This is for Everyone

With the current fight for net neutrality in mind - here's a step back to look at the bigger picture of The World Wide Web, and its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee.

Social Media Image Sizes

It's really nice to customize your own graphics or photos for your social media sites - for profile photo or banner image, for example. Thing is, they change fairly often.

Here are the current 2017 sizes!

Create something new each day!

Creativity is good for the soul. Get in the habit of creating something every day.

Health Benefits of Creativity

How To Be Creative - great tips and infographic

e-Comm For Life!

When you take e-Communication classes, you aren't learning a subject, as much as a way to communicate - about anything. It's a lot like learning a new language - except this language lets you sense the world around you, think about it and feel it, and then communicate it to others with much more than words.

Share your passion

e-Communicate your passion!

e-Communication is how you can really reach people. What are you interested in?  What do you love doing? e-Communication gives you ways to share it with the world, when a vocabulary of words alone would be inadequate.

Not every e-Comm student is going to end up working in journalism, video entertainment, animation, graphic design, or web design. However, all of you will carry with you the skills from these areas to apply to any future career, hobby, or passion.

Noteworthy analogy

It's all about the drums.

To use my own experience as an analogy - music is what got me through junior high and high school. I earned my bachelors degree in music. By the time I finished that degree, I realized that I did not want to be a school music teacher. I taught lessons in a music store for a few years, while I tried out the life of a "full-time" professional musician. It didn't take long to decide that wasn't going to be my life-long career either. I finally got back to teaching school in other areas than music - BUT all my life there have been countless little ways that my music background has paid off. It's a hobby and a love. Through music, I can communicate wordlessly from parts of myself that are otherwise hidden and silent. I am able to donate my musical talents to good causes. My life experience would be much less rich, less interesting, less beautiful - without that background in music. e-Communication may turn out to be to you what music is to me.

Your superpowers

e-Comm may not turn into a life-long career for you, but it will stay with you - giving you enriched ways to see the world around you, and to communicate what you see and what you are passionate about. Your ability to get your ideas across through some combination of writing, video, animation, graphic design, and web design gives your communication extra range and impact.

You may have noticed e-Communication's new slogan:

Communicate, Collaborate, Innovate, DESIGN. 

This is the stuff that lasts, no matter what crazy new things happen with technology or software in your lifetime. We also hope you take away some project management and leadership skills, in addition to mastering the current technical content.

Use the Force!

Sure, we love to see e-Communication alumni make it as professional designers, animators, broadcasters, entertainers, and so on - but our goals go beyond that. We especially hope that all of our students take these skills, these different ways of seeing the world and communicating to others what you see, to enrich your everyday lives - and maybe even to change the world, regardless of your occupation.

Plus, there's always this, as Mrs. Morris puts it so succinctly:

"What we do is cool."

Mr. Olson


(This is a repost - originally from May 2015 on Mr. Olson's blog - molsononw.blogspot.com.)

Think you're not a leader? Think again.

Drew Dudley redefines leadership - in a way that aligns beautifully with what we in e-Communication refer to as leadership.

"I'm stumped - what should I blog about?"

e-Communication students have occasional required blog posts of various types that we think are important to assist in learning or demonstrate learning of e-Comm material.  However, to really have an interesting and well-rounded blog, you may want to also include other kinds of posts.

"What could I possibly blog about that would be interesting to others?"

Oh - about a hundred things.  Seriously.  In these two posts, a girl, obsessed lists many possible blogging ideas. If you're stuck on figuring out what to write - scan through these and chances are you'll be back writing great posts in no time:

• 50 Blog Post Ideas
• 50 (more) Blog Post Ideas

Oh - and, by the waaaay... one category in this year's eMagine competition is for blogs. 

(Also see our To-Do List For a Better Blog.)

Blog of the Week -- January 8

Visit www.smalltalkwithcorbin.com

The blog of the week belongs to Mr. Corbin Eaton, a junior in the video focus.  Corey has a flair for writing in a humorous, casual style – and for incorporating strong photographs into his posts.

Corey has decided to jump over to the Weebly platform, and combine his blog and portfolio there. (Juniors and seniors in all focus areas are now permitted to use other platforms than Blogger – ask your teacher which platforms will work best for your focus area.)

Great job, Corey!