Unschool Magazine (v1.108)

01/02/2005 Reply

UPDATE! Happy New Year! Unschool Zine is just about ready to be pinted and sent to unschoolers everywhere! A slight delay has come up, however... the evil kitten (Draco)chewed holes in my (Brittney's) computer's power cord making it virtually impossible to charge my iBook. I've ordered another cord and will finish this highly anticipted project promptly! Reply

I also ran into trouble creating the webpage for the zine... particularly issues with my firewall blocking me from posting information... so that aspect of this project is not available as of yet. Reply

One Final Note

I think this is an ideal time to add a Classified page to the zine to include upcommnig Annoncemnts that may not fall under the Events page such as weddings, calendar changes, etc. As well as Unschooler Real Estate concerning roomates, apartments, and homes, Travel partners or accomodation offers from you to traveling unschoolers perhaps, as well as Sales if you want to mention your small business or a personal book colection put it here —-> UnschoolZineStuff and I will put it in the January issue. Or you can e mail your information to Unschoolzine at maildotcom. Reply

I look forard to hearing your feedback on the first issue, check back soon for updates! —Brittney Reply

This project is underway. I have been less active online since I was recently in Europe, am applying for college and just moved back to Georgia. I have, however, been collecting information for the zine periodically, and corresponding with people via snail-mail. Sorry for any inconvience but, the zine's e-mail address has change and is now UnschoolZine at maildotcom. I also have plans to do a zine-building workshop at third session. Take care! -Brittney A. I'm planning on publishing the first zine in January of 2005! Reply

6/9/04- Is this project still happening? Reply

12-04-2003. Ok, time to start compiling zine stuff!! We've started the " UnschoolZineStuff " page so that people (you, for instance!!) can simply post things that they'd like to contribute to the zine. /Anything really!/: Reply

recipes,
journal essays,
events (general or specific),
a short story (or a link to it),
cute comments/ snide remarks,
photos that are already on the web, or even things on NBTSCwiki

Just post a link, including any personal websites that you might like mentioned in the zine! We're also going to try a pen-pal slash cool people who will let traveling unschoolers stay with them section. Of course, contributions can also be e mailed to this address: unschoolzine at maildotcom, or snail mailed to: Unschool Zine / 12146 N. Fox Den Dr. / Knoxville, TN 37922 ATTN: I've moved! For the quickest response, mail contributions to UnschoolZine 102 East Liberty Street Savannah GA 31401 THANKS!! Reply

Additionally, someone stated interest in doing a column on “unschooler etiquette.” This guru of bad behavior understands that unschoolers rather enjoy cutting-up, but she’d like to put a fresh spin on your questions and gripes about socially acceptable behavior! Sooo, if you want to gripe or have question, let this omniscient Unschooler give it a whirl. —-> UnschoolZineStuff . Reply

OLDER POSTS BELOW: Reply

I think that some bright, motivated, wildly creative ... well, in brief, unschoolers should get together and start an unschool magazine! It could include travel journals; dreams; recipes; experiences; traditions and ways of life; hairstyles, projects, photos, art, and other works of unschoolers; great books and music (reviewed and recommended by unschoolers); as well as a calendar of upcoming events that may be of interest to unschoolers: camps, fairs, festivals, performances, demonstrations, workshops, etc. —Brittney A

Me —Brittney A madchild55 at macdotcom

I'd be very interested in working on this. ~Ezza
I'd love to receive and contribute to this. —Maia

Me too, me too! When/how can we start? —Betsy (queer_muppet at hotmaildotcom)

Title Ideas

Un-School: a Compendium. compendium Definition: 2. n a publication containing a variety of works Synonym: collection—Brittney A Reply

Contribution Ideas

—Brittney A can contribute: Reply

Recipes: super yummy non-vegan fruit pizza dessert, vegan enchaladas, yummy chai tea (from scratch) ...mmmmm;
Photos of a purple painting of jazz legend Dizzy Gilespe and a scarf I kit and even the pattern (If I cite the source, or edit the pattern it that legal?);
Essays I've written including one on NBTSC, the best feeling in the world (aka: the breeze), soapmixing, group games, and all things macrame (except plant hangers)!
Some annual events that I know of in Savannah, Georgia: Sidewalk Arts Festival (a wonderful display of talent in the form of sidewalk chalk), The Beach Bum Parade (A massive Super Soaker/Water fight and parade by the beach) ;
The Strange Yet Ordinary Things That People Use On Their Hair.

