Information Please

EMA schedules warning sirens test

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:13:18 GMT

The Vermilion County Emergency Management Agency will test warning sirens at 10 a.m. Tuesday, April 1.

The test will be in Danville, Allerton, Alvin, Armstrong, Bismarck, Catlin, Fairmount, Georgetown, Henning, Hoopeston, Indianola, Oakwood, Potomac, Ridge Farm, Rossville, Sidell, Tilton and Westville.

The alert signal will sound at 10, followed by the attack signal at 10:02. No public participation is required, but residents should be familiar with the two different warning signals.

My News

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:16:47 GMT

Registered users on www.allarounddanville.com can not only be reporters and photographers, they can be editors. Clicking on myNews in the banner at the top of the screen will take you to your very own customizable news page.

When you first go to the page you’ll find a box showing the headlines and first lines of local news stories that appear on the Commercial-News website that day, but you don’t have to stop there.

Pretend you are an editor and have been given this blank page to build all of the elements of a news product that you want. No more reading over the parts you don’t care about. Click on Add Feeds. Here you will find folders with dozens of different news sources on a variety of subjects. You can choose from local feeds or national feeds. Danville Feeds gives you choices from the Commercial-News site including local news, obituaries, births, weddings, etc. National topics include Top News, National News, World News, Sports, Business, Opinion, Politics, Health, Science, Entertainment, New Media and Travel.

Let’s say you really like sports. Click on the sports folder and choose from feeds from ESPN.com, FOXSports News, SI.com, CBS Sportsline and Yahoo! News Sports. Click on any one to get a list of what the most recent stories are for that source and when you find the sources you like best, click Add to my page. Continue to choose feeds you like from that folder or from any others. As you add these feeds, they will show up in a box on your main myNews page. As news is updated on any of these sites, your news page will be automatically updated.

Now click on Add Widgets. Here you’ll find choices of other interesting features to include on your page. One choice is Epicurious Recipe. Click on this and say “yes” you want to add the gadget to your page. Now a box will appear showing a new tasty recipe each day. Add the Weather for your area, your Horoscope, a Daily Bible Verse, This Day in History, Movie Schedules, a Word of the Day or the game Tetris to name just a few.

If you are a Major League Baseball fan, track your favorite player with MLB Player Tracker. Trackers are available for NASCAR, Golf and Hockey too. You not only will see your favorite player’s photos and stats, but recent stories about them.

You can even add Live TV and receive streaming video from one of dozens of television stations around the world. Virtual Earth lets you put in any address and find a satellite photo of that spot.

Elements can be moved around on your page by clicking the grey bars at the top of each and dragging them to the spot you like best.

The best way to find what’s available is to jump in and play with the site yourself. If you fill up one page you can add other pages. It’s your virtual world.

Adding photos

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:02:15 GMT

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Share your photos with the world on www.allarounddanville.com. Photos uploaded by on-line community members and staff can be seen on the main page under Recent Photos.

Click on Photos in the blue bar at the top of the screen or click on All Photos below the recent photos. You will see small thumbnail versions of all the photos uploaded to date in the system. Click on them to enlarge them and to view any description added by the poster. You can add your own comment to the photo by typing your comments in the box and clicking Post Comment. You can also give the photo a 1-star to 5-star rating that will add it to the Most Popular Photos box.

To submit your own photos, follow the Click Here to Add Your Own Photo link. You have to a registered user and logged in to upload photos. If you haven’t registered yet, click on Register Now and follow the instructions. Click the Browse button to navigate through your computer to the photo you would like to upload. When you have clicked on the photo file you want, the path will show up on the window. Click Upload File and your photo will appear. Give your photo a Title and type some description under Caption so readers will understand who and what is in your photo. Choose to allow comments, allow comments up to a certain date or not to allow comments at all on your photo by other readers.

It’s also a good idea to create a Tag or Tags for your photo. Think of Tags as a file folder. If you were going to file your photo under a subject, what would that be? Type in a subject you think is appropriate and click Add. You can include as many cross-references as you want. If you posted a photo of a Danville High School basketball game, you might tag it “Basketball,” “Danville High School,” and even with the player’s names. If you click on Tags in the blue bar at the top of the screen and then Photo Tags, you’ll see a list of subjects other users have assigned to their photos. Click on the word and pull up all photos tagged with that subject.

You can share photos that are just special to you or you can share photos that tell a news story. Maybe you are attending an event, take along your camera and “cover” the event for your on-line community, All Around Danville.

Citizen journalism

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:01:07 GMT

How is the website, www.allarounddanville.com , different from traditional print media? This is the place where news isn’t just what an editor sitting in a newsroom decides is news - you get to decide.

Beneath the photos on the right side of your screen you’ll find a variety of areas including Neighborhoods, Information Please, Nostalgia, School Days, Sports, The Arts, Vermilion River Country and We the People. If you click on Staff Blog after you’ve clicked on any of these areas you’ll find posts from our news columns on that subject.

