In Oregon, we are on Spring Break and I am visiting the Oregon coast with my family. Yesterday we visited Fort Clatsop, a replica of the place where the Lewis and Clark expedition spent the winter of 1805-1806. The original replica burned in a fire last year, so they are currently building a replica of the replica. The visitors’ center has a nice film the explains the expedition from the point of view of the Clatsop people who happened to be here when Lewis and Clark paddled down the Columbia.

This reminded me of Jim Petersen’s web site, Lewis and Clark: What Else Happened. He describes it as a riff on Lewis and Clark…

It’s about simultaneity. Ever think back to an important day in your life and wonder what else happened that day? Here I’ve considered every day of the Lewis and Clark expedition as important, and looked for simultaneities. The Lewis and Clark expedition left St. Louis on May 14, 1804, and returned on September 23, 1806. For each corresponding day during 2004-2006, the weblog shorthands the expedition’s activities and then describes something else happening in American history on that day.

Technorati Tags: Lewis & Clark, Fort Clatsop

Opera Browser for Nintendo DS™:

Last week I wrote of the Nintendo DS in regards to Good Nintendog. Over the weekend I read about the announcement that the folks who create the Opera web browser are working on a version for the Nintendo DS. I’ll be interested in seeing how well this works. I tried the browser that Sony provides for the PSP, and was not impressed, but Opera is a great browser. I have it installed on my cell phone and it works very well, so hopefully this will be an interesting tool. At the very least, a nice coffee table device to help settle sports bets…

Technorati Tags: Nintendo DS, Opera

A few weeks back I wrote about Google offering hosted Gmail to organizations for use as their mail platform. I went ahead and signed up and last week got an email indicating that we could take part. With some help from my service provider, Clarity-Innovations, I have set up mail going to lewiselementary.org to utilize Gmail. So far I just have a few accounts set up, but after spring break I plan to offer it to any staff that would like to take advantage of it.

The control panel for administration is very easy to navigate. The interface also takes advantage of their new Google Talk feature. As with regular Gmail, their are targeted adds. Like I said before, it would be nice if instead of adds, there were links to education related resources based on the content of a mail message…

Technorati Tags: Gmail, Lewis Elementary

Google Earth maps of avian flu spread:

Declan Butler, a writer for the journal Nature, has created a Google Earth file that charts the outbreak of avian flu. The map is updated weekly and can be linked to in Google Earth as a network link, which will automatically update itself with new versions when you reload it on your computer. This is a nice feature of Google Earth, rather than having to download a new copy of the file, Google Earth pulls the file from the web.

Butler also posts about the latest issue of Nature that looks at the future of computing. 2020 - Future of Computing focuses on… “what will the relationship between computing and science bring us over the next 15 years?” It is part of a series of reports sponsored by Microsoft Research called 2020 Science. I found the article about sensor webs ( 2020 Computing: Everything Everywhere )to be very interesting. Soon we will be able to track just about everything we can think of tracking. The question is what do we do with all that data?

By way of Spatially Adjusted…

Technorati Tags: avian flu, Google Earth, Nature

I was talking with Joe Luft last night and he was asking how my year is going. Well, the work at school has been going pretty well. We are making progress in a lot of areas. We are currently in the middle of a residence by a local artist and the work that he and the students are producing is looking great. He is working with students to create large mosaic piece that will go up outside of the main entrance to the school. It should be done in a few weeks and it should look great. This year we also have our music teacher, Tony Jamesbarry, working with older students in the computer lab on various activities that incorporate multimedia into some interesting projects related to classroom units. For example 4th grade students have been using GarageBand to create radio plays. 5th grade students are using Google Earth to track the birthplaces of passengers on the Mayflower as part of a social studies project. He has introduced all of his students to GarageBand and students have used it to create sound tracks for slide presentations. Lots of interesting work and high quality work and collaboration between him and the classroom teachers.

Like I said, this stuff is the fun part. On the other hand my district is again facing a drastic cut in funding because of a series of events related to school funding. These include a reduction in state funding, a decline in enrollment, the expiration of a local income tax, and the expiration last year of a local property tax measure. All have combined to produce a $57 million dollar shortfall for next school year, on top of a $35 million dollar cut that is in effect this year. All of this based on a total budget of roughly $370 million dollars. It is all kind of complicated and I think this article from the Corvallis Gazette-Times does a good job of explaining the issues. Kind of the Cliff Notes version to bring you up to speed…

If you would like to follow along at home, the local Portland paper, The Oregonian, has a page up with all their most recent articles about the PPS budget situation. I’m finding that the Yahoo News and Google News RSS search feeds to also be a good source for not only news articles about the situation, but also links to local blogs where folks are talking about this situation. Also I have a been using del.icio.us to tag articles and such related to the budget situation. http://del.icio.us/timlauer/pps57

Luckily we are on Spring Break for the next week. The real fun begins April 4 with the official announcement of our superintendent’s proposal for school closures and reconfigurations. Stay tuned…

Technorati Tags: budget shortfall

Odeo: Ed Tech Coast to Coast #7: Steve Burt talks with Tim Wilson, Will Richardson and Steve Dembo from FETC in Orlando…

Technorati Tags: Ed Tech Coast to Coast, Steve Dembo, Steve Burt, Tim Wilson, Will Richarson

Wes Fryer has been very busy lately posting podcasts and notes about the SITE conference and FETC. I’m currently listening to his recording of Dr. Janet Swenson’s keynote address the SITE conference.

Dr. Swenson passionately challenged educators at all levels to engage in advocacy for children in an era where high stakes testing and federally mandated accountability…

Wes also recorded and posted Joe Lambert’s talk at SITE. A nice follow up to Tim Wilson’s recent interview with the Director of the Center for Digital Storytelling.

Technorati Tags: Dr. Janet Swenson, FETC, SITE, Wes Fryer