Newsletter Archive
Newsletter November 2007
From the Executive Director
Breaking News - we've changed our name! What, you didn't notice? Well, we've always been commonly known as TINCAN, which was actually an acronym for The Inland Northwest Community Access Network. That was quite a lengthy name to remember, and frankly, no one knew the full name other than its presence on legal documents. It really reflected our roots in 1994, when we were primarily focused on giving disenfranchised populations access to the Internet. That's still a noble goal, and we still pursue it through supporting our many community partners. But we have become so much more. We now focus on content creation, training, education, and other projects that use information technology and interactive media to serve our community. So we changed our legal name to Tincan - not an acronym, just a word.
We have also hired a new Finance Manager, Eric Ruthford, who comes to us from Raphael House in San Francisco. Eric has a Masters degree from Carnegie Mellon University, and a background in journalism as well as finance. He is a welcome addition to our staff.
It's getting close to the end of the year, and as you consider your end-of-year charitable giving, please consider making a donation to Tincan to support its programs.
Karen L. Michaelson, Ph.D.
Executive Director
tincaninfo@tincan.org
WIBIT News
 What's a WIBIT? It's the Women in Biotechnology and Information Technology program held after-school at East Valley and Centennial Middle Schools. The eighth grade girls have come up with some interesting solutions to creating a murder mystery video game that uses science for solve the crime. "Something Smells Fishy" at Centennial is about a classroom fish who mysteriously dies and the next day Mr. Hamm was found eating a fish sandwich. Coincidence? You will have to wait and play the game to find out for yourself.
The seventh grade Biotech Soda program is in its third year. Girls develop a soda using fermentation to create their product, then they develop an e- commerce web site to promote it. Think you know all the crazy flavors the girls could create? Try KiwiColada. It's surprisingly tasty.
We would like to welcome two new science teachers to WIBIT, Michele Roban at Centennial Middle School and Nicole Williams from East Valley Middle School. We also have several of last year’s WIBIT participants returning from high school to be WIBIT teaching assistants this year. We look forward to a great year. For more information on WIBIT and how to volunteer please contact, Tara Neumann, tara@tincan.org http://wibit.tincan.org. WIBIT is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education Women’s Educational Equity Act program.
Inland Northwest Memories Project Update
History Online
Thank you to all the Veterans for attending Tincan's Veterans Day event, and allowing INMP to recognize and preserve your memories. Special thanks to all those who made this event possible. East Central Community Center for the use of their facility, EWU students for volunteering, and the Thor Fred Meyer