You don’t have to wait for the staff to post this kind of information, you can do it yourself. You might write about meetings that are coming up, special programs, announcements about awards, an article about the history of something in the area, a post telling about a meeting or sporting event you’ve attended or a story about someone you know who is especially interesting. The choices are endless.

Say your school PTA is selling candy bars as a fund raiser and you want to get information out on how people can buy them. Go the area entitled “School Days.” Click on the “School Days Community Blog” tab and then click on the “Click here to Add an Entry” Instructions on the page will walk you through, but basically you type in what you want to say, give your entry a headline and click submit. If you are used to typing in any type of word processing program, everything will look very familiar. Your entry will then show up in the Community Blog area under that category and on the main page.

What is newsworthy? Whatever you think is. But remember, in the Community Blogs you are the reporter so let’s take a minute to talk about journalism. As a journalist, your goal is to share facts not opinion. Opinions are great to be posted at length on your personal blog on the site or in the forum area. In this area, it’s like Joe Friday used to say on Dragnet, “the facts, ma’am – just the facts.”

The best way to remember to include everything is to see if you’ve answered the classic reporting questions – who, what, when, where, why and how? In our candy sale example you would include what group is involved, choices of candy, prices, the goal of fundraising, timeframe of the sales effort, and who to call for information. You might talk to one of the students and ask why they need to raise the money then quote them in your story with quotation marks around their actual words.

If you are writing about a meeting or event you’ve attended, double check to be sure you’ve written down what happened accurately and that you have people’s names spelled correctly.

Start with the main point first and get as much information in your first few sentences as you can. People get tired of reading quickly so you have to grab their attention.

Try you hand at reporting this week. Next week we’ll talk about photos.

Become a registered user

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:59:39 GMT

Anyone can read articles and view photos at www.allarounddanville.com but becoming a registered user is free and allows readers to become citizens of an online community.

Click on the “Register” button and fill out the form including an e-mail address. You can create a special user name that reflects your personality or you can use your own name. You absolutely need to use a real e-mail address though. Once the information is added and the submit button is clicked, a confirmation e-mail will be sent to this address. You will need to check your e-mail and click on the link back to the site in that e-mail to finish the registration process.

Once a member, you have access to your own page with a unique URL that is essentially a web page for and about you. This area combines the functions of a blog site and a social networking site. Some activities to consider:

· Fill out your profile. This will help you and others identify potential on-line friends based on your interests.

· Update your user photo. The computer assigns generic artwork to represent you, but you can upload your own photo or identify artwork in the vast resources available to represent you instead.

· Request others to join and become your friend on the site. Your friends can see areas the general public can’t. You can also communicate through the site with your friends by leaving a message or a comment.

· Create an event. This can be a personal event for you and your friends to remember or a public event that anyone can see. If your group or organization is hosting an event or meeting you want to let others know about, post it as public. If you are having a birthday party for your friend, post it in the private area, unless you have a big house and really want to invite everyone who reads the site.

· Post your favorite photos to share with your friends or with everyone. Upload digital family photos, vacation shots, pet pictures - whatever you want.

· Write a blog. A blog, or web log, can be a place to talk about your take on issues of the day, it can be a place to share information on areas of interest to you, it can be a diary of your thoughts or anything else you want it to be. Your blog will be accessible on All Around Danville, but you can also send your other friends the direct link to your blog or post its link on other sites. You can choose to allow or not allow comments and can manage them from your profile area.

· Create lists. These lists help your online friends get to know you. They can be your favorite movies, actors, books, famous people, places you’ve traveled, websites you enjoy, top scoring games, etc. It’s your world.

Next time we’ll look at how you can become an ace reporter for your new on-line community, www.allarounddanville.com.

The new site

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:57:37 GMT

The new website, http://www.allarounddanville.com , is an online community where users can share news, events, photos and ideas as well as a place to make friends. Many people prefer to wander through websites on their own to find all the possibilities, but this column will highlight various aspects from week to week also.

As with any community you can visit the site as a “tourist” or you can be an active user or “citizen.” If you’d like to just visit, type www.allarounddanville.com in the address bar of your browser and go to the site.

The first page that you see is the Community page and showing the most recent posts in the center box.

The tab that says “Headline News” will show you a constantly updated list of stories from the Commercial-News website with the most recent stories showing first. Clicking the headline or the words “read more” will take you to that story on the www.commercial-news.com site.

The tab that says “Community Blog Entries” will show you the most recent entries exclusive to this site. These are sometimes brief articles about upcoming events or stories from the weekly print version of All Around Danville posted by our staff, or information posted by other users.

Clicking on these will take you to the full text within one of the site’s areas. Right now there are areas entitled Neighborhoods, Information Please, Nostalgia, School Days, Sports, The Arts, Vermilion River Country and We The People.

If you find the entry interesting and want to share it with a friend, click “send this” and a box will pop up that allows you to e-mail the story to a friend with comments from you.

