The Town Theater
I'm visiting the Chicago area for a few days. Today I was driving to my mom's home and passed by The Town Theater in Highland, Indiana. When I was in high school and college, The Town Theater was an island of cinema in a sea of multiplexes. A place near my home town that showed foreign language films and limited release art house movies.
Sad to see it is no longer open.
timlauer's photo on Instagram
Flipboard Magazines...
I use the personal magazine app Flipboard on my phone, and iPad (also available for Android devices) to organize and read news, and also to then share interesting things I find while reading. Flipboard has an intuitive interface that makes reading on a tablet or phone much like flipping through the pages of a magazine.
In the past year Flipboard has added the ability for users to create curated magazines that can be shared with others. For example I follow all of the posts from my staff using Flipboard. It makes it easy to read their posts in one place rather than having to visit each of their blogs. A few months back I started to curate their posts into a Flipboard magazine. As I read their articles I add them to my Meriwether Lewis Elementary School Magazine, and then share a link to the magazine via our Twitter and Facebook accounts. The link will open up in web browser, or in the Flipboard app itself if the end user has Flipboard installed on their device.
I have also used the curated magazine approach to create special one time only "magazines." For example all of our classrooms have recently been working with artists from Portland Taiko, a traditional Japanese drumming troupe. I used Flipboard to curate blogs posts from my staff to create a magazine of Taiko related posts.
Flipboard continues to add new features and has recently acquired a similar site called Zite. While Zite is similar to Flipboard, one area where it stands out is in its predictive content feature. Zite learns about your interests based on what you follow and "like" and then serves up content based on those interests. Zite's features will be folded into Flipboard.
Friday at Lewis
Posts by Lewis staff via a Flipboard Magazine...
This has been a pretty busy week at Lewis. We are continuing with our work with Portland Taiko. The last of our classes will work with them again on Monday, with a performance on Tuesday afternoon. It has been a great experience and several of our teachers have written about it on their classroom blogs. To read these please follow the link below:
Taiko at Lewis: Posts from classroom blogs...
Intel's Jones Farm Conference Center
This week Mr. Marchyok, one of our 5th grade teachers, and I had the opportunity to travel to Intel's Jones Farm facility in Hillsboro to take part in a Chromebook app design session. Intel brought in some educators, engineers, and user interface designers to work together in Design Thinking teams. This was a new experience for me and I found it very exciting. It was also nice to be able to see how a corporation goes through a development process. All in all a very good experience.
It is looking like spring is finally here, we had some great weather this week. Our plum trees in front of the school have started to bloom, along with our daffodils, and our tulips are just about ready to do so.
Friday afternoon at Lewis
Felix the Service Dog...
Felix is a service dog helping to support one of our students at Lewis. Felix recently started coming to class on a daily basis. He is a great dog, very calm. He has become a well regarded member of Ms. Elissa's classroom.
timlauer's photo on Instagram
Lewis Audio Postcard: March 7, 2014
We produce a semi-weekly audio podcast about events and activities taking place at Lewis Elementary School. Below is our most current effort which highlights our recent Talent Show, kindergarten information, and a bit about our current Japanese drumming residency with Portland Taiko.
OPB Radio Visits Lewis
OPB Radio's Rob Manning visited our Kindergarten Connect meeting on Wednesday as part of a report he did on the funding of full day kindergarten in Oregon.
IntegratED in Portland...
This week IntegratED-PDX was held in Portland. This is the annual conference put on by OETC. The event opened up with a special leadership strand on Wednesday. I had the opportunity to work with Tricia George and we helped to facilitate a session with school administrators focused on using social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to share the story of your school.
Photo Credit: rwentechaney via Compfight cc
The opening keynote was by Mark Frauenfelder, the founder of BoingBoing and Make Magazine. His message of the maker movement and the celebration of DIY, was something that I have not heard spotlighted in a major education conference keynote and was very glad that OETC provided him the opportunity to share this.
On Thursday Tricia George and I helped facilitate a discussion with school leaders about trends and challenges associated with technology. I liked that the majority of the time was spent in table groups having conversations.
Finally the aspect of IntegratED that i enjoy most is that this conference works very hard to break down hierarchies. Michelle Cordy had an insightful Twitter post about how the name badges did not have ribbons to designate speakers, board members, and other strata of conference goer. Just a a blank slate which allows participants to tell who they are.
To me that is the most important take away from this event. Darren Hudgins and the staff of OETC work hard to bring in interesting people, doing interesting work, work focused on students and learning, and then make a space that allows them to share, and learn with the participants. The opportunity to connect with participants is just one of the many aspects of the program that make this my favorite conference.
iPDX14
An important aspect of this is time after sessions, when people gather. I was fortunate to be able to connect with many of the participants in the evenings and between sessions. The size of the conference makes connecting possible.
Finally the event allows me to connect with old friends and also connect with new friends that I have met via social media. It is a great venue for connecting with educators working on the cutting edge of education and I encourage folks to consider attending next year...
@techlandiacast and friends on a rainy Saturday in Portland...
The Lonesome Teacher Trio...
On Friday evening Lewis Elementary School held its annual Talent Show. The show is lead by our 4th grade teacher, Sarah Kohn, along with support from many parents. The acts are mainly students singing, dancing, performing gymnastics, playing musical instruments and performing in skits. Students also act as announcers and stage support. We have posted a few photos on our Flickr site. http://flic.kr/s/aHsjTAVD1g
In the last few years we have started a new Talent Show tradition. A performance by The Lonesome Teacher Trio. The trio consists of our won Mr. Colvin, Mr. Jamesbarry, and Mr. Marchyok. Enjoy.
The Lonesome Teacher Trio...