When a model goes on a casting call or audition, he or she leaves a comp card behind with the casting director. The cards can also be passed around like resumes to prospective employers. So how do you create them…?

You could use any number of design suites to put together a layout for comp cards, and one such option would be InDesign. You need to create a document that’s 5.5″ x 8.5″. One side holds a large frame (a headshot), while the other side contains multiple smaller frames (usually 4). Somewhere, you’ll need to make room for stats and contact information.

You can download this fairly standard model comp card template for InDesign to get started. You could also take a look at this alternative one sided model comp card template. It’s a little less conventional, still simple.

Many comp cards look like the templates above, but you could experiment with fancier fonts, backgrounds. Either way, once you have a completed design you can export a pdf file and take it to your local printer. Printing alone will probably be much cheaper than getting them designed and printed by a studio.

However, if you do want an all in one solution you could order model comp cards from Olinda Gibbons Photography.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on my new photography blog, Rockin’ Photogs. My article comparing the Canon t5i vs t4i has been very popular, and it’s part of the reason why April saw almost 10,000 visitors to the site. May is looking to be even better, and I’m hoping that I can solidify that success over the summer and turn this into a long term success.

I’ve also been spending some time on two other projects, although they’re a bit related to this.

First, I’ve got a Tumblog specifically for Rockin’ Photogs. I started this originally using the “Publicize” part of Jetpack for Rockin’ Photogs. This allows me to automatically syndicate posts from Rockin’ Photogs to the Tumblog with a link and an included photo. Only thing I don’t like is that I don’t seem to be able to tag the Tumblr posts… which makes them far less effective in catching attention.

But I’ve also started using this Tumblog to share some of my own photography, so that it’s not just a list of links to Rockin’ Photogs. Here’s a good example of some pics that I took at a college track meet at Georgian Court University.

Then, today, I decided I was going to start another Tumblr project – Cool Pics Reblog. It’s a simple concept. Reblog cool photos on Tumblr. With this, I’m making heavy use of the queue feature to queue up re-blogs and then post them twice a day. My plan is to spend a little time once a week queueing up a whole week’s worth of reblogs and then letting them funnel out over the course of the week. Perhaps this will get me some followers, and then I’ll have to figure out something to do with them.

This is pretty much my first real attempt to capitalize on social media in a real way. So we’ll see how it works. I guess only time will tell.

Why does it matter? Well, if you recently upgraded or if you got a file from someone who has an upgraded version of InDesign, you’ll find out that there’s a problem. There is absolutely no inter-version compatibility between InDesign versions. And what makes it even more confusing is that all of the versions use the same file extension (*.indd).

You can read more about the problem in this post about the sharedcontent.rpln InDesign plugin.

To some extent I understand Adobe’s position. As new features are incorporated into InDesign, the file format gets more complicated and enforcing backwards compatibility restricts innovation between versions. But at the same time, it seems like there should be some indication that a file isn’t going to work – like naming them .ind5, .ind6, or something similar.

When Microsoft jumped from the .doc format to the .docx format, they also made a concomitant change in file extension. This made it clear, looking at a file, that it either was or wasn’t in the new format. A .doc file, no matter what version of MS Word created it, was always going to open in MS Word.

So, naturally, it’s an important thing to focus on in English class. It’s also a fun thing to teach, and kids like this kind of writing. It’s opinion based, and it plays into their strengths – arguing and persuasion. It’s one of the reasons I wish I could be an English teacher instead of a Social Studies teacher sometimes…

Of course, to keep working on persuasive writing you need a long list of prompts and topics for students to work on. I’ve realized that this is a commonly searched topic on the Internet, as there are a lot of teachers out there looking for ideas to use in class.

So, to help, I’ve started publishing a few lists on HubPages.

My first list, 20 Persuasive Writing Prompts About School Rules, is pretty popular. It’s a collection of generic prompts about school rules and other things that would interest middle school or high school students.

I also wrote a few lists that focus on more specific requirements. 5 Persuasive Writing Essay Prompts About Health Care Reform is a collection of more in depth prompts based on a Time Magazine article about healthcare reform. These are great for high school students who can do a bit more research to support their answers.

10 Persuasive Writing Tasks and Prompts About Politics and Government focuses on poli sci issues. These are all of particular interest to me, as a teacher of civics and politics.

Finally, 10 Persuasive Writing Prompts for 3rd Graders is, well, a short list of writing prompts that are age appropriate for younger students. This was an interesting project for me, as I’m typically more concerned with older, high school students.

Anyway, check out the lists, leave a comment if you find something interesting. I’ll be writing up a few more lists over the next few weeks as well about more targeted topics.

But, the actual web hosting is still being used for quite a few things. My latest project is something else in the education field – Tech and Teaching. The goal of the website is to share tech-based resources for teachers, share educational technology research, and generally join in the national discussion on educational technology.

I got the idea when I read a post somewhere about how many teachers lack basic tech literacy skills. With that in mind, a focus of the website is on offering simple tips intended to help educate teachers (and students) about the basics of computers and technology. These tips aren’t groundbreaking news for tech savvy folk, but they’re often unknown to the average teacher.  You can find the latest simple tips for teachers here.

