time for fact-checking.
• Proofreading comes after a piece is laid out on a page or website, prior to final publication.

Design

• The style and execution of your design will depend on who is creating your publication and who it is for. A publication that is made for students and by students will likely have a different design than one made by students for parents or by students for the community.
• Design can go way beyond the printed page! Consider a website, a blog, a podcast, a web video, etc.
• Web-based classroom publishing projects are a way for students to build a positive presence on the internet. A college scholarship committee will likely take note of a student with a web-based publishing project more than a student with a public Myspace page, etc.
• Let design serve as a visual metaphor for your entire publishing project.

Production

• This can come in many forms (paper, internet, digital presentation on a CD, etc.). When choosing a production method, consider your audience, intent and, most of all, your project budget.
• Here is a great list of publishing and production resources from Wordstock for Teachers.
• Contact local businesses and community groups to see if in-kind donations or financial assistance is possible for your production efforts.

Marketing

• Marketing is often a dirty word to artists and educators, but a book that doesn’t get marketed doesn’t get read!
• Marketing is more about connecting your audience with your project than it is about making money. But if you want to use a publishing project to raise money for another educational effort, it can’t hurt.
• Ideas for marketing efforts include having students to read from their publication over the school intercom, having students design posters and bookmarks for the project, hosting readings and open mic events, hosting book fairs, and connecting with groups online that are conducting similar projects. Relationships can begin with something as simple as students students from different schools commenting on each other’s blogs.
• Marketing is a great way to practice important writing skills such as persuasion, summarizing and identifying a target audience, and it requires clarity and conciseness.
• Your project should have a hook and pitch. A hook is a short, attention-grabbing phrase (such as “Take student work beyond the classroom”) and a pitch is similar to an elevator speech — about 40 words that clearly describe your project.

Is classroom publishing really worth all the effort? As a writer who is about to make classroom publishing into a career as a Journalism and Language Arts teacher, I am inclined to answer with a resounding YES. Sure, I’m biased. But I’m biased because of the pride I felt in third grade when my teacher laminated the drawings I made to summarize The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I’m biased because of the pride I felt when my sixth-grade teacher stopped the entire class to read my poem aloud (reading aloud is a form of publishing, too, because it brings work to an audience). I am biased because working on my high school newspaper staff taught me a variety of skills that have had direct applications to my paying work in public relations, nonprofit administration, journalism, and even parking permit services (that one’s a long story).

To learn everything you ever wanted to know about turning your students into publishers, visit Ooligan’s Classroom Publishing site and get a copy of their practical guide for teachers.

Wordstock for Teachers: Publishing as pedagogy

I still have a few crayoned, laminated, hand-bound books that I wrote in elementary school. In  many ways, the drawing and writing I did in those books was no better than the work that made it onto my mom’s fridge, or the work that cluttered my bedroom and was thrown away. But the fact that they were published means that pieces of my childhood were preserved, and that I felt a sense of legitimacy in my work, even as I was still practicing D’Nealian handwriting. Even if no one read the books, the sense of accomplishment they brought was similar to what I feel today when publishing a well-read news article or blog post, or even when I see that I’ve been “retweeted” by a stranger on Twitter.

As I mentioned in an earlier post about the future of the publishing industry, self-publishing is no longer considered a last resort for serious writers, but is becoming an increasingly legit way to share your work. This shift in thinking opens the doors for teachers and students to use new classroom publishing platforms and tools, and to share their work with increasingly wide audiences. All publishing industry issues aside, when I think of the way technology impacts publishing from a teacher’s perspective, fireworks go off. The possibilities for quality work are endless.

Classroom publishing was the theme for this fall’s Wordstock for Teachers conference in Portland, and I was fortunate to assist with a workshop conducted by the Classroom Publishing team from Ooligan Press at Portland State University. The event’s keynote speaker was Erick Gordon, formerly of the Student Press Initiative at Columbia University. Below are notes from his motivating presentation:

• Publication is no longer for elite students only, but also for students who are at risk.
• Publication raises the bar for all students involved in a project.
• Explore the idea of publishing as pedagogy. Allow it to expand your ideas of what kids can accomplish.
• Get linked up with teachers who are involved in publishing with the Student Press Initiative’s Ning.
• “This work can set you up to really know who kids are.”

