In spite of my retrograde, contrarian stance on the potential of your Internets in my classroom, I’ve gotta say that if my job description put me anywhere in the humanities next year, I’d be on MagCloud like an NECC attendant on a 1GB flash-drive embossed with an itty-bitty Pearson logo.
MagCloud: upload a PDF and they’ll print it (full color! saddle-stitched!), sell it (40 cents / page!), and distribute it.
I’m serious, people. Get your kids into publishing. Start a literary magazine. Post a call for submissions for your student body’s best photo and print material. Make a contest out of it. Use InDesign. Avoid ComicSans. Put a PDF online for free. Sell a print edition through MagCloud. Turn a profit with any price point above the 40 cents / page minimum. Forget to disclose your earnings to the IRS!
It’s in beta. Request an invite here.
Full disclosure: this post has not been sponsored by MagCloud or Pearson, though the author is willing to negotiate with both.
Postscript: I’ll be sure to let you know when my own magazine goes live –
12 Comments
Jen
July 3, 2008 - 1:59 pm -Heh, love everything about the cover. Really would buy it (a mag with those contents, not just the cover, to be clear).
Benjamin Baxter
July 3, 2008 - 3:36 pm -I’d suggest a wider font for the title, myself.
Kate
July 3, 2008 - 3:49 pm -lolz. “avoid comicsans.”
Kate
July 3, 2008 - 3:56 pm -srsly, you’re very funny. and, you should get over to The Faculty Room and back me up! :D
Chris Lehmann
July 3, 2008 - 5:04 pm -You do enjoy being a professional pain in the rear, don’t you? ;)
ken
July 3, 2008 - 6:25 pm -You can make one of these over at Flickr (spell it just like it sounds).
You can use it in any class, without any regard for standards, assessment, or curriculum mapping.
Cute little inter-tools on the interweb interwoven in classes with complete disregard for content-specific outcomes.
But…
If there are teachers that let others in their classrooms to do these fun, fun, server-dependent 2.0 (oops) “activities”, well, I think there’s another problem that needs attention.
Christian Long
July 3, 2008 - 8:27 pm -Can I get a 2-for-1 if I also subscribe to Cat Fancy?
Oh, and is there any way my own copy can address the single words hanging off the secondary article title gangplanks can be removed? A bit busy to the eye, me thinks. Like little eye-drawing orphans ruining a perfectly good day at the park.
Christian Long
July 3, 2008 - 8:30 pm -P.S. My rowdy gang of interns failed to appropriately edit the 1st line, 2nd paragraph before they hit submit. Probably should have paid them a living wage rather than offering them supposedly valuable access to the Web 2.0 alone.
While a cleaner sentence would be ideal, it wouldn’t revolutionize the message. Plus, I’m too dang busy counting syllables in haiku-land these days to bother with sentence structures over here in the math wing.
dan
July 3, 2008 - 9:25 pm -@Kate: Good eye. That post is bonkers.
@Ken: I think I found that same utility as I was looking for magazine cover examples. Disregarding my previous gripe about teachers wedging these awkwardly into instruction, I also find these automatic tools somewhat soulless. These utilities have gotta be more careful which creative agencies they strip out and automate. This dates back to Animoto, I guess. [Ooo. Just read that one again and, uh, you and me didn’t agree.]
@Chris: And a personal one, on regrettable occasion.
@Christian: Agh. My jab has sent you into a nitpicking frenzy. My blog can’t cope. You win! Uncle!
Nancy
July 4, 2008 - 4:29 pm -You photo looks a little like Joel Olsteen–he’s a happy guy, you’re a happy guy. He’s super rich–we’re not.
ken
July 4, 2008 - 4:44 pm -For what it’s worth, I’ve abandoned Animoto.
I guess people change after all.
sam shah
July 5, 2008 - 7:29 pm -Nice mag cover!
If you ever want to publish online, instead of paying for print copies (which are dang cool to have, don’t get me wrong), there are ways to set up academic journals online for free too.
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Free_and_open-source_journal_management_software
I wanted to set up an academic journal for my high school [http://samjshah.com/2008/05/07/a-scholastic-journal-for-high-school/] and I hope to start making it happen next year using some of this open source software.
In other news, I used lulu.com a bit over a year ago to print booklets for a conference I was helping host, and I thought their prices and service were really good. But I was getting all text, no pictures. I don’t know if they are cheap with color added into the mix.