Archive for the ‘Projects’ Category

Making Books

Saturday, February 4th, 2012

We have been making digital books and in case you’re thinking of putting one of your books into digital form and you’re wondering how hard it is to do right, I can tell you it’s not as easy as everyone is saying in the ebook reviews and advice.  If you have a literary piece that you want to be formatted and finalized into a presentation befitting of your work and the reputation you want to project, you can’t just dump the manuscript into a piece of software and expect it to be what you were hoping.

My team and I are glad we took the more disciplined route.  Two books we recently put out are Dating Latino Immigrants: Five Pitfalls to Avoid So Your Relationship Can Last Forever, and Feeling Better Instead of Bitter about the Latino Immigrant.  Both books are on Amazon and other places.  I used to have to practically beg publishers to look at a manuscripts for magazines or books.  Not anymore.  Plus, my writings have a farther reach by being available in digital and hard copy form.

All kinds of people are doing this the fast, cheap, and not-so-professional way.  In my opinion, you’ll be a lot happier and more influential if you do your books the right way.  Spend the necessary money.  You will get what you pay for.  (Because we handcraft people’s books when putting them into digital form, we only accept a limited number of requests.)

Our Fourth Batch of 100+ Video Lessons

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

A large portion of our fourth batch of 100+ video lessons has been completed. Batch 4 is for the 2011-2012 school year. We will have about 500 videos by December 2011. The plan is to do two more batches of this sort, but this is still just a tiny part of what we are up to.

Covering the Walkabout Entertainers

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

Two of us just returned from videotaping and interviewing the walkabout entertainers at the Wisconsin State Fair. They took us in, trusted us, and showed us the inside scoop on their work. Hard work. This long series will turn into a documentary in our fourth batch of 100+ Max and Max Spanish video lessons. These lessons will teach kids a lot about hard work, culture and language. They will never, ever forget this series.

Illegals Remind Me of Citizens

Friday, July 9th, 2010

You know those character banners that decorate school hallways and classrooms? Well, I realize the U.S.-Mexico border is way out of control, but I’m so tired of people complaining to me about illegal immigrants that I have decided to create a video series on the painful similarities between citizens and illegals. I want to do this with those character banners in mind. Here are some:

Respect (no putdowns)
Caring (treating people with dignity)
Fairness (allowing people to have what is due them, and not taking what is not yours)
Citizenship (playing a wholesome role in your society and country)

When we take an honest look at how citizens behave, we find plenty of illegality along with bad citizenship and other character flaws. It’s good to examine our own behavior before despising others. Maybe we have a lot in common.

By the way, even the immigrants who cross illegally tell me that the border is out of control. Most of them are just plain desperate.

The series will appear in the Batch 3 and Batch 4 Cultural Insights, which are for 6th grade and up, including the adults who are with them. I think subscribers will enjoy the lessons and take another look at their feelings. We will not agree on an effective solution to our border issues, but at least we can try a little harder to live up to those character banners.

Feedback on the K-8 Spanish Video Lessons

Sunday, April 4th, 2010

Feedback on our K-8 Spanish video lessons is now equal to the feedback I got when I taught in the classroom. In short, people appreciate the (1) personalness, (2) the wide variety of techniques and content, and (3) the fact that students are using the language outside the classroom. This is a significant result, partly because it proves what some people did not think was possible on the K-8 level.

The first year of developing the videos was sometimes rugged, and with lots of embarrassing mistakes that occur when your attention is strewn across new software and hardware. Half the lessons needed major revision.

There’s no question that much of what I do in the videos is way beyond what I was able to do on site. The videos provide many, many field trips to people and events that I was unable to access before, and because the lessons are in digital form, all of them can be repeated and scheduled as the users please. I used to dream about having such a resource. Now I spend my time developing and expanding it for the benefit of anyone who looks long enough to realize what it can do. This project is a matter of following the principles of learning and of educational media design.

Bigfoot Interview Done

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

I just returned from the Pacific Northwest, where I interviewed a wildland investigator who has tracked Bigfoot on at least four occasions. This highly reputable detective was simply assigned to track professionally and report objectively. A television special turned his report into a tale of scary fiction. So I was delighted to conduct an objective interview for a series of wholesome Spanish lessons that will appear in our third batch of 100+ lessons (Batch 3 is for 3rd grade and up). The series will show the intelligent deductions that can be drawn from an expert tracker and former special ops soldier who has spent his life in the wilderness. His respect for nature is beautiful. Staff and students will appreciate his many insights into the wilderness.

Audio Quality

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

We’re almost ready to launch our On the Go audio fluency builder series for busy people. We aren’t worried about “crystal-clear” audio. It’s nice with music recordings, but when do you ever hear crystal-clear speech in the conversations of daily life? The important thing is to be able to hear accurately. So we shoot for clean audio, but not the kind that we rarely experience in daily talk. It’s important to learn in the presence of the usual noises that surround us.

Bigfoot

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

I’m getting ready to interview a wildland investigator who has experience with Bigfoot. Another investigator has checked the story and says it’s the best documented account he’s heard of the legendary creature. A university has examined the evidence and, as far as I know, no one has been able to refute it. I will turn this interview into a feature story series as I have done with other interviews for the Max and Max Spanish video lesson subscriptions. It will appear in Batch 3, which is the third set of 100+ video lessons. We will begin posting Batch 3 lessons in late July.