Photo credit: Sam Kittner/Newseum

FRIDAY APRIL 27

On Friday, April 27, the Newseum will open the HP New Media Gallery, an interactive experience that uses the latest technology to allow visitors to physically step into a social network that shows media’s powerful impact on our world. Live Twitter feeds fill touch-screen monitors and connect visitors with trending news stories. The 2,500-square-foot gallery is the first permanent addition to the museum since its grand opening in 2008.

As visitors enter the gallery, they are directed to the “Check-In” area, where they can post photos of themselves to screens in the gallery and comment on events of the day. At two 11-foot-wide interactive touch walls, visitors are encouraged to explore dozens of important news events and viral videos, including the first Twitter reports of the 2008 China earthquake and the Facebook posts that fueled the Egyptian revolution in 2011.

In the “Choose the News” area, visitors can flip through the latest stories and build custom news pages, then publish them to a large video wall. The “Game Zone” features motion-tracking technology that allows visitors to use hand gestures to test their knowledge of social media.

SATURDAY APRIL 28

Fenton Street Market returns to Veterans Plaza in downtown Silver Spring on April 28, from 10:00am – 4:00pm! Every Saturday through October 27, over 60 local vendors a week will showcase their wares: original artwork, handmade and imported crafts, antiques, jewelry, furniture, vintage clothing, unique services such as acupuncture and henna tattoos, and much more. Community programming will include a screen printing demonstration by Pyramid Atlantic, an interactive model train exhibit by the Riverdale Model Train Club, and music by market favorites Snakehead Run and Israel Dempsey. Veterans Plaza is located in front of the Silver Spring Civic Building, at the intersection of Fenton St. and Ellsworth Dr., Silver Spring, MD 20910.

SATURDAY APRIL 28 & SUNDAY APRIL 29

USA Science and Engineering Festival
Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, D.C.
April 28: 10:00am-6:00pm
April 29: 10:00am-4:00pm
Admission FREE

This huge and awesome free festival which features over 3,000 hands-on science and engineering activities, and more than 100 stage shows on six stages! It’s a science loving family’s dream! Attendees can operate state-of-the-art robots; converse with astronauts, Nobel Laureates, storm chasers, science celebrities like Bill Nye the Science Guy or the MythBusters and even scientists of the past; fly a fighter jet simulator; enter a virtual reality environment, be a CSI agent and so much more. Students can also leave with information about science and engineering scholarships, internships, mentorship and future jobs.

Before you go, be sure to download the FREE USA Science and Engineering Festival App. It lists all activities, stage shows, 36 Featured Authors, and gives you a map and more. The app is available for both iPhone and Android.

Highlight for Young Kids 

Visit the PBS Kids Sid the Science Kid Booth for fun hands on activities for children all day, a photo opportunity with the Sid the Science Kid costume character, see Sid the Science Kid will perform his “Science is Everywhere” singalong on the Curie Stage on Saturday at 10:50am and 12:50pm and Sunday at 10:00am and 11:50pm, and be entered to win a Sid the Science Kid collection of merchandise drawing each day.

Also, leave a comment on this post to win one of TWO copies of the Sid’s Backyard Campout DVD! The winners will be randomly drawn in one week.

Have a fabulous weekend!

I believe the biggest pitfall of parent volunteering for schools or clubs is the reading of lengthy reply-all e-mails. I have lost days off my life slogging through those massive missives and the replies from fellow parents. And even after reading through, signing up for duties and saving them to a personal calendar, those beasts rear their ugly heads when a child gets sick and a parent needs to swap or change.

Once in a while an industrious parent will recommend an online organizational website to keep track of who is bringing the snack/paper plates/manning the playground for lunch duty/etc. But often those sites require a long signup registration process, they send oddles of spam to your in box and some require payment from your group or by individuals. Who needs that? Even a group’s use of a Google calendar requires all members of the group to acquire a Gmail account, and many people are very happy with their Verizon/Cox/Yahoo! addies and do not want another one thankyouverymuch.

