Here's another Storify. (Does it seem I like doing these?) It focuses on my niece and her friend and their weeklong visit to Chicago. Appreciated the chance to show teenagers how Twitter can be used for more than just chatter, and how curating social media preserves memories. One other thing: a colleague tweeted, after it was published, for me to include video. So I added a very cute 15-second clip of Andrea and Keturah playing their part on cue. Enjoy.

"Teach it!" That was our mantra during "Teachapalooza," the amazing three-day conference for journalism educators this past weekend at the Poynter Institute in Florida. Sixty college educators from across the country and Canada heard newsroom executives tell us what they want their new hires to know, and learned from Poynter faculty how to better integrate social media and multimedia into our teaching. We also learned new tools for gathering the story, how to tell one story seven ways and the "10 Commandments for Video Storytelling." And we focused on helping students navigate ethical landmines, envisioning the curriculum of the future, mobile journalism and the digital divide.

Several attendees offered terrific 10-minute "show-and-share" lessons during lunchtime on Friday and Saturday, including a rubric for grading tweets, using smartphones for newsgathering, using black sports history to teach storytelling, students blogging about food, getting students to better know their syllabus and a digital literacy project. I had the honor of presenting a show-and-share on "Using Storify and Twitter for Good Not Evil."

Having also attended the "Teaching the Craft of Writing (in the Age of Twitter)" session at Poynter in May, I expected that "Teachapalooza" would better prepare me for my multimedia journalism courses in the fall. But I could not have imagined that I could learn so much in just three days. I think Lisa Taylor, an instructor from Ryerson University in Toronto, put it best when she could learn more only if she had an external hard drive attached to her head. Click here to access the best of the weekend's offerings via Poynter's News University.

This is my next Storify, about Michelle Michael, the 2010 National Press Photographers Association's Solo Journalist of the Year, and her presentation to Diederich College of Communication faculty on Day 3 of a weeklong Platypus workshop in which we learned to shoot high-quality video and edit it with Apple's new Final Cut Pro X. 

I loved how journalism educators from elsewhere and Marquette students following me on Twitter and Facebook responded to Michelle's offerings as I was tweeting. Definitely demonstrating the power of curating social media.

Presenting my next Storify, about how my wife and I spent our Fourth of July cleaning up her late parents' home in North Carolina. Especially enjoyed curating this story because it shows that good storytelling doesn't always have to involve life-and-death circumstances or impact a great many people. They can just be about those closest to us.

This Storify marks progress in that it includes my first two times sharing photos via Twitter and also gave me a new chance to share three audio slideshows that celebrate the life and times of Mira's parents, Allen and Clara Thomas. Another case of using those close to me to practice digital storytelling and learn new software – in this case, iMovie.

The day after my last blog post I received this email from Benet Wilson: "I'm co-chair of the Digital Journalism Task Force. I saw that you used Storify to cover the NNPA Sharpton-West discussion. I would love to do a post on (the) NABJDigital blog on how you did this. I'd also love to do a webinar to show members how they can use Storify ..."

OMG! I have only done one of these, folks! Still, Benet and I chatted last week about it. She wanted to know why I chose to capture the discussion using Storify and how I chose which tweets to use. The answer to the first question was "homework," I told her, referring to my graduate-school independent study effort this summer. As for the second question, I tried to use tweets from as many Twitterers as possible, while ensuring to keep the story moving.

Benet, online managing editor of the Business Aviation section of Aviation Week, agreed to hold off writing about my Storify conquest until I could duplicate it at least once or twice. I thanked her for calling and for her leadership of the task force and stewardship of its daily blog. Frankly, I'm not sure I knew of the blog before getting her email last week. That's OK – I am now. I spent more than three hours one night last week soaking in its content and printing most of its postings dating back to December. I also bookmarked for further study more than 150 links to matters related to digital journalism, conferences, social media, multimedia, technology, blogging, training, etc.

The task force's blog also introduces visitors to people of color who are blazing trails in digital journalism, entrepreneurship, blogging and branding. It's all very inspiring and I'll be visiting NABJDigital regularly from now on.