Elizabeth can contribute: Reply

Original knitting patterns (I make up my own designs as I knit along, so I should be able to translate those to paper, eh?)
Short stories, around 1,000 words (more might be excessive, but I do have longer fiction, too)
Crappy poetry
Nonfiction on any topic — you name it, I'll write it
Recipes, maybe (my family has some good ones but they're very aproxomate and always turn out good in a new, different way)
Quotes. I have lots. And lots.

I know some HTML and I'm interested in learning more. I've done HTML within Yahoo webhosting on my site (http://elizabeth.bouma-holtrop.com). Anyway, I'd be willing to share the small knowledge I have, and learn more, to help with the technical details. If, of course, you decide to go online. —Elizabeth Reply

Franny is not sure she can commit herself to contributing material right now but she would love to help with/give advice about etc... layout issues and things of that sort if you have need of it. Franny hearts zines.

Jimmy can contribute: Reply

Recipes, a lot of cool recipes.
A few half-done crappy short stores.
Anything about the weather.
Umm, theres something about travel below, my family has been in most of the 48, I could write about travel or something.

Some travel thing would be really cool, Jimmy. I'd be interested in learing a little something about the whether, also! Do you know about HARP stuff? —Brittney A

Maia: Reply

i know stuff about homebirth & midwifery, unschooling (duh), groovy colleges, sustainable agriculture, menstruation, credo-building, etc & i love love love to research & write essays & articles & book reviews
poetry
lovely quotes

Hey Maia, just wondering, what's credo-building? —Brittney A
- A credo an essay of the beliefs that you live your life by & trust in. (basically what you believe) There are specific questions to answer about your beliefs. (I think it's a Unitarian Universalist thing - but I could be wrong) —Maia
Reply
How intriguing. Deffinately somethign I'd like to know! —Brittney A

—Jadzia can contribute: Reply

Poetry, short stories
Travel advice, fun facts about states (including alaska!)
Thoughts/info on homebirth, massage, homeopothy
SIblings!
Unschooling in college/living on own/low cost living
recipes!! Lots of vegan/vegetarian, jewish, german & japanese recipes, yummy!
info on lampworking/jewelry making/metelsmithing
lots of other cool ideas as well...

Barnraising (Zine-Style)

Let's add a page on what brings you happiness, post your thoughts here WhatBringsMeHappiness .
I'd like people to send me ideas on homemade gifts for an article as well as the strange but ordinary things that people use on their hair. So far my list includes Antiseptic Mouthwash, Avocado, Beer, Cool Whip, Chammomile Tea, Egg, Hydrogen Peroxide, Mayonnaise, Lemon Balm Tea, Lemon Juice, Milk, Over Ripe Bananas, Peteroleum Jelly (Vaseline) Tang, Tomato Paste/Sauce/Juice, Vinegar, Vodka, Whip Cream, And last but not least, Witch Hazel. Know any?

Content Ideas

The Arts of Unschoolers: photos (dance, craft, performances) essays, short stories, projects and ideas
The Sciences of Unschoolers: Experiments, essays about astronomy or mythology etc.
The Issues of Unschoolers: a perhaps controversial discussion
The recipes of Unschoolers
The travels of Unschoolers, places and events
the reviews: music/film/books/restaurants/websites/anything/etc.. reviews to live by
Weird/facinating Facts Did-you-know?'s(did you know that it's impossible to lick your own elbow?)
The Unschool-Year Calendar: say ... 6 mo., calendar of events that may be of interest to unschoolers
Pen Pals/ cool people who will let strange traveling unschoolers stay with them list
What brings you happiness? (tell us at WhatBringsMeHappiness )

Brainstorm Here!

