Beautiful sky this evening...
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Street Gardens...
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It has been a year since I bought a bike and started riding it on my commute to school. This is something I wish I had done years ago. The freedom of hopping on the bike and propelling myself down the street is something that I really enjoy. I also enjoy the street level view of the world that riding a bike provides. You just don't get that from a car. I find myself noticing and observing much more as I make my way to and from school.
One of the things I've been noticing is what people do with the parkway area that lies between the sidewalk and the street. I see more and more little gardens popping up in these spaces. I find this use of these spaces both inspiring and intriguing . The images below are from an area just south of Powell Blvd. I have enjoyed watching the plots move through their various stages as the seasons come and go.
Summer Garden Club at Lewis with Chefs David and Raymond Anderson...
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via flickr.com
On Wednesday, July 28, 2010 students from the Lewis Elementary and Abernethy Elementary Garden Camps came to Lewis for a day of garden work and cooking. Under the direction of Genoa Executive Chef David Anderson and his brother, Ray Anderson, Sous Chef at Nuestra Cocina, students made pasta and created a wonderful lunch with items from the Lewis Elementary School garden. We thank both David and Raymond, and their respective establishments, for their time and work and for making this such a great event.
On the way home. Stopped to watch the T Ball kids...
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Sunflowers: thank you first graders...
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This past spring some of my first grade students planted sunflowers seeds outside my office window. Over the course of the summer, they have done quite well and some are over 6 feet tall. They provide some much needed shade for my south facing office.
LightTrac for iPad
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I found this over at iphoneography. A nice way to visualize which direction sunlight, or moonlight, will be shining at any given time and at any location...
LightTrac is a must have tool for all outdoor photographers. You can use it to find when and where the light is perfect to shoot your subjects outdoors at any location. Whether you are a landscape photographer, a wedding photographer, a sports photographer or a nature photographer, you will love it. Find ahead of time, Sun & Moon's elevation/angle at any time of day, for any date on any place on earth. Then position yourself at the right spot.
via itunes.apple.com
More About Using Flipboard to View Your Flickr Photo Stream...
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Yesterday I posted about using the iPad application Flipboard (http://flipboard) to view my Flickr photo stream. (You can see that post here...)
I was having trouble getting it to work, because I could not get Flipboard to find the new Twitter account I had created for this. I sent off a quick Twitter post to @flipboard stating my problem and they sent back a reply within a matter of minutes. When searching for specific Twitter feeds, be sure to search with the @ symbol before the Twitter user name. Basically with Flipboard you can subscribe to any Twitter feed and have it display in Flipboard's magazine style layout. Using a tool such as Twitterfeed (http://twitterfeed.com) you can create content streams that can flow into Flipboard, or any other Twitter viewing app. Lots of RSS mashup possibilities...Viewing your Flickr Images with Flipboard...
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I have been enjoying Flipboard (http://flipboard.com), the iPad social magazine application. I like how it grabs content from my social networks and presents it in an attractive magazine style. For example a friend might point to an image or an article using Twitter. Flipboard will take that link and parse it and present it graphically on a page along with other content from that stream.
I was thinking it would be great it if could grab my Flickr stream (my photos, and also photos from my contacts) and present it to me in this manner. Flipboard does not currently do this, though I would expect at some point it will. This got me thinking about how to do this and I came up a solution by creating another Twitter account and then using Twitterfeed (http://twitterfeed.com) to have it automatically create a Twitter stream from the RSS file of my own Flickr account, and of the stream of my Flickr contacts. Once set up, Twitterfeed will automatically post items from these feeds to the Twitter account I created. I created a Twitter account for My photographs stream. The account grabs my photos, and photos from my Flickr contacts, and automatically adds them to this account. I then subscribed to this Twitter feed with Flipboard and now the images flow into Flipboard. I have a couple of screen shots below.
Tim Lauer
Principal
Lewis Elementary School
Portland, OR
lewiselementary.org
Using Flipboard to view your Flickr Stream...
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I have been enjoying Flipboard (http://flipboard.com), the iPad social magazine application. I like how it grabs content from my social networks and presents it in an attractive magazine style. For example a friend might point to an image or an article using Twitter. Flipboard will take that link and parse it and present it graphically along with other longs and posts from my social streams.
I was thinking it would be great it if could grab my Flickr stream (my photos, and also photos from my contacts) and present it to me in this manner. Flipboard does not currently do this, though i would expect at some point it will. This got me thinking about how to do this and I came up the solution of creating another Twitter account and then using Twitterfeed (http://twitterfeed.com) to have it automatically create a Twitter stream from the RSS file of my own Flickr account, and of the stream of my Flickr contacts. With Twitterfeed you can basically autopost items from any RSS feed to a Twitter account.
I created a Twitter account for Photographs. The account grabs my photos, and photos from my Flickr contacts, and creates a stream. I then subscribed to this Twitter feed with Flipboard and now the images flow into Flipboard. I have a couple of scene shots below.
Out on the patio...
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Shooting around
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refinished gym floor at Lewis
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MECP Bus
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While our regular education classrooms are on summer break, our Multnomah Early Childhood Preschool Program is in session over the summer. I snapped this shot at dismissal...
No Easy Answers in the Copyright Debate - NYTimes.com An interesting discussion on copyright, this time around sheet music...
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Fortunately, over the last ten or fifteen years, amateur pianists have been scanning the contents of their grandmother's piano benches, and... voilà. A million monkeys typing don't get you Shakespeare, but a million monkeys scanning -- that makes a dent.
via nytimes.com
An interesting discussion on copyright, this time around sheet music...
Watering the school garden... gonna hit 100° F in Portland today...
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More Summer
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Today was a pretty hot day. Well a pretty hot day for Portland. It is currently 93° F, which passes for pretty hot in Portland. Now 93° F in Portland is different than 93° F in say, Hammond, IN, where I grew up outside Chicago. There you would also have the associated 80% humidity to go along with the heat. As they say in California, ours is a dry heat. Nonetheless, as I prepare to leave my school today the temperature in my office is 87. My office is south facing and even in January on a sunny day, can get pretty warm. The folks who suggest we move to a year round school calendar will need to plant some more shade trees outside my office before I sign up for that...
Looking...
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Summer at Lewis...
Room 13 Before...
Room 13 After...
The mail carrier who delivers mail to my school jokes with me that July must be my favorite month of the year. He refers to the school in the summer, when it's basically just me and the custodians, as my Fortress of Solitude. In a way he is correct. I enjoy the time alone at school. It is a good time to read, think, tinker, plan and occasionally mow the lawn. During this time I like to reflect on the previous year and to look ahead to the coming new school year.
One sobering consideration for that planning is our budget situation. Portland, like many school districts, is facing an uncertain budgetary situation. Check that, it is not uncertain, we know we are getting less than we planned for and for this coming school year have to cut $19 million dollars. This is basically 126 teaching positions in addition to a number of other program and service cuts. When the summer ends, and staff returns to school we will be looking at a different teaching and learning situation. Final decisions won't be made until the middle of July, so for now we continue to live with a bit of uncertantly.
One thing that is certain, is that because our school has grown, we are facing what our Facilities Department likes to call "space allocation issues." Room 13 is being renovated to allow for its use as a classroom. Last week the small inner office in Room 13 that we had used for meetings was removed. A bit more work will happen this week, but by the end of the week the room should be ready to serve as an instructional space. Above you will find a before and after shot of the work to date.
Dinner here tonight...
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Out for a walk before dinner...
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