Previous students at the Center for Advanced Technologies magnet program at Lakewood High School had tried to create a virtual tour of the facility, but kept hitting snags.

Then Kyla Kolb, 17, stepped up to the challenge.

Within three weeks, she and fellow senior Lindsay Hofer had it up and running. Now, prospective students can view the facility and its amenities via the program’s Web page.

To view the virtual tour, visit the website at: www.cat.pcsb.org.

For that, and other achievements in computer programming, Kyla is one of 35 students from across the nation to win a 2012 Award for Aspirations in Computing, which is sponsored by the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) and Bank of America. She will receive a $500 cash prize, a laptop computer, a crystal award and a free trip to an awards ceremony and technology showcase in Charlotte, N.C., in March.

Kyla, a senior who lives in St. Petersburg, designs websites and is a network assistant at the CAT program, which means she works on the website and provides technical support to the entire faculty.

Kyla helped launch a popular video game design club and is now working to start a “Women in Engineering Club” at Lakewood.

She has teamed up with Lindsay again to work on an iPad application that links hall monitors to a virtual hall pass system.

“I’m delighted for Kyla that her talent and work, that combination, has been recognized in this way. I think she’s a terrific example of women in computer science. It’s not a boys’ game, not anymore,” said Melissa Heeren, the teacher who nominated Kyla.

Palm Harbor University High actors raise money
to compete in southeast U.S. conference March 7-10
as Florida’s representatives

Check out the behind the scenes VIDEO.

For the first time in nearly 20 years, a Pinellas County school has won the top honor at the Florida Theatre Conference. Palm Harbor University High drama students were selected for their performance of the play Wiley and the Hairy Man.

According to the conference website, it is the only secondary school drama organization in Florida that is associated with both professional and amateur theatre organizations and individuals where secondary students get the opportunity to safely interact with and observe members of the total theatre community.

On Jan. 27 at a fundraising dinner with entertainment from vocal chorus students followed by a performance of the play, the cast of 23 students raised more than $11,000 from community support for their trip to represent Florida at the Southeastern Theatre Conference in Chattanooga, Tenn., March 7-10. The conference is one of the largest festivals in the southern United States.

The award and the fundraising show have been the greatest experience for student actors Amanda Springer, Tim Hart and Vanessa Lopez.

Springer, a junior in the traditional program at the school, was named Best Actress for her portrayal of the character Mammy, Wiley’s mother. Mammy encourages her
son to go out to the swamp and defeat the Hairy Man.

Through theatre, she achieves balance between school, family and friends, she said.

“You have to learn how to make time for everything,” said Springer. “I do theatre because it gives me an opportunity to be challenged. It is also a lot of fun and a great way to make friends.”

Hart, a 10th grade student in the IB program, plays the role of Hairy Man. The biggest challenge for him is the physical transformation of becoming the antagonist with a big, fake belly, shoulder pads, beard and a lot of body hair.

“I love to entertain people. I have been performing since the first grade,” he said. “It is fulfilling for me to be on a stage and make the audience laugh or cry. It is great to see their reaction.”

The Hairy Man’s only weakness is that he hates dogs. Lopez, a senior, plays Wiley’s dog and best friend. Dressed in costume and wearing paws and a tail, she chases Hairy Man and barks at him.

“Nobody recognizes me on stage. They [don't] even know I am a girl,” she said laughing. “I was excited when I got the role because there are only four roles and a chorus. It is fun to impersonate a dog. I have fun, I bark and lick people.”

The play uses Jacques Lecoq chorus style choreography which originated in Paris. Actors generate a physical performance based in large part on improvisation: http://www.ecole-jacqueslecoq.com/en

“I had seen the play on stage a couple of times many years ago,” said Graham Howard, theatre teacher at Palm Harbor University High. “Each senior has to do an independent study which is either a performance or workshop. Jocelyn Reynolds worked with chorus as part of her IB study. She researched, planned and blocked the movements with fellow students.”