I’m also experimenting with developing some ed-tech resources of my own. My first attempt is to work on a web app that utilizes JQuery to create an interactive writing tool. It lets students drag sentences around on the screen in order to “build” a paragraph. It’s a fairly simple educational concept, and it uses some fancy technology to take an age-old manipulative (index cards or strips of paper) and turn them into a modern one. I’m still working on the basic concepts, and you can read the latest on this project with the Draggable tag at Tech and Teaching.

So… check out the website. I even made a Twitter account for this project (@TechAndTeaching) and I’ve decided to start building a presence on Google plus. So follow me somewhere and come along for the ride.

In the meantime, I’ve worked a few events and gotten them posted to the website.  Back in March, Olinda and I worked the William Paterson Fashion Show. This was a joint venture between HASA and CARIBSA at William Paterson University. It was a great show, and we got a ton of great pictures…

This past weekend, I did a job for a Campus alumni.  Akeem, an ’08 grad, organized a community event to celebrate single mothers in the E.O. area.  I actually managed to dump all of the images onto my computer, edit them, and upload them the same day… quite a feat for me!  Check out the highlights from the 1st Annual Red Carpet Single Mothers Appreciation Day at Watsessing Park.

I’ve got a couple other events from the spring that I want to post as part of our portfolio. When that’s done, I’ll post here with links to the pages.

Every once in a while, I look through my Google Analytics data to find new topics to write about.

1. Log into Google Analytics and choose a site.
2. Click on “Traffic Sources” on the left-hand menu.
3. Click on “Keywords” in the new sub-menu.
4. Browse through the hundreds of phrases that people used to find your site.

Here’s the key. Look for search phrases that are questions about things related to your site, but that you haven’t really answered directly. On my photography site, someone searched for “What is black clipping.” I had mentioned the term black clipping in an unrelated post, but this seemed like a good time to write a post explaining exactly what the term means.

Here’s another example, from the same digital photography site. One keyword that a few people used was “canon compatible zoom lenses.” I previously wrote an article about a collection of canon compatible lenses that I had owned. Apparently this isn’t a topic a lot of people wrote about, because that post ranks #1 in Google for the phrase “canon compatible lenses.” That article didn’t really focus on zoom lenses, though, so this coming week I plan on writing up a list of canon compatible zoom lenses.

And, to make it even more sweet, this is a great opportunity to write up a post with lots of links to Amazon… which has the potential to generate some referral income.

So go check out your Google Analytics data and see what people are searching for. They’re practically asking you questions and just waiting for the answers. Give it to them, and you’ll end up with content that people want and more visitors.

For a short time, it worked out well. Through November 2008, when I first launched this site, to December 2008 I kept up with it. After Christmas break, I started school up again in January 2009, and I just couldn’t keep up… the ironic thing was that I found something that I could write about and attract a whole lot of traffic – Fallout 3. Too bad I’m not younger, or I would just keep playing video games and blogging about them. I think I missed out on that boat when I was an avid gamer 10 years ago…

But, alas, I couldn’t keep playing Fallout 3 enough to write about it, and I didn’t have a lot of steam to write about my other topics either. So, this site and my NaBloPoMo pledge both fell by the wayside.

After starting up Digital Photography How To, I’ve been pretty consistent about posting. There have been some lulls, and I’m not doing as much as I originally thought I would… but I’ve come a long way from July. Recently, I came across a link for NaBloPoMo and I thought I’d try it out again. Maybe this time, I’ll make it through January and actually survive…

As part of NaBloPoMo, you can also create a profile page and mini-blog on their site. As if I needed something else to worry about. But, it is a good place to reflect on the actual process of writing that may not be so relevant for my actual blog.

Now I can understand if this was a WordPress.com blog and they had restricted certain filetypes (or another shared host). But this was my blog, gosh darnedit, and I was gonna upload that file if I wanted to…!

A quick search revealed just the type of WordPress hack that I needed. Read the full explanation of how to modify the allowed upload types in WordPress on Chris Meller’s blog. The gist of the solution is that WordPress uses a function, “upload_mimes” to check what file types are allowed. You can add a filter to hijack that function, add your own filetype, and pass that back to WordPress.

I followed Chris’ directions, added ‘dng’ to the array, and it worked like a charm. Awesome.

The trouble is, not everyone knows that you can easily and freely turn office documents into PDF files. Typically, it’s assumed you need some (expensive) professional software to create PDF files. For example, you could get Adobe Acrobat Pro or Distiller. Not cheap options, and not for the average user.

I was reading the NJEA review that I got in the mail today, and they listed Zamzar as a great resource because, among other things, it can convert documents to pdfs. While this is true, you don’t need an online service like Zamzar. There’s another free option: Open Office.

Within the entire OpenOffice suite, you automatically have the option to save a document as a pdf file. If you create a handout in OpenOffice Writer, you can have a pdf file instantly by hitting the PDF button. If you want to share a presentation, you can open your Impress file and save it as a PDF. It’s built into the OpenOffice suite, in part, because OpenOffice is about using open standards to share information… PDF is an open standard. “.docx” is not.

I still wonder why more schools don’t turn away from expensive, licensed proprietary options when there are perfectly good open source alternatives available. For some students (i.e. graphic design, photography), you’ll want a PC or a Mac that can run the Adobe Creative Suite. For just about everyone else… Ubuntu, OpenOffice, and any number of open source alternatives is a perfect solution. I’d say something like 90% (or more) of students would be perfectly served by a purely open source system.