If you want to share your comments with anyone who reads the article, type them in the box below the article and click “post comment.” You will need to include your e-mail address but this won’t be displayed in the comment. You will also need to enter characters you see in a box to be sure you are not a computer randomly posting. There may be a slight delay as your comment works its way through the computer servers.

You can also view photos that have been posted by our staff or other users by clicking on “Photos” in the blue bar at the top or on any of the recent photos displayed on the right side of the main Community page. You can leave comments on the photos also.

Sometimes you may run across a screen that says “You must be registered to do that. Please log in or register.” If your visit to the website has been interesting, you might want to move in and become a citizen so you can post stories and photos yourself and create your own profile and your own social network and your own news page – but more on that next week.

Vermilion County Soil and Water Conservation District elects directors

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:38:04 GMT

The Vermilion County Soil and Water Conservation District held its general election and three were elected directors to serve two-year terms beginning March 1.

Neil Andrews of Alvin, Morris Chesnut of Ridge Farm and Richard Kentner of Bismarck were elected.

Alice Payne, principal of Meade Park School, speaks to Kiwanis Golden K

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:15:42 GMT

Alice Payne, principal of Meade Park Elementary School, will speak to the Danville Kiwanis Golden K at 2 p.m. Monday, Feb. 11 at CRIS, 309 N. Franklin St.

She will speak on “Working on the Requirements for No Left Behind.”

Horticulturist presents 'Suddenly Spring' seminars

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 19:42:12 GMT

Mary Stonecipher, horticulturist with Sunset Memorial Park, will present two “Suddenly Spring” seminars. Learn how to plan and prepare for a beautiful garden.

The first one will be from 1-2:30 p.m. April 3 at Sunset’s Community & Life Tribute Center. RSVP to 442-2874.

The second “Suddenly Spring” seminar will be from 1-2:30 p.m. EDT April 10 at Sunset’s Covington Chapel in Covington, Ind. RSVP to (765) 793-4500.

Door prizes, dessert, coffee and iced tea will be served.

Carle Clinic to offer Lamaze classes beginning March 3

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 19:32:56 GMT

Beginning March 3, Carle Clinic – Danville will offer six-week Lamaze classes for expectant mothers and their partners. The sessions will be lead by Pam Martin, RN, BSN, LCCE, a registered nurse in obstetrics/gynecology at Carle Clinic and Lamaze certified childbirth educator.

Classes will meet from 6-8 p.m. Monday evenings at Carle Clinic – Danville on Fairchild, 311 W. Fairchild St. The first session will begin Monday, March 3. The sessions are open to the community. There is no charge for participation, but there is a small fee for materials.

Over the course of six weeks, expectant mothers will learn labor techniques, plan for delivery and discuss benefits of nutrition and massage. To register, call 431-7850 with your expected due date.

Vermilion County War Museum schedules meetings

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:13:43 GMT

Vermilion County War Museum Society, 307 N. Vermilion St., has planned the following activities:

n Illiana Chapter, Ex-POW’S, will meet at 1 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 10 for monthly meeting.

n Veterans will meet for coffee and donuts from 8:30-11:30 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 12.

Guest speaker will be Wyatt Hirsch, program assistant for Older Workers Employment Program.

n The Vermilion County War Museum board will meet at 4 p.m. Feb. 19.

City of Danville sponsors blood drive

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 23:45:06 GMT

The city of Danville is sponsoring a blood drive with Community Blood Services of Illinois from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Feb. 15 in the council chambers, 17 W. Main St.

Refreshments will be provided. Walk-ins are welcome.

For more information, call 1 (800) 217-GIVE. For an appointment, call Stacey Trosper at 431-2318.

Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Vermilion County sponsors education program

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 15:49:07 GMT

The Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Vermilion County will sponsor the NAMI Family-to-Family Education Program specifically for families of persons diagnosed with serious mental illness. The 12-week series of classes will be from 5:30-8 p.m. beginning Feb. 19 at the First Assembly of God Church, 428 N. Walnut St.

The course will cover information about schizophrenia, mood disorders (bipolar disorder and major depression), panic disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder, coping skills such as handling crisis and relapse; basic information about medications; listening and communication techniques; problem-solving skills; recovery and rehabilitation; and self-care around worry and stress.

The curriculum has been written by an experienced family member mental health professional and the course will be taught by NAMI Vermilion County family member volunteers who have taken intensive training as course instructors. The teachers for the Danville area will be Denise Cottingham and Debbie Taulman.

“This course is a wonderful experience!” say instructors Denise Cottingham and Debbie Taulman. “It balances basic psychoeducation and skill-training with emotional support, self-care and empowerment. NAMI Vermilion County hopes families with relatives who have a serious mental illness will take advantage of this unique opportunity.”

The course is designed specifically for parents, siblings, spouses, teenage and adult children and significant others of persons with severe and persistent mental illness. The course is not appropriate for individuals who themselves suffer from one of the major mental illnesses.

The course is free. For more information or to register call the NAMI Vermilion County Mental Health Board at 443-3500.