But I have found some exceptional websites that I am loving in my “real life” as a mom involved in volunteering in my children’s school and activities. All four sites are free, do not require registration and offer helpful tools that I believe increase volunteer participation and decrease time spent reading reply-alls!

Take Them a Meal - This online sign up sheet does not require registration and allows a group of people to easily choose days to bring a meal to a family with a new baby, illness or in need of assistance. The program will remind you of your assigned day and makes it easy to include directions, food allergy info, meal choices and more. They also have a sister site, Perfect Potluck, which does exactly what you would think.

SignUpGenius – Another great group sign up site. I was introduced to this by our church’s Children’s Liturgy/Sunday school co-op coordinator (Hi Shannon!). It makes group coordination very easy, and again, the registration process is simple and they do not spam. I am now using this for lots of group volunteer efforts and most participants are loving it.

PTO Today - This site is full of free tools and templates to assist parent-teach associations and parent volunteer groups. I am a fan of the Parent Express E-mail tool, and I believe that the Auction Procedures and Forms share site will be very helpful to our school’s auction gala committee.

Volunteer Spot’s Room Mom Spot - I love the letter templates available here for everything from encouraging fellow parents to chip in for a teacher gift to end of year thank you letters. (Because when you have over-extended yourself and signed up to be a room parent or parent volunteer, every single minute saved is worth every bit of lack of personalization, in my humble opinion.)  Volunteer Spot’s main site also has great ideas, such as games for Field Day and you can use Volunteer Spot as your hub for all online organizing for your school or org (that however requires all participants to register online.)

Do you have a favorite website that has helped you in your organizational endeavors? Please share it with us in the comments!

This infographic by Lab42 explores how parents interact with their own minor children on Facebook. I found this interesting, as more children daily acquire Facebook accounts. Remember, Facebook requires users to be at least 13 years of age. 

Facebook is in no way connected with this survey, infographic or blog post. Survey and infographic credit: Lab42.

Every month or so I receive an e-mail from a fellow Gmail user asking for the link to my old post on how to get rid of the dreaded Inbox (863) or whatever three digit number is haunting you. As I work to muster the mojo to create new content again, here is that oldie but helpfulie.

How to Delete All Unread Messages in Gmail

And when I say all, I mean ALL. Every last one of those messages that you figured out from the subject you didn’t need to open.

Like those hundreds and thousands of breaking news alerts from The New York Times and The Washington Post that you’re meaning to get to but won’t, the Tory Burch sale alerts from Gilt that you don’t end up opening because you can’t afford the stuff anyways, especially those pesky email feed posts from A Parent in Silver Spring.

Maybe I’m a dummy and you guys with Gmail had already figured this out, but I found the instant deletion of 3894 unread emails so liberating after two years of deleting them in sets of 20. It felt so good to not have a huge number taunting me with my slacktitude that I decided to post here and risk looking extremely stupid. If I can help just one of you guys in an instantaneous declutter of your Inbox, my public humiliation shall not be in vain. (I guess that was a very petty ripping off of Dickinson. I clearly want to look as lame as possible.)

ANYWAYS, here’s how you do it:

In the Gmail search box on top of your messages, type is:unread . Then go to Select and click All. After you do this the first 20 unread messages will be highlighted. Then click the Delete button.

Then a magical link of blue text will appear directly over your messages that says Select all conversations that match this search. Click it.

A window will come up asking you if you’re sure. If you want to get rid of every piece of spam that made it to your Inbox or other item you never opened and now is obsolete, you’re sure.

Thank you to who?Comics for sponsoring this post and encouraging my child to read biographies in comic book form! Please click here to learn more about the app. And follow who?Comics on Twitter for updates

Who?Comics iPad App for Children Age 8 and Up

Our kids believe the iPad is a just one big gaming tool. Angry Birds was the gateway, opening up a world of fruity sous chef-dom,  cute monsters cutting ropes, even rainbow tooting unicorns.

You know, VERY intellectual.