Hey Guys! I'm psyched to see that people are interested! I thought we could start getting the word out by asking unschoolers for their contributions, essays, photos, etc. via chain letter, and/or e mail. Here is the ZineLetter to Pass On! It explains what we're doing and asks unschoolers for contributions! If you find a mistake, think that I forgot something, or want to perk it up feel free to edit it! E mail it to people, or print it out and go the old fashion rout! Thanks! —Brittney A Reply

Will this be printed or web based?
What about being mostly web-based, but folk could ask for and receive (for the cost of printing and postage, perhaps) a paper copy? A Quo Vadis person would know better than I, but I think that's what I heard they did with their brochure, at least one year(?). —Elizabeth

There is free web space here, even not on the wiki. Rick can set it up. —Ruth
Rick is I. —Ari

That's quite possible. The web copy was a PDF file — hardly nice to use to read online, but good for printing out oneself and getting good results. Making a PDF is pretty easy — download PDF995 and it works like a printer that gives files instead of pages. Even better would be HTML. If people don't want to learn HTML, someone who knows it can put up pages, or a wiki-like thing could be set up (which makes HTML out of easier to read and learn text). The nbtsc.org server has a ton of free space, and all the free web hosting you'd ever need for the project. It beats Geocities or Angelfire any day. If you want a web page here, ask and I'll set it up. I'm easy to reach. —Ari
So Franny, do you have any advice on the $$ aspect of this project- printed or online? —Brittney A

Personally I'd say go with printing if it's at all possible. It feels good. it's easier on the eyes. It's real. I've found that people are usually pretty willing to send a dollar or postage to cover production costs. Sometimes you cut it close but you can usually find way to break even in the end. Also: I don't know if you've thought about distributing it beyond the NBTSC community or how interested you'd be in that but there are a fair number of people in the large zine community that are pretty interested in unschooling and would probably pay a buck or two for something of this sort. At least I think they would... Just some ideas. E-mail me if you want. —Franny (franny at nbtscdotorg)
I would suggest having three things: A paper copy mailed out for the cost of production and shipping, a free on-line copy designed for on-line reading (HTML/CSS), and an on-line copy designed for printing (PDF). Some people will enjoy a paper copy, some would preffer to read it on-line for free. Also, if you're interested in publicity, there's nothing quite so simple as people being able to tell their friends click on this link, read what's there, it's cool. On-line is good for making archives available, too. The printable on-line copy could serve to decentralize distribution; anyone with a decent printer could print out copies for themselves and their friends, paying for the paper themselves, avoiding shipping costs entirely, and making that much less work for the people/person who originally put it together. You could keep an e-mail list of people who want to be notified when new issues come out. —Zack

I think that those are great ideas. Though, to me, they are somewhat bewildreing. I have no experience with HTML, CSS, or PDF's and, despite the amazing amount of help people have offered, frankly I'm intimidated at the thought. Should I be? = ) an honest —Brittney A
Well, if they weren't missing, you could check the brief tutorials that are supposed to be at http://community.nbtsc.org/HOWTOs/ . CSS and HTML are the tools necessary for publishing text (and pictures) on the web and giving it the appearance you want. Getting the basics down is pretty easy, making presentations of professional publishing quality is (by deffinition I would think) a bit harder. In other words you can get started easily and learn more when you need to, to refine exactly how things appear. HTML and wiki write up are really about the same — they're symbols you use that tell the browser how to display the text/images, etc. HTML is lightly more tedious for basic things like making text bold, but there's a lot more you can do with it. CSS is unnecessary, but it streamlines HTML and does some things much better. For instance, you can have a CSS file which defines the background color, font, and a dozen other things for a page, and then have one line of HTML in the begining of each page, telling the browser that for displaying that page, it should reference the CSS file. (Rather than specifying all those things for every paragraph on every page in your entire site, inevitably forgetting one or two). It's neat stuff! And best yet, you can view the HTML source for most pages, just click view at the top of your browser, and then source (or Page source, or something like that, depending on browser). Aaanyway... I don't rate myself all that computer-geekly, and I've made several web pages for myself just asking people on the NBTSC IRC channel how to do it. HTML and CSS are not coding, they're way easier to understand. Oh... and PDF... I really don't know a damn thing about it. Hopefully there's a program somewhere that can automatically convert a page from HTML/CSS into PDF, meaning you could make it in HTML/CSS, hit a button to make a PDF, hit another button to print the PDF, and booyah, three different copies. Not sure if it's quite that easy yet. Ask a geek. :—) —Zack

''Well then. Draw lots of illustrations, take lots of photos, and send them in!''