Looking ahead to Columbus

I leave in one week for Columbus, Ohio, to attend the Digital Media and Composition Institute.  I have a full 13 days in front of me -- see my schedule!  I have started doing the readings plus have some early ideas for my final DMAC project.  Here are my thoughts in no particular order ... all tied to being very excited to go and PRODUCE projects based on all of my reading and study.

• One of the first things we will produce at DMAC is a literacy narrative.  I have been collecting artifacts, such as this To Kill a Mockingbird essay (one of my all-time favorite books from middle school), as artifacts for mine.  I am trying to think visually, which is a huge change for word-oriented me.  This is one of my main  goals for DMAC -- to increase my own visual abilities and shift my tendencies as a teacher more towards the visual.
• I have felt prepared for DMAC as I have been doing the early readings for two reasons.  First, I have read the New London Group's A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies, and this is the basis for much of our reading.  Second, I am also familiar with a large number of the theorists who form the base for the ideas in the articles we are reading -- from Selber to Latour to Jenkins.  This is the first time I have felt like I am bringing something to the table in my studies, and that is a truly great feeling.
• For our final project, I hope to create a video based around performing Othello to use as I introduce this project to my students.   I am also collecting artifacts for this, and I still need to see if I can access the uStream videos of past performances.  If I can, then I will be able to use both still and moving images, which would be very cool.  If not, I can roll with just the still shots that I have.
• My DMAC time will then form the basis for my independent study for the rest of the summer. For this, I want to create a site for my AP students that replaces our current ning.  I am hoping to do this on a Wordpress foundation with plug-ins and personal coding. While I will use some of the content that I create at DMAC on this site, I will build the site itself after returning from DMAC. I hope to polish up my CSS skills on this as well.
• Finally, I want to use this second independent study to get to some reading that I have wanted to do after my New Media Theory and Practice course.  I have been keeping a "to be read" list in my End Note library and will knock a few of those out!