If you’re interested in the Student Press Initiative, check out the organization’s website for classroom resources and inspiring project videos.

Stay tuned, because highlights from the Ooligan Press workshop on Classroom Publishing are in the fryer.

Eek! An eBook!

Last week I finished reading my first-ever ebook. The future is now!

Just a few months ago I saw an eReader at the Willamette Writers conference, and was a little scared of it. It seemed like an alien or something that was probably an enemy because it was different. Books are dear friends of mine, and I didn’t like the idea of anything threatening them, no matter how much I enjoy my other gadgets.

But this fall I tried an eBook as an experiment. I needed to do a quick read of a novel for my book group and I heard that Kindle and Nook had eReader apps that I could use on my smart phone (it’s Android, if anyone cares). So I looked into it. I found out that the apps for these eReaders are free. I was interested. I found out that I could also install these apps on my computer for free. More interested. And a quick scan of the eBook stores online told me that electronic books typically cost the same as paperbacks if not much, much less. The novel I was looking for was available for about $5. It seemed worth a shot.

And you know what? I loved it. I could adjust the text to a size that worked for me, and I could adjust the brightness of the page. I always feel a tiny surge of accomplishment when I turn a page in a book, so I really didn’t mind turning the page as frequently as the tiny pages on my screen required. (Read: The pages were tiny, but the font was a normal size.) I could check the table of contents, jump to a chapter, and bookmark pages just like I do with my paper books (in some ways, far more efficiently). The only thing I really missed was having the option to underline passages and write notes in the margins. I do love margin notes.

There were three moments that sold me on eBooks:

• First was the moment when I realized that I didn’t need to lug a book around in my purse all day — I could carry my book in my pocket, along with everything else that’s on my phone. Maybe this means I just really enjoy my phone. But having the book in my pocket was a revelation. It meant I could read whenever I had a free moment. I had it out in line at the DMV, the bank and the grocery store, and on a long car ride (plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter). It felt much better to use those moments for something as peaceful as reading a book instead of repeatedly checking my email or playing Tetris.
• Second was the moment when I plugged my phone into the outlet by my nightstand, laid back on a pillow and read myself to sleep by the light of my eBook screen. I have always loved reading myself to sleep, but paper books can be pretty awkward to hold while laying down. (Can I get an amen?) And paper books require lighting of some kind. So I will admit that it’s really, really weird to take your electronics to bed. But when it involves a book, I find it to be downright magical.
• Third was the moment when I realized that I could use the eReader apps on my computer and download classics for free. As an English teacher in training, I see this as a goldmine. It means that I can have the entire text of, say, a Shakespeare play on the same computer where I am writing my lesson plans. It means that I can do quick searches for key words in that Shakespeare play and copy excerpts directly onto lesson handouts. Just writing about it makes me want to do a dance.
• An addendum: I haven’t done this yet, but I am super-excited to try knitting while reading an eBook on my laptop. Two of my favorites at once!

Admittedly, I have reservations about getting new books on the cheap from a monster bookseller such as Amazon or Barnes and Noble. I still want to support my neighborhood book store. And I wonder if someone is losing out when a book is marked down by, um, 70 percent. At the same time, can it really cost that much to produce an e-book? It seems like it has to be far cheaper than printing, and cutting down on printing could provide enormous environmental benefits. But it’s a complex picture.

Totally by coincidence, Google unveiled its electronic book store today, and it sounds promising. According to this NPR story, the site sells eBooks from large and small publishers, and it can be accessed from a smart phone, Nook device or your computer. You can use the service from any device with an internet connection, and you have the option to download a book so you can read it even without an internet connection. I see all this as key in making electronic books much more widely available. It means that you don’t have to have a fancy device to use the books. It means that teachers can share eBooks with students, and that students can easily access those books on school computers, or on their computers at home. Google books cost about the same as paperbacks and many classics are free, as they are with other services. (Weirdly, I just looked up the Google bookstore while logged in to my Gmail and somehow the program knew of three classic books I have on my phone. That’s either really cool or kind of creepy.)