I know there are a good deal of iPad apps out there that will better stimulate my children’s minds, I just have not yet explored. (I’ve added that activity to #549 on my to-do list.)

However, I do read to and with all three of children daily. Bring on the frozen Trader Joe’s nuggets, the bakery-ordered birthday cupcakes, even online games with burping candy, but I hope that the reading every single blessed day will somehow get me a passing grade when mothering report cards come out.

So when the Clever Girls asked if I would check out the Who?Comics biography iPad app for children, it seemed a worthwhile activity to share with Charlie (eight, in second grade) and Eve (nearly six, kindergarten). My husband Chris and I use the iPad primarily to read newspapers, magazines and books, as well as research the new headway made daily by app developers.  Why not involve the kids in also using the iPad similarly?

Official Who?Comics description:

Read about the lives and achievements of some of the greatest people in history, both past and present, in a 150 page long comic book form.
These comics are educational and fun to read. Instead of boring plain text, give your children a new, enjoyable reading experience that is light and easy to read in comic book form. But even before the children can start, parents won’t be able to stop turning the pages, too.

Who?Comics series contains the life stories of 10 of our greatest leaders of today and 19 historical figures of the past. Read and learn about the amazing lives of Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Clinton, Steven Spielberg, Joanne Rowling, Barack Obama, Warren Buffett, Stephen Hawking, Nelson Mandela, Jane Goodall, Bill Gates and much, much more.

You can even collect badges easily as you read the comic books and even try to find and collect hidden badges for each great figure.
Who?Comics provides a fun badge collecting experience that both children and parents will enjoy. Everyone can get caught up in the fun of badge collecting and eventually discover and develop their new found reading habit.

The who?Comics app costs $9.99 on iTunes. There are two free biographies included in this price, Bill Gates and Oprah. Additional biographies to store on your who?Comics bookshelf are $4.99 each. or you can buy the entire set of biographies – 30 titles – for $29.99.

Charlie was intrigued by the notion of learning history comic-book style. This was his first experience with a graphic book that was not a superhero or Super Diaper Baby. He chose J.K. Rowling’s biography as our first Who?Comic to read together. He’s a huge Harry Potter fan, and he has been intrigued by the idea that one person thought of all those stories and spells and fantastical names and plot twists. Although the comics are geared toward children age 8 and up, Eve heard us reading the comic in the other room and she jumped in the bed with us too. The J.K. Rowling was a great story to “hook” Eve since the beginning involves young Joanne “Jo” Rowling’s imaginative childhood and her little sister.

My kids loved reading this 150 page biography together. I read aloud, they read along with me and looked at the graphic manga-style drawings (podotree, the developer, is based in Seoul). I thought the fictionalized dialogue was a bit cheeser at times, but my kids responded to the dramatizations. I think they will better remember the stories because of the funny jokes and awkward lines. I have no idea how much of some of the lesser plot items in the biographies are based upon research, and which items were filled in by the authors in the spirit of items gleaned from interviews and other biographical sources.

But then, most of what I know about Mark Zuckerberg I learned from The Social Network, so who am I to judge.

Since I let Charlie choose the first Who?Comic, I chose our second and selected the biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. I thought this biography was appropriately meatier. Charlie and I read this one without Eve, although I believe it was not too much for her. But reading about Dr. King one-on-one allowed Charlie and me to have some solid older kid discussions about civil rights, segregation and race. I read this one solo before involving Charlie, because I wanted to ensure that those topics were handled with age-appropriateness while not glossing over the severity and horrors of segregation and discrimination. I also wanted to see how Dr. King’s assassination was handled in pictures, and I believe it was portrayed accurately but not sensationalizing the violence. (The accompanying picture shows Dr. King wincing and falling as a bullet non-gorily enters his cartoon body.)

In summation, I think this is an entertaining and educational app. The proof for me? The kids enjoyed this app even more than me.

Thank you again to who? Comics for sponsoring my post. Please click here to learn more about the app. Visit Who? Comics for updates. I was selected for this opportunity by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions expressed here are my own. #CleverWhoComics #spon