Long, Long Lost Blogger

Well, I still do exist. Shocking, seeing as I seem to write to this blog, oh, each time the seasons change. And that doesn't account for the fact that I skipped summer. Ah well, I'm back for at least a day.

The whole reason for having time to write, however, is ironic - in about 15 minutes I'll be assisting in a talk about designing Websites for Writers. And my piece (drumroll) is on blogging. I know, how hypocritical. But when I was approached by the group, it seemed like a perfect subject. Here was a way to be up and having a presence on the web in, oh, five minutes. And unlike me, a visual artist who then has to twist his words into English for this blog, they hopefully have actually writing skills and can spell

In fact, I've been thinking of blogs much more in the last week. In addition to this talk, I have also started a new blog. Yes, you may ask yourself why start a new one when I can't keep the old one running. But this blog, FutureSplash actually revolves around my current batch of students. You see, I'm currently teaching at the Bradley Academy for the Visual Arts in York, PA, and one of the assignments is to submit bi-monthly articles about the web, new media, web design, etc. And that means that every other Wednesday I come home with a stack of paper that could choke a small tree (you know, the ones you pick up at the nursery, hoping they'll grow?). Well, it hit me last week that I could just set up a group blog and have them submit there. This solves three problems I've had with the assignments:

1. Students don't have a way to read each others' articles, either the day they're turned in or into the future
2. Students have a way to track what they and others are writing
3. And as mentioned, I end up carrying no papers home

So, hopefully this will be a good experiment. If not, the school does seem to provide endless stacks of paper for them...