our collective digital self
Posted by Michelle on May 20, 2007 in Jeff, More Family
Photos from Jeff’s folks from the VT campus after the tragedy.
See more photos from this set:
Regular view (easiest to find one in particular or print)
Slideshow view (easiest to see them all)
Posted by Michelle on Nov 2, 2006 in Hayley
A friend emailed us to tell us that Hayley was on the evening news on WTVD 11. We are trying to get a copy of it or see if they re-air the footage. It was just from her classroom at school, background for a school bonds story.
Of course Hayley didn’t even mention it! Who forgets to mention a TV crew in your classroom?!?! I guess she was just so engrossed in learning, hahaha.
The email…
Did you see the ABC News channel 11 this morning or last night at 11 ?
They were doing a story about the voting for the bond and the cameras must have come to school yesterday to tape our kids in the classroom and I saw Hayley in Ms. Hall’s class.
They showed Ms. Hall and then had a great shot of Hayley at her desk.
You might be able to see if again at noon and maybe again tonight because they are having a meeting at Green Hope High School about the bond so they may show it again.
They may even have it available online for you view.
I thought you would like to know in case they didn’t tell you she would be on TV.
Posted by Michelle on Oct 5, 2006 in Michelle
My dear friend Bryan is a sports editor at the newspaper in Kinston. He writes a blog on the paper and a recent one entitled the The (slow & mostly painful) death of ihigh.com was about me and the company I used to work for before quitting to work for myself and parent Hayley.
I adore Bryan and regular readers might know him from several years of beach trip photos/stories and basketball tournament photos. I’ve known him since the days when I ran nchometeam.com.
There were some really nice comments on his blog too about the site, which really made me happy as well. My work there was something I was deeply passionate about for many years but leaving it was for the best in so many ways.
—
The (slow & mostly painful) death of ihigh.com
By Bryan C. Hanks
A few years ago, a good friend of mine — Michelle Donahue Hillison from Raleigh – started the northcarolina.ihigh.com site in our state. For several years, it was THE site to go to when you wanted to know what was going on statewide in prep sports. Every school was represented on the site with scores, schedules, news, etc., by local sports writers and writers from within each individual school.
Most of that — heck, all of that — was due to the hard work Michelle put into the site. I know for a fact that she worked sometimes 18-20 hours a day to make ihigh.com the premier prep sports site in N.C.
For a time, the ihigh folks supported her, too. She was able to hire writers from all over the state (myself, Chris Hobbs from Hickory, Langston Wertz from Charlotte, Charles Alston from Rocky Mount, among many others) to write for her.
When the Internet explosion started to die down a couple of years ago, the money dried up, too. She was unable to keep the writers and the site started to die.
But she kept working hard and procured agreements from newspapers all over the state to use their stories on the site. That worked for a while.
She finally decided she was ready to go in a different direction and now runs her own sports consulting business in the Triangle that is – by the way – going strong. But ihigh has continued to plug along, sometimes painfully.
Well, sound the death bells for ihigh.com. Today, the site has moved along to more of a teeny-bopper “entertainment-type” site that pretty much forgets sports altogether.
You know what? Good riddance. Arnold Solomon’s ncpreps.com took over the mantle as best prep site in N.C. after Michelle left ihigh and it is the place you have to go if you want to know what other fans and coaches are thinking throughout North Carolina.
The powers-that-be at ihigh.com should be ashamed of the way they ruined a great Web site.
Forget them. Support ncpreps.com
Bryan’s Blog on the Kinston Free Press website.
Posted by Michelle on Jul 11, 2006 in Jeff, More Family
By Jane W. Graham
Special to The Roanoke Times
The Virginia FFA Association needed a way to honor the man who inspired its members and teachers for the past 30 years.
So the farm youth organization created the John H. Hillison Middle School Quiz Bowl Award to mark the retirement of the veteran Virginia Tech professor and administrator.
“John Hillison has been an inspiration for all agriculture teachers in the state,” said Susan Shomo, agriculture education teacher at Beverly Manor Middle School in Staunton.
A former student of Hillison’s, Shomo said, “He has allowed us to ask questions. … He helped us find the answers to help us become better teachers.”
Hillison, who has been at Tech since 1976, described himself as pleasantly surprised when the new award was announced at a recent FFA convention.
The award will provide money to help the state winner in the FFA Middle School Quiz Bowl attend the national FFA convention.
Hillison retires at the end of this month as professor and department head of agricultural and extension education at Tech. This week, he is taking part in the Virginia Association of Agricultural Educators Convention in Richmond.
Hillison said he has learned an important fact about agricultural education.
“The most important person is the classroom teacher and FFA adviser,” he said.
He is looking forward to staying involved, teaching at least one class a year at Tech and volunteering in the agricultural education department at Blacksburg High School.
Shomo credited Hillison with helping Virginia middle school agricultural teachers develop “Ag in the Classroom Curriculum,” a program keyed to the state’s Standards of Learning.
Hillison is known throughout the nation as an FFA historian. This interest is fueled by his work at Virginia Tech, birthplace of FFA. The FFA History Room is just down the hall from his office in Litton Reeves Hall at Tech.
Hillison, an Illinois native who got his doctorate at Ohio State University, was featured in the June 2006 edition of FFA New Horizons, the magazine of the national FFA organization.
Posted by Michelle on Jun 14, 2006 in Jeff, More Family
Congrats to Jeff’s dad on his big honor!
Blacksburg, Va., June 13, 2006 — John H. Hillison of Blacksburg, Va., professor and head of the Department of Agricultural and Extension Education in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Tech, was conferred with the title “professor emeritus” by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors during the board’s quarterly meeting June 12.