For her leadership role in the play production, Howard describes Reynolds as the assistant director for choral movement.

Springer, Hart and Lopez say theatre is now and always be a part of their lives.

“I have this dream of being on Broadway, this is what I want to do in my life,” Hart said. ”Obviously, I have other alternatives, I am not going to be soul crashed if it doesn’t work out but I know this is what I want to do. It is hard work but it is going to be worth it at the end.”

Hart said the key to success is collaboration with the team.

The folk-tale inspired drama Wiley and the Hairy Man by Susan Zeder is the perfect drama for his students, said Howard.

“I love the rhyme. I love the magic,” he said. “When I was looking for a play for my students, this drama seemed to offer a lot of opportunities both for the stage and in the classroom.”

Howard said that exposure to theater teaches his students about collaborative work.

“I enjoy seeing them light up the stage,” he said. ”I am very humbled to receive such an honor and I am very excited for my students because you direct, but it is the student, the actor, who then has to make it come alive. They have to internalize it, breathe it and just bring it back to the audience. When they do that, and I have been doing this for a long time, I can still sit there and get goosebumps and smile and enjoy watching them take this wonderful step, this leap of faith on the stage to entertain an audience. There is no experience quite that. When you know that students experience that as well, this moment of entertaining an audience, of reaching out and touching an audience, that cannot be taught in a classroom.”

She is self-confident, expressive, passionate and professional when she speaks about a syndrome called Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), she wants her audience to understand that this syndrome is 100 percent preventable.

It is caused by the mother who chooses to drink alcohol while she is pregnant. The growing fetus inside the mother is continuously bathed in alcohol for months. The results of the mother’s selfish acts are a baby who is prematurely born with low birth weight, feeding problems, respiratory distress, and under developed lungs.

The other problems that continue throughout the child’s life include tremors, stuttering, trouble concentrating and lack of memory.

The speaker’s name is Chanel Torres, an Extended Transition student at Richard L. Sanders School.

Chanel speaks from experience when she gives presentations about this syndrome because she has FAS. But she has not let this syndrome stop her. Chanel is on a mission to help educate others who are living and dealing with FAS. She has created a website, www.advocatefortheunborn.com and spends a lot of her time giving presentations at public speaking engagements, facilitating young adult support groups, and working on her autobiography that she hopes to soon publish.

Her compassion and determination to empower and advocate for other young adults with this disability has won her national and local recognition. She is a 2012 Yes I Can! Award winner from the Council for Exceptional Children in the Self-Advocacy category. She also is a Pinellas County Schools’ 2012 Young Hero Award winner.

“The more people I can educate, the more babies I can save from this awful syndrome and suffering. This is my story. This is my life,” she said.

Students at Clearwater High School’s CTTV program came in first place in the high school division of the Florida Celebrate Literacy Week public service announcement contest.

The video was produced by juniors Briana Clements and Patrick Shackton, both 17, and senior Michael Dedman, 18. The theme for this year’s contest was “Take the Lead and Read.”

The video starts with a coach-type figure in a locker room, encouraging his team to read and “raise the literacy rate.” The training theme continues throughout the announcement, which ends with the tagline: “Be a Reader Leader.”

Click the screen shot photo, right, to watch the VIDEO.

The group was led by teacher Cara Ryan. The contest was held in conjunction with Florida Celebrate Literacy Week, which ran Jan. 23-27. Clearwater’s winning team was announced by Gov. Rick Scott’s wife, Florida First Lady Ann Scott, at the Daytona International Speedway on Wednesday, Jan. 25.

One of the best ways to generate interest among your visitors is by offering a poll where the collection results can be monitored immediately.

For those of you familiar with established social science research methods, this type of poll is by no means authoritative. It is not meant to be. The benefits are entertaining, informational and a way to create buzz on your blog.

