Coast Starlight coming to take us home. March 2008
A cold day in Spring; the first day of WASLing; a chance to do things that are not normally easy to find the time to do.
Two 10 day expeditions down the West Coast by rail and bus to Southern California and out to Channel Islands National Park by boat in the past three months with Bergquist's Adventure Education class and both exceptional in every way; a fine and beautiful way to bring balance to the public school experience.
Non-fiction science books offered out to Zisette's 7th grade science students and Hoelting's 8th grade students as extra credit self-selected opportunity. Many new science titles purchased specifically for these programs this year and last. Similar opportunity created for Bergquist's American Studies class with a large selection of non-fiction (some historical fiction as well) titles both from our library and from Sno-Isle.
New mini-dv format video camera bought from returned refurbished shelf at Circuit City for $170.00. I took same on California Santa Cruz Island Expedition in March and found the li machine to be a joy to carry and use. Hoping to get similar deal on another one soon or purchase a new Canon HS100 flash based vid camera when it is released in May.
Yearbook will be done as soon as Tessa and Vica take pictures of first official track practice this afternoon and place these on Track 2 page spread on Jostens' web site.
Video yearbook (dvd insert in print yrbk) looks like it will happen now that I have seen and briefly used dvd duplicator machine and Publications video yearbook workers are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
That LMS Friday Show is at number 12 and is stumbling along nicely thanks to the efforts of John, Emily and Emma, and assorted up-and-comers now free of yearbook chores.
Last quarter Computer 6 class is off to a good start. We watched a TED conference presentation by Jeff Han on a new multi-touch interface for a computer that does away with a physical keyboard and mouse. I saw some happy, amazed, maybe a little awestruck, looks from the 6th graders watching, which was the point. Afterward, they all responded with a short TextEdit document saved to their server folders. I will try to incorporate some sort or stimulating technology preview often and have kids do short written reflections. Later these semi frequent writings can be illustrated and compiled into a Keynote presentation and shared with the next class.