The title of emeritus may be conferred on retired professors and associate professors, administrative officers, librarians, and exceptional staff members who have given exemplary service to the university and who are specially recommended to the board of visitors by Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger. Nominated individuals who are approved by the board of visitors receive an emeritus certificate from the university.
A member of the Virginia Tech community since 1976, Hillison provided statewide leadership to Virginia Agricultural Education programs at both the middle and high school levels. He also provided leadership for the Virginia Future Farmers of America Association and its advisers, and was selected as a Fellow of the American Association for Agricultural Education.
Hillison received his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from the University of Illinois, and a Ph.D. from Ohio State University.
Ranked 11th in agricultural research expenditures by the National Science Foundation, Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences offers students the opportunity to learn from some of the world’s leading agricultural scientists. The college’s comprehensive curriculum gives students a balanced education that ranges from food and fiber production to economics to human health. The college is a national leader in incorporating technology, biotechnology, computer applications, and other recent scientific advances into its teaching program.
Founded in 1872 as a land-grant college, Virginia Tech has grown to become among the largest universities in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Today, Virginia Tech’s eight colleges are dedicated to putting knowledge to work through teaching, research, and outreach activities and to fulfilling its vision to be among the top research universities in the nation. At its 2,600-acre main campus located in Blacksburg and other campus centers in Northern Virginia, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke, Virginia Tech enrolls more than 28,000 full- and part-time undergraduate and graduate students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries in 180 academic degree programs.
Posted by Michelle on Dec 23, 2005 in Michelle
I used to work for WRAL in their new media group. I really enjoyed being over there and the people involved. I noticed over the year that they have been adding blogs to their website – they have employees writing baby blogs, weather blogs, tech blogs, etc.
Recently I saw they have added a non-staffer blog – Dave Glenn doing an ACC sports blog and it hit me like a TON of bricks. I should do an adoption blog there.
So I drafted a proposal and they were intrigued enough to agree to let me do it. They got it started right quick and I was so excited I had tweak right then and there.
So if you check wral.com, wral.com/family/ or wral.com/interactive/ you’ll see that all three pages have mentions of WRAL’s new adoption blog, done by ME!!
NEW URL: The direct address is http://html.wral.com/sh/blogger/wraladoption.html
This is a TV station website that reaches 1.2 million people a month. 32 million page views a month. I’m so excited and I really feel like I can share and help people!!!!
Posted by Michelle on Nov 7, 2005 in Michelle
My dear friend Bryan (seen in many vacation photos) mentioned me in an article he wrote that was in about 10 papers across the state. It was short mention but one that gave me a pat on the back in a way only a few of us would understand.
Link: NCHSAA to release prep football playoff brackets today
Fans who want to see where their team will be playing in the first round can log onto http://www.nchsaa.org/ today. In past years, the brackets have been released first on ihigh.com, but the NCHSAA – which has been easing away from ihigh following the resignation of N.C. director Michelle Hillison – will use their own site this year.
Posted by Michelle on Mar 9, 2005 in Michelle
A sportswriter I know from our old prep days emailed me a request about Rashad McCants’ mother, who is suffering from breast cancer. McCants as we all know is a UNC player and his younger sister Rashanda is one of the 10 best HS players in the country – and signed with UNC over TN.
The sportswriter had written a column about Brenda Muckelvene’s battle with cancer and thought it would be wonderful to run a response column with emails from people sending good wishes to her. He wanted her to be overwhelmed by them, which is wonderful!
So he asked me to post on the IC board about it, which I did. And he got flooded by them. You know how we do it at IC – full out.
I too sent in a message for her … and it made the cut, whoo hoo!
The following letters are in response to Wednesday’s story by Andrew Pearson in the Citizen-Times that gave details of Brenda Muckelvene’s battle with breast cancer. Muckelvene is the mother of University of North Carolina basketball star Rashad McCants and Asheville High School All-American Rashanda McCants. Many basketball fans who wrote letters to staff writer Andrew Pearson addressed them personally to Ms. Muckelvene.
Read the rest: Brenda’s fan club
And in case the archive there expires, what I said:
Dear Brenda,
Please know you are in the prayers of all Tar Heel fans. Breast cancer is something that seems to touch so many, and our hearts are with you on your journey through this.
Know that by allowing your struggle to be public, you remind all women how important breast self-exams are to catching this early. You will save lives because you have opened up.
Take care of yourself – we know you are a strong woman and a survivor.
God bless you!
Michelle Hillison
Cary, NC
I’m please to be able to say something special to a woman who has given a lot to UNC basketball but is also just a woman struggling with a disease that affects so many women.
Posted by Michelle on May 20, 2004 in Michelle
Michelle gets a mention in a column by Jason Boyd at the Rocky Mount Telegram, who wrote a column about some problems relating to high school playoffs.
What in the world is going on?
two mentions:
I guess I could buy that argument except for one thing – Southern Nash’s name was on at least one bracket. I emailed Michelle Hillison, who runs the North Carolina iHigh.com Web site right after Southern Nash beat Morehead to inform her of the result.
and later on…
On the NCHSAA Web site, it states: “If equal seeds meet in regional round, bottom line hosts.” So while confusion sets in, someone like Hillison, who is only doing her job in posting the correct information, gets chewed out by those who contact her and don’t understand why the error was made
Jason is a friend and I surely want to hug him for that last graf because lord knows I get a lot of flak.
Posted by Michelle on Mar 13, 2004 in Michelle
Michelle gets a brief mention about WIFI stuff for the ISAB board in the Cary News, Town board wonders: Why go Wi-Fi?
