“Good news. Our Interfaith Conflict Resolution Course has won a Best Practices Award from the U.S. Distance Learning Association. Very nice recognition. A lot of elements went into it, the narrative, the videos, etc., and you contributed in a variety of ways. But the photo selection in particular brings life and originality to each page.”
My friend and colleague Wayan Vota launched a site called OLPC News in 2006. Now the site has a three-person editorial team, over a dozen other authors, and 5,000 readers per day.
In their own words, the editors “do our best to celebrate what is going right, question what is going wrong, and suggest what could be done better. Cute pictures of children with shiny new laptops don’t keep us from asking tough questions.”
OLPC News has been running on Movable Type since launch, and now runs Movable Type Pro, version 4.21. I have years of experience with Movable Type, so I was happy to help make some recent small changes to the templates and to the CSS. Here is how I was able to help:
Added automatically generated (tag-based) list of related entries at the end of each entry
Changed search results so that clicking on a tag brings up a list of entry excerpts (instead of full posts)
Visually differentiated comments by the entry authors
Visually differentiated the recent forum posts and recent comments in sidebar
I’ve granted permission to Professor Emeritus Alvin O. Thompson, Department of History & Philosophy, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados, to use this photo. Dr. Thompson is writing a small book entitled Confronting Slavery: Breaking through the Corridors of Silence. The photo was taken in the courtyard of the Maison des Esclaves (Slave House) on Goree Island, Senegal.
The UK-based Quality Improvement Agency will be using two of my photos of Dogon country (Mali) in publicly-funded educational materials.
The first is of cliff paintings in Songo, Mali. Songo hosts an excision ceremony every three years for all boys of age. For better or worse, it is also attended now by many tourists and international journalists.
The second photo is of a pair of typical Dogon granaries, which store millet, onions, tomatoes, and other supplies. This one is on the cliffs outside Teli, Mali.
The U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) asked me to put one of their courses online: The Certificate Course in Interfaith Conflict Resolution (link goes to USIP site). USIP had already posted one course on conflict analysis, so they had already established the course structure and design template.The course content, which they provided, was fascinating. The course includes two case studies, Nigeria and Guatemala.
screenshot from Certificate Course in Interfaith Conflict Resolution
In reading the Nigeria case study, I learned about “the pastor and the imam” — two religious leaders who arrange interfaith dialogue in troubled communities, in a brave and powerful effort to bring peace to their region.
The Guatemala case study was a sort of “behind the scenes” look at the peace process that brought an end to thirty-six years of misery in that country.
I had several tasks for this project:
Researching, selecting, and editing photos to illustrate the content and themes of the course. I used photos provided by USIP, and others I found on the United Nations and other NGOs’ web sites. Best of all, I used an AP Images account to through some of the most striking and powerful news photos ever taken.
Writing multiple-choice test questions based on the content. I have to admit this part was more challenging than expected, but very satisfying when I worked with the client to get the questions and answers just right.
Coding all the web pages from a template provided by USIP.
Proofreading the text.
After completion of my tasks, my contact at USIP said,
“Thanks so much for your help with the project. Not only your first-rate technical work and editing support, but most of all your experience as a photographer. Those photos help put the visual into visual storytelling, and help explain the continuing flood of enthusiastic feedback.”
Another custom website for an artist friend, including a hidden page with a “secret door” leading to it! Each page background is based on a different photo by Mark, from his Reflections series.
Mark’s site was certainly different from any other I had worked on, and a lot of fun.
screenshot of Mark's projects page
From the projects page, clicking on a portfolio pops up another window with the portfolio inside:
screenshot of Mark's Media self-portraits portfolio
I have granted permission to OTTN Publishing (Stockton, NJ) to use this photo of Senegalese fishermen setting out in the morning. I took the photo from our hotel in Toubab Dialaw. OTTN says, “the book in question is entitled Senegal and is part of our Africa: Continent in the Balance Series, which we are publishing through Mason Crest Publishers, based in Philadelphia, PA. Each book in the series profiles an African country and reviews the people, the government, the economy, the cultural traditions, the history and the land itself. They are full-color, glossy paged, hardcover books aimed at middle-school library readers.”
As Geekcorps Associate at IESC in 2006, I was tasked with redesigning and rebuilding the Geekcorps website with a new CMS. (The original site had not been redesigned in years and used a custom-made Microsoft Access-based CMS that had become somewhat unwieldy with age.)
Adapted Consulting, a newly formed company, was building a website. They had their own developer but needed a designer to develop the look and feel, and build an XHTML/CSS template that they could replicate throughout the site.
I made mockups, and coded all the XHTML and CSS except the dynamic menus.
Adapted Consulting, a newly formed company, was building a website. They had their own developer but needed a designer to develop the look and feel, and build an XHTML/CSS template that they could replicate throughout the site.