Polldaddy.com offers both a free and premium level service that allows you to post a poll on a website or blog page, in an e-mail, on Facebook or Twitter. Check out their two-minute promo video:

I have had a pro-level Survey Monkey account and in comparison, this tool rocks and is so much easier to use. The free account does have some limitations regarding the total number of survey responses per month — 100 — and the total number of questions for each poll or quiz — 10 — but with some planning on your part, you can leverage this tool for a huge benefit at no cost.

1. Log into your WordPress.org Dashboard, then on the left navigation bar click “Plugins” –> “Add New”.

2. Search for: polldaddy

3. In the results, choose “Polldaddy Polls & Ratings” by Automattic, Inc. Why? This is the one I have tested. If you try another option your mileage will differ.

4. Once it loads into your plugins screen, click “Activate”.

5. In a separate Web browser window or tab, go to http://polldaddy.com/pricing/ and sign up for an account. For now, I am using the free option which is what I recommend to you. Follow the prompts for creating your Polldaddy account as you will need to confirm the process through the e-mail you provide. Remember your account information especially your password!

6. Once you have confirmed your account through your e-mail AND you have received the welcome e-mail — this takes a minute or so — go back to your WordPress.org Dashboard and locate the new Polls option in your left navigation bar. Click it and enter your Polldaddy e-mail address and password — the same ones you provided when you registered for your account in step 5. Follow the prompts to complete the process of activating your account.

Note: First I tried with the SSL check box selected, which is the default. When it did not work, I clicked the check mark to deselect the SSL option, then my registration went through.

7. Now, in your WordPress.org left navigation bar, click “Polls –> Add New” and follow the prompts or watch one of their training videos: http://polldaddy.com/dashboard/.

When you create a poll and make it live, copy and paste the URL where it is located into my comments/contact form so I can take a look and most likely vote.  My current poll is displayed in the right column of this blog. Check out the results and if you like, vote!

My free Polldaddy account also includes a ratings option. I have added this feature to this post. If you like, rate it.

Related story: “Nearly 90 percent of students will continue blogging after Web Publishing course ends” — http://wolfetracksproductions.com/fresh_tracks/index.php/2011/06/22/nearly-90-percent-of-students-will-continue-blogging-after-web-publishing-course-ends/

By following one of Wendy Joan Biddlecome’s posts this semester, I learned about the WordPress Tip of the Day feature. The one I received today is a topic I have been meaning to share with you. WordPress.org software contains an easy to change setting that allows the URLs of your pages to have more meaning rather than, by default, being assigned characters that look like jibberish. By changing your permalinks to be more visually friendly to your site visitors, you are also making them more appealing to search engines like Google and this ultimately improves your blog’s ranking in search results.

Since the GFYD folks have already invented the wheel with a great video tutorial, I am going to just pass it along:
http://gfydmember.com/wordpress-training/wordpress-tip-of-the-day/005fe

Click to enlarge

If you give this technique a try but it doesn’t work for your WordPress theme — you wind up with page cannot be found error messages — just put your permalink setting back where it was before you made the change. No worries. As with anything in technology, your mileage may differ from the tutorial. Personally, I use the built in “Day and name” option and it works just fine for me.

There is a link at the bottom of the GFYD page to sign up for their free WordPress Tip of the Day feature — no need to join the GFYD ranks to benefit.

“I want one.” “How did you do that?” You can see mine in action in the upper left corner of the Web browser you are using to view this blog. The tiny graphic appears to the left of the URL or Web address. In Firefox, it will also appear in the tab.

Click to enlarge

For starters, my premium WordPress theme — Thesis — has this popular feature built in and when I was getting to know my software, I thought it was a cool idea so I went ahead and made one. When many of my students saw what I had done, we all realized that not all themes offer this option.

Enter the tutorial that will work for every theme and you guessed it, it requires a plugin.

