Cultural Event: A Celebration of Storer College

Me in the Storer Ballroom right after the film showing.

For one of my cultural events for my Capstone, I went to the celebration of Storer College in the Storer Ballroom. Program Board director Rachael Meads presented the event, which was a dedication of both a place and a people.

At the celebration, attendees were treated to a wonderful documentary film about Storer College by Jefferson Co. native Midge Yost, who wrote, directed, and produced the film.

The celebration of Storer College was more than just a program, it was an inward look at the many milestones that American history went through. It gives meaning to the name "Storer" Ballroom and reminds us that America is a country of many diversities. At times these diversities and gems are lost to other parts of history, but the film inspires us to remember and explore the rich community right in our very own surrounding area.

Storer College, which I had not heard of ( or rather knew much about) before attending the celebration is truly an achievement for the African-American culture and heritage that is such an important part of our civil rights history. The college was one of the very first colleges to educate freed black slaves, and provided one of the first state systems for the higher learning of African-Americans.

The college, which opened in the fall of 1867, set up missionary schools to over 30,000 freed slaves in the Shennadoah Valley.  These school were designed to show recently freed slaves how to manage their freedom and become self-sufficient and successful. It was at Storer and college like Storer that proved that (contrary to the popular belief at the time) that freed slaves could learn and they could be educated. They were taught valuable skills and developed a passion for self-determination that helped them give themselves respect and a greater sense of humanity.

Before the college closed in 1955, Storer had become one of the most influential and respected institutions for African Americans in the US. Storer not only enriched the lives of its student with a strong community, but also was home to an intense, diverse, and ultimately very spiritual learning environment. Student were required to go to chapel almost every day, which sometimes include the occasional visit by important African-American leaders, including George Washington Carver.

In fact many say that Storer College was one of the birthplaces of the NAACP, when it met as the Niagra Movement, their first meeting together in the United States.

People as influential as Don Redman, who was the first African American attorney in WV was a Storer College alum. Redman went on to be the first elected president of Nigeria.

After the film, we were entreated to a interesting discussion and were fortunate to have an alumni from Storer College present. She was full of spunk and kept reciting how she had a wonderful time at Storer and how important the experience was to her life.

This event truly was inspirational, and it reminded me of how much cultural and history I had missed out on, Storer was truly a legacy to be celebrated!

Creating the aesthetic for project presentation

So not only are we creating a project for Capstone, but we also have to present the project via board to the public in a "fair" setting. My board project has acquainted me more with Adobe Illustrator than I thought possible.

My idea for my board was to design something that was eye catching, but simple in design, but functional so it reflected the ideas that I put into my website.

Researching into Adobe Illustrator, I found a way to create my own paintbrushes to include my own personal color scheme into my board. It has also changed the way I feel about Photoshop and Illustrator.  Illustrator seems to have not an more expansive way of creating, but just a very different way, it seems a little more artist oriented than photoshop, which seems more business/industrial oriented.

Another way I researched for my board was look through the different capstone projects on the Facebook group to see how other students had done their project boards in the past.

After My Last Capstone Meeting, Revisions and Revelations

Knowing now what I  need to update and change going into Spring Break, I hope that I can make all my corrects and modifications before I present the site for user testing next Thursday. Some of the elements that I am researching to make better are:

-The testimonials page: I wanted to incorporate a testimonials page because it was important to Victoria (director of Career Services) to receive feedback from Shepherd students. Though with Wordpress.com, I thought it would be unfeasible to create, however I found an option that allows me to create a very basic testimonials page. The idea is that a blank page is set up, but the comments are left turned on. Then, the posted comments become the testimonials.

-The transfer of documents to posts: The posts feature of Wordpress, I realized, I was actually underusing the feature. By researching what I can do to make the most of how my posts function within my the theme I chose, I can definitely tweak and make adjustments to what I already have to make sure that the site is working as efficiently as possible

-Blog feature: I need to find someway to incorporate a separate example blog, which I have already completed in my 447 class, however, I need to find an example blog feed, or just incorporate it into my technical plan as something that I could not include in the wordpress site.

-Graphics into posts and pages: This is something I have put on the back burner, but I really need to complete and make sure that the graphics complement the pages and are not superflous.

-The technical plan: A technical plan was something that was extremely important to this project, and therefore I have been looking at formats that best presents information in quick, easy to read and digest manner, and also echoes the organization of the actual site.

My other research includes the final and most vigorous testing of the navigation to make sure that it is function and understandable.  This means  going in and checking my custom menus and making sure that I have the most efficient definition between my categories and my pages. The custom menu feature is a great one, but I do have to make sure, (by using comparative analysis) that I am using it effectively.

Ominupdate, the future of Shepherd's CMS solution, and capstone

So I just found out this week, that Wordpress is not going to be the future of Shepherd's CMS solution. And I'm okay with that. I always knew that what I was doing was laying a foundation for Shepherd Career Services. What my goal is, though is to discover how I can make my site and my content more adaptable to this new CMS solution called Ominupdate.

Omniupdate, as I have been able to figure out from their demos and website is another kind of CMS specifically used for educational institutions. The program is called OUCampus and like Wordpress, it is a browser-based CMS and features insertable modules for sidebar content and menus ( called widgets in Wordpress). It is unlike the in-depth self-hosted Wordpress, (the wordpress.com blog I'm using for my own site for SCS is also free) free.

From what I can tell with the site, is that educational institutions choose from three different customizable templates, which tells me that this kind of site is especially made for function, not necessarily aesthetics. Each instution's site is pretty much like every other site with a few customizable changes.  Examples of headers and footers show us that there are also custom options, that you don't get available with Wordpress.

OU Campus lists a variety of different benefits of using their programs including many of the same options as Wordpress, including intuitive CMS and easy editing, media addition with forms and polls, it also supports most browsers including IE, Firefox, and Chrome.

Though the OU Campus site is rather vague, so I researched some actual colleges that are using OU Campus as a CMS, University of Denver, University of Chicago, and University of Dallas, so I could get a better understanding of how the CMS functions on a real time level.

Surprisingly, my personal reaction was very positive to each of the sites, they seem well organized and feature some dynamic content, except with much more customizable ability, which actually does make it aesthetically pleasing.

I think this program works well with trying to incorporate any other kind of CMS, because it contains many of the same features, which will translate well.

I only wish that I could have been able to use the actual program, so I could better prepare Career Services for what is to come in the future, however I do plan on putting some of my research in with my technical plan so they can be more informed.