Academy students can now try condensing their poetic inspirations to 140 characters and submitting their mini-poems to Achona for publication.

Achona has set up a new Twitter feed, MiniPoems@AchonaPoetweets, in addition to its school news Twitter account, Achona@AchonaOnline. The staff invites all AHN students to try their hands (and iPads) in creating their own 140-character poetic gems or longer works  for publication in Achona. The Creative Media section is now ready to go and includes pages for students’ creative media and writing.  AHN students should submit their written work  to [email protected] and larger files to N407.

Inspiration for Twitter mini-poems comes from National Public Radio (NPR). During Poetry Month last April, NPR  challenged listeners to submit tweet-poems on the theme of one’s personal Muse. A recent NPR focus has been on news poetry tweets., which involves inviting a poet to spend a day in the NPR newsroom and report on the news of the day through poetic tweets.

In the same class with Honors Journalism is a small group of  Creating Writing students, who will be creating poetweets, longer poems, short-write stories and scripts, all to be published in the new Creative Media section of Achona. They will also submit their best works to Excursions, the high school literary magazine, moderated by Mrs. Patricia Loesekann.

Despite rolling Internet connections in N407 the entire week of August 20, honors journalism students kept their patience and perseverance as they worked on plans and on-and-off construction of its Creative Media section, as well as its new Sports Center section.

Co-Editor Li Stalder has been setting up the fall games for the new Sport Center page, while creative editors Mikella Mollanazar and Ketaira Phillips have been using an animation iPad app to create animations with audio. These media presentations will be ready for download to Achona from YouTube by the week of August 27.

Co-Editor Tori Litschgi, who attended the Poynter Institute High School Journalism Workshop in early August along with Li Stalder, has now become a social media guru.    Her first Storify integrates social media with her own reporting skills. Quick to pick up any new creative idea, Caroline De Quesada is still in the process of polishing up her Storify on summer concerts.  Storify writers can embed posts from Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, LinkedIn and other social networking sites to create a truly Multimedia story.

Ready to come to the assistance of Achona’s small staff, Set 7 AP Lit students will be working during the week of August 27 on producing a variety of features and media for Achona. Video Editor Alex Gerecke and Section Editors Jess Riddle and Gini Barreda will continue to keep the rest of Achona updating weekly. Photography Editor Alexandra Diaz and new staff member Elaine Petrarch have been editing photos from activities during the first week of school and will try, Internet permitting,  to upload those to the online Achona in the coming week.

 Students interested in creating Storifies, using animation apps, writing Poetweets, creating photography videos or creative media should sign up for the blue or white clubs of Multimedia News during Club Sign-up on Wednesday, August 29.

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