You can search plugins by either clicking “Plugins –> Add New” in the left sidebar of your WordPress Dashboard or by visiting the WordPress.org website and clicking “Extend –> Plugins”. The direct address is: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

Search for: favicon  You will find with either method that plugins are rated with stars like movies — the more stars the more popular the plugin. Neither method ranks plugins by the number of stars received so you will need to scroll down to locate the one you would like to try.

The one I did of my mug — a tight crop of the image I use as a banner at the top of each of my blog pages — is hard to recognize when it is so tiny, so I will be redoing it. Maybe one of my Wolfe Tracks wolf paw prints would be cool, but then folks might get the idea I am writing about kennels. I am still pondering. And you will be too. I suggest you make a draft, then go live with it so you have something on display while you are trying to decide what your next and more permanent one will be.

In researching the plugin alternatives for this post, I discovered one of the options is a rotator! http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/favicon-rotator/ Hmmm. This means I could have several and not worry about choosing just one.

The most universal favicon files type is .ico as it works in all flavors of Web browsers. There are plenty of free .ico generators on the Web. Here is a site that allows you to create one from scratch or upload an image to use as is or as a starting point. You can even do an animation: http://www.favicon.cc/ The site also provides examples.

With some issues regarding Internet Explorer, the next most usable files types are: .png or .gif.

The physical size of a favicon file as measured in pixels can be: 16 X 16, 32 X 32, or 48 X 48. The color depth can be 8-bit, 24-bit or 32-bit.

I used Photoshop via File –> Save As –> Format (File type:) and I saved my favicon in the .png file format. Again in Photoshop, with my graphic displayed, I used a combination of the crop tool and the Image Size window to achieve the exact size I needed. Also, the .png file I used in the example is at 72 dpi. I did not need to download, try out or purchase an .ico application because I have no intention of going into mass production!

For inspiration, check out: http://thefavicongallery.com/ For those of you in the Tampa Bay Florida area, see if you can find the favicon for the St. Petersburg Times. Hint: Look for the letter “T”. Hover over any favicon to see a larger image in the upper right corner and the URL it represents.

Now, try making one of your own and when you get it live on the Web, copy/paste your link into my comment/contact form, then send me a message so I can take a look.

Have fun!

You have seen these tiny graphics off to the side of a blog post that are programmed to have them display. A person’s or company’s online persona is displayed in the form of a mug shot, a cartoon character, logo or perhaps a combination of two or more.

Click the image to enlarge

Mine is a cropped version of the banner image I use at the top of each of my blog pages. This is a form of branding and when you are a freelancer, it is good for business.

How to set up your own
Visit http://Gravatar.com and create a free account for uploading, then managing one or more of your avatars across the Web. The service will want to tie the image of your choice to an e-mail address you provide. You can upload more than one image, then choose which one you would like to associate with your primary e-mail address. It even allows you to list multiple e-mail address and associate the image of your choice with each one. For my Gravatar, I edited a photo image to a square and kept it at 300 dpi. The service will resize it for you as needed. In Photoshop, I also added a layer so the name of my blog is displayed across the bottom, then I dropped out the background to create a transparency. Your image file can be a .jpg file. If you need to maintain transparency, save your file as a .gif or .png file.

Your Gravatar.com profile
The address to my Wolfe Tracks Productions, Fresh Tracks version is: http://en.gravatar.com/dpwolfe You do not have to fill out any of the profile areas, but this gives you an idea of what it can look like if you do. I also followed their menu prompt and uploaded a custom background image which they automatically repeat behind the profile box. First, I uploaded my 300 dpi image as a file with a large width and height since their service said it would take care of my choice. Well, when it showed up it was unrecognizable as it was virtually falling off the edges of the computer monitor. So, I made some adjustments in Photoshop starting with a physical size of approximately 5 X 7 inches. Trial and error kept leading me to create then upload smaller physical sizes until I achieved the look I was after.

For those of you interested in QR codes, a link in your Gravatar profile provides you with a ready-made graphic based on the unique URL that leads back to your account.

