Gunalchéesh

Dear students: I want to commend you all on the focus, energy, hard work, humor, and courage you have shown during the Path to Excellence Academy. During the celebration last night, your words and images--and also your attitudes--conveyed joy and pride in your learning and your personal growth.

It was a privilege to work with you as you put together your blogs and presentations. Through your images and words, I learned so much. From the importance of properly returning the seal skulls to the ocean, to the pronunciation of Tlingit words, to the correct structure for a formal Tlingit introduction... I felt so privileged to have this glimpse of the power of Tlingit culture through you. I hope all of you continue to shine as students, leaders, educators, innovators, naturalists.

Keep exploring, discovering, studying, meditating, learning. I hope that you continue to add to these blogs; I'll definitely be checking back to see!

Best wishes,

Kathy H.

Some blogs to check out

Here are a few blogs to look at for ideas and inspiration. Notice how the authors of these blogs answer the essential questions that we've posed to you for your own work. Notice also how they use images and maps!

Pajama Morning

--An Oregon family travels to Juneau for Celebration, and also goes hiking, bakes bread...

There and Back Again

--A Juneau woman relates her experience on a canoe trip from Angoon to Juneau

Sitka Nature

--A curious naturalist in Sitka ponders everything from fungi to fish

Everyday Adventurer

--This nature blogger in Michigan has a laid-back, slightly goofy style and some great observations and photos

Tlingit Petroglyph - A Cultural Touchstone

On our catamaran trip up Berners Bay, we were met by a skiff that shuttled an expeditionary group of students and adults ashore to look for ancient Tlingit petroglyphs.

Though our time on shore was short and some had already gone back to the boat, we did find an amazing, large weathered petroglyph.

In the dappled light, you can see the circles and spirals carved on the large rock which used to sit on the beach, but has been lifted up into the woods over the centuries as the local land rises.

Essential Questions

As young leaders, your calling is to work to answer these big questions, both now and throughout your life.

Each of your blog postings should reflect a sincere effort to explore any or all of these essential questions:

1. Who am I?

2. What place do I call home?

3. How am I connected to that place biologically and culturally?

4. What is my path?

Blogger Introduction:

If you're reading this, you're reading a blog. If you're taking this course for credit, your assignment is to respond to one of the course Essential Questions in your own blog.

You may already be a blogger and use another blog program or service. Feel free to use any other blog program or service you like. Otherwise, try blogger. It's quick! It's easy! And it's free!

Start by clicking on this blogger link Follow the prompts to set up your own blog for this course.

You'll also find a helpful Quick Tour and Video Tutorial along with other useful features - just a click away.

Naming Your Blog
It can be a surprisingly difficult task to reduce the scope of ideas in this course to a few helpful words. Feel free to be creative and personalize, but please choose a title that somehow directly relates to this course.

Choosing a Design Template
You will be prompted to select your basic template for your blog. You can change colors, add gadgets, and move elements around to suit your style. Take a little time to play with your blog design. Strive to make it unique, appealing and easy for others to use and read.

Linking your blog to this blog
After you save your blog, send an email to the course instructor including the blog title and its URL.

The URL is your blog's web address. It should look like this, but with your blog's name in it: http://your blog name here.blogspot.com.

The instructor will add your blog as a link in the Course Participants menu on the main page of this blog.

A Note on Privacy
You are not required to use your real name or provide personal information on your blog. Here are some recommendations:

1. Only provide information you wish to make public.
2. You may choose to not display your personal profile when you set-up your blog.
   
3. You may choose to not include your email on your blog.
4. You may limit or exclude Readers' Comments under the Settings menu for your blog.
   

Bottom Line: Treat your blog as a practical portfolio which you can use professionally.

Better Blogging

A few words about better blogging. Among other things, blogging is writing. However, it's writing in a very public way. Unlike a personal journal or diary, blogs are open to the world and should reflect an awareness of a potentially much larger audience.

Please consider these concepts:

Clear - Blog writing should be final draft quality. Consider doing your initial writing and editing offline, then copy and paste it into blogger when you're satisfied with its quality.

Concise - Good writing in general is spare, simple and direct. This is arguably even more true for online writing. Try to aim for 3-5 paragraphs per post.

Confidentiality - Carefully consider what kind personal information is appropriate to include in your blog. Blog profile settings offer a wide variety of features to help you best decide who and what others should know about a blog's author.

Comments - Consider how you want others to interact with your blog. From zero comments to an open forum, comments sections add richness as well as liabilities for bloggers. I recommend using moderated comments that are only displayed with your approval.

Credible - Personal opinions can have considerable merit, especially when based on personal knowledge and experience.
Otherwise, reason, research and resources should be employed to support personal views.

Creative - Blogs are an excellent medium for personal creativity. The themes you choose to feature, the kinds of other media you include, the writing style you employ and the layout and visual appeal you design are just some of the creative arenas for you to explore and master.

Contrast - Visual appeal and readability are enhanced by using contrasting fonts, colors and elements. Selecting the wrong font color may be all it takes to keep someone from reading otherwise brilliant writing.

Clean - Blogs can become cluttered with visually distracting images and features. Keep your blogs visually tidy. Besides looking better, they are more useful for others whom you'd like to visit your blog.

Credit - Good ideas and images deserve and/or require proper credit - even your own.

Captions - Unless it is absolutely obvious, images should have some kind of caption to help make conceptual connections more clear.

Context - Images should relate obviously to the topic at hand.

Connected - Including excellent links and having others link to your blog makes it more powerful and more connected.

CRAP - While we're on the subject, let me share with you some words about CRAP! Hit this link to DailyBlogTips to learn simple tools for designing more powerful blogs using the principles of Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity.

Using Google Earth Screen Shots

Try taking screen shots in Google Earth of places that we visited, or of other places that are meaningful to you and your culture. This picture in Taku Inlet is taken using the 3D tilt function.

Perspective

What would Raven See?

Give careful thought to perspective when writing or choosing images for your blog. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

Richard and I climbed a tall tree to get this picture from Raven's perspective.