Coming down the homestretch for the semester here at UWM and my Multicultural Amercia class was given the ultimate challenge as they were working on their final projects — an online archive devoted to the child’s advocacy group, Kids Matter Inc. . Using the fairly new and usually nifty app, Google Site, somehow the class was trapped in a spam filter that shut down the entire site ONE DAY BEFORE the classroom presentations of their work. We all had a collective gasp and kept working and looks like the site is now emerging from the Google limbo intact. We are still working away on our collective project given the mini setback, but I wanted to give a shout out to my UWM students’ resilience and good humor throughout the experience.

I ask a lot from my students in the class, building basic to mid range multimedia making skils, media analysis, critical skills on multicultural issues, AND a service learning experience. I am excited to see their final projects and the archive completed. Their earlier assignment, a photo essay and interview, demonstrated enormous self-reflection as well as concern and respect for their subjects. I have learned so much from my students this semester and just wanted to send them a big thank you in this blog post. I will put a link up here when the archive is available, but in the meantime here’s to our adventures in praxis.

A big thanks is especially directed to our course tech assistant, Dale Kaminski, who labored all afternoon creating a parallel website for the class and then received a note from Google informing us of our release from exile.