Click to enlarge

Displaying your avatar in WordPress
Sign into your WordPress.org software. In the menu on the left, click “Settings,” then “Discussion”. Scroll down to the Avatar section then make the choices you desire. Be sure to save your changes.

Favicons for Web browsers
My premium WordPress theme — Thesis — includes a Dashboard option that allows me to easily upload then display a favicon which is the little graphic that appears to the left of the Web browser’s URL display box and if you are using Firefox, it will also appear to the left of the browsing tab.

See my separate post on how to create, upload then display a favicon.

Click to enlarge

Your exact street address should never be a part of your website, blog or any documents you distribute over the Web … like a resume.
Why?
There are too many nut cases out there who have the motivation to show up at your doorstep.
No, I am not paranoid. I have had this happen to me, twice.
One of my job responsibilities when I worked as the technology training editor at the St. Petersburg Times was to make sure news staff were aware of how easy it is for unscrupulous or unbalanced people to use either public records or SELF SUPPLIED information against them. One particular staffer who has a very famous relative was particularly thankful and this was in the era of Usenet Newsgroups before the Web became public.

What to do?

Do plan on providing some level of contact information that will allow potential employers, freelance clients or people wishing to give you an internship interview to reach you. Safe forms of communication are:
1. a professional e-mail address
2. a cell phone number
3. a U.S. Post Office box street address
4. the street address of a UPS Store mail box
Any one or more of these safe forms of contact information should be in each one of the files you make public that showcases your portfolio work.
In your formal resume, simply state that “additional contact information is available upon request”. Same with references. I don’t even list the exact city where I live. The more general “Tampa Bay” or “Tampa Bay, Florida” or “Tampa Bay area” is just fine.

Go one step further

When you registered for your domain address, you provided some very specific contact information about yourself for the WHOIS database which is an international public record. The Parcom.net hosting service offers a FREE option that will protect you. If you request them to do so, they will substitute their information for yours in this database. Other Web hosts, like GoDaddy, charge for this.
Between the stars, below, is the information from the Parcom.net website about this topic:
* * *
Parcom Privacy Service – NEW!
This optional service is now FREE with any Parcom registered domain. No extra fees at all!
Adding the Parcom Privacy Service to your domain registration can shield you from…
Spam
Identity Theft
Data mining
Name Hijackers
and more…
Did you know that current ICANN regulations require that your Private contact information (WhoIs Info) be included in a publicly accessible Database?
This means that your private information is displayed and made available to anyone who wants to see it, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Now you can protect your private WhoIs information by requesting the FREE privacy service offered by Parcom today! Many places charge extra fees for this feature. We go the extra mile to still assure you own the domain, but all information is replaced with Parcom generic information that keeps your mail box from getting full of junk mail and your e-mail from getting filled with spam!
Protect your Privacy today by contacting our billing department and requesting your Parcom registered domain have this new feature added today!
Note: Parcom will replace all customer information with generic Parcom information to mask and protect the domain WHOIS information, however, the domain still belongs to the customer 100%. Clients can request changes at any time too!
* * *

So, rest easier by requesting that your Web host mask your personal details. If your host is Parcom.net, visit the following link and fill out the form to request the “Parcom Privacy Service”.
https://secure.parcom.net/forms/billing_request.html
Be sure to provide them with:
1. your domain name (a.k.a. your website address or URL)
2. the user name of your Parcom helm
You do NOT need to send them your password.

Now, this is multimedia!

The following collection represents a small slice of what my life was like while filming Dry Creek on location in Parrish, Fla., and as part of publicity at Cowboy Days in Dade City, Fla. In the viewer, you will experience still photos taken by Andrea Lypka and unedited video shot by me.

The player is by Cincopa and I am showcasing one of the free versions to illustrate how still photos and video clips can be mixed and matched in the same viewer. I also adjusted the settings of the player to match the dimensions of my blog post column.

Make a fresh bag of buttered popcorn and enjoy!