This whole experience reminded me of a panel I attended at this year’s Wordstock festival in Portland called Brave New World: The Future of Publishing. Industry experts and authors Lauren Kessler, Rhonda Hughes, and Kevin Smokler made up the panel, and discussion was facilitated by Richard Meeker, publisher of Portland’s Willamette Week. Watch for highlights from the discussion in my next post!

Portland’s artisan economy: Author Q&A with Heying

“We know, we know. Portlanders love bicycles and microbrews. Portlanders love all things artisan. Portland loves Portland, and the city is making a name for itself in the world.

But does that mean anything apart from providing unique options for an afternoon out?

It means plenty, according to Charles Heying, the author and editor of Brew to Bikes: Portland’s Artisan Economy. Heying is an associate professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University, and his book posits that Portlanders’ way of working and spending money is reflective of a larger economic trend—one that brings liberals and conservatives together in support of local, and often small, businesses in order to enhance their own quality of life. …”

This week NeighborhoodNotes.com published my interview with the above-mentioned author and editor Charles Heying, whose book I was connected to this summer through my work with the student staff of Ooligan Press at Portland State University.

The more I dig into this book and Heying’s research, the more I am fascinated by this approach to boosting the economy. Can we really pull everyone up by supporting the little guy and pursuing quality over quantity? We shall hope, and we shall see.

Here is a link to my interview, along with a couple of other recent stories mentioning Heying:

• NeighborhoodNotes.com: The new face of Portland’s economy
• The New York Times Portland Journal
• The Oregonian
• Brew to Bikes launch party

WFT! (That’s Wordstock for Teachers)

This fall’s Wordstock event is happening Oct. 7 through 10 at the Oregon Convention Center. I wanted to put the word out about the whole festival, but particularly about Wordstock for Teachers (happening Oct. 8th) because it is going to be extraordinarily fun AND useful.

For WFT my friends at Ooligan Press are giving a presentation on classroom publishing (everyone who attends gets a free copy of Classroom Publishing: A Practical Guide for Teachers, which is my new favorite book), and there are several other events outlined on the Wordstock website and on the Classroom Publishing blog.

Did I mention that it’s really, really fun? And that there’s a discount for students? And that it’s really funny that the Wordstock For Teachers acronym is WFT?

Classroom Publishing: It’s that simple

Today my post with the Classroom Publishing blog of Ooligan Press is a quick reflection on a super-simple publishing project I helped first-graders with this week.

I have believed for a long time that classroom publishing is one of the most effective ways to get students engaged with the written word and take ownership over their learning. But I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that the process was inevitably complicated. This week, first-graders showed me just how effective the process can be, no matter how simple the project.

Read the rest of the story here.

Classroom Publishing: “Life of Youth” on video

Today I’ve contributed my first story to the Classroom Publishing blog of Ooligan Press at Portland State University. While it’s easy to think of classroom publishing as a process that’s stuck on paper, we at the CP blog like to think of it as an empowering creative process that allows students to put their voice out in a form that generates feedback. This could be a chapbook, a literary magazine, a newspaper, or a podcast, a blog, or a video, or any number of things.

In the case of 14 youth working with Outside In (a Portland non-profit that helps homeless youth move toward health and self-sufficiency), classroom publishing has taken the form of a 90-minute video series, which premieres Aug. 31 inside the Portland Art Museum. The 10 videos address teen sexual health with creativity and without scare tactics. I am proud to even have the small role of helping announce the project, but the filmmakers and their project partners are even prouder. Here’s the story!

“Wear their book… as a necklace”

My “Back to the Basics” post for Ooligan Press is up today, affirming and reminding writers, publishers and marketers why we all do what we do. My post is kind of like Chicken Soup for the Publishing Marketer’s Soul, and I’m good with that.

The post is based on a quote from one of my favorite Ooligan Books, Classroom Publishing: A Practical Guide for Teachers. In this book’s introduction, Ninive Calegari, former chief executive officer of 826 National, says this of her enthusiasm for her student authors:

I want to wear their book around my neck as a necklace and tell all my friends.

Hell. Yes. That is what the work of marketing is all about, and that’s what my post is all about. The rest of the Ooligan blog is chock-full of resources and insights for writers, publishers, designers, marketers, and teachers, and Ooligan deserves a shout-out for that as well as everything else they do.

Watch for more from my colleagues and I on Ooligan’s Classroom Publishing blog.