July 11 2015

Vancouver Art Gallery shows Kodak plant demolition

Vancouver Art Gallery

It’s not everyday that one sees a photography exhibit of an institution — Kodak — fall.

Robert Burley’s 2007 photos of the Rochester, New York Kodak plant are on display in the Vancourver Art Gallery.

Demolition

This photo is on display in the Vancouver Art Gallary (July 2015).

The exhibit’s impact is in its immediacy, even though the images are from 2007.  Photos include storage of film cannisters alongside employee I.D. cards, not to mention a series of shots before and after the implosion of the physical Kodak plant.

For this journalist, it was a fascinating moment to ponder.  It was a wake for journalists like me who know that film is dead, but haven’t quite come to terms with it.

 

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June 16 2015

I finally saw a model of the flippin’ classroom

Flipped Classroom

The infographic excerpt is from Knewton.com,

an education company that adapts technology for the classroom.

Although I am a full-time teacher in the traditional classroom, I also teach part-time for the Idaho Digital Learning Academy (IDLA).

For IDLA’s summer conference for professional development, the event was organized as a flipped classroom.

Conference materials were posted in a Google+ Community, and included activities to complete for Human Resources, Content Teams, the IT Department, and Supervision.

IDLA Summer-Conference Worksheet

At the IDLA Summer Conference, we had 8 sessions, and 8 boxes to complete. It was a great opportunitiy to use all my color Sharpies!

Throughout the day, we filled in a graphic organizer for each session we attended, which included the flipped ones.

The discussions in the sessions in which I received pre-conference materials proved meaningful. We were able to cover a lot of material in a short amount of time, especially in one session at which I sat next to two other English teachers and we had all come prepared.  We had our SMART goals written out, bulleted, and highlighted like no other!

Although I am anxious to try a flipped classroom, I couldn’t help calculate the pitfalls for my regular English students, some of whom rarely bring a pencil, rarely read or do homework outside of class, and rarely take advantage of doing work in class when the time is given.

For example, I found it funny when someone in the room asked a question about how Blackboard Collaboration compares to E-tutoring, two remote ways in which IDLA helps students with questions. It had been covered in the pre-conference materials. I felt both smug and slighted; I privately gloated because I could have answered, but, at the same time, I sized up my fellow learner as a slacker.

Although I came away enriched by participating in a model of the flipped classroom, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the flipped classroom is just another way to say, “do your homework.”

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