Flash drive fun!

Hello everyone! Time for an update. I've been way way busy lately (I'm sure you all know how that feels). We just finished a weeklong workshop with middle schoolers at the Marin Youth Center's Computer Clubhouse. It was my first time in a computer clubhouse, they seem like a great idea! While I was there I learned a little about making beats using FruityLoops. Fun! But a lot harder than I thought it would be.

Right now the main things on my plate are working with Danielle and others on Stories for Change, a web portal for community-based digital storytelling facilitators. Danielle is head of the committee that's creating the site and I'm helping with content collection. We're getting close to launch so I've been extra busy gathering up resource materials, formatting them, and uploading to the site. It's a Drupal-based site so luckily the uploading is relatively simple. (someone else built the site, someone far techier than I am!)

Anyway it's been really eye-opening to see all the work that goes into planning a website. The site should be really great resource for anyone interested in using digital storytelling in their community work. I'll keep you posted on when we launch.

Other news:

--Fellow VISTAs Naomi Jimenez and Brittney Fosbrook came to CDS to do a digital storytelling workshop a few weeks ago. Yay! Hopefully they will post their stories on Blip.tv to share them. It was good to have a little VISTA reunion...I hope we can collaborate further on digital storytelling work with their organizations.

--I finally got an external hard drive to hold all my work! Thanks goodness. I've been having a lot of issues staying organized because there hasn't been one computer where I can work all the time. I'd been daydreaming about this portable drive from LaCie and voila! CDS came though and now I've got it in my hot little hands.

--Speaking of hard drives and such, we also just got two new flash drives to use in our workshops. They are super handy, especially since we often need to transfer files from machine to machine, Mac to PC, etc. We found these 2 gb flash drives for just $20, can't complain about that. What we do complain about is the way our flash drives tend to grow legs and walk away from our workshops. This time we've attached smurf keychains to the drives, we'll see if it makes them a little trickier to just stuff into your pocket. I ran across these other ideas for how to make USB flash drive modifications, seems like good clean CTC VISTA fun and an anti-theft measure, too. Maybe I can make one out of the VISTA robot?

Comment from lauren bratslavsky on May 1, 2007 - 2:38pm

Thanks for that great link! We've been having problems too. Seems like most electronics have legs and walk off. I'll definitely be using this.

A coworker just suggested I turn this into a one-day workshop for kids. Maybe even go to some electronics store and ask them to donate some flash drives even. This project has got a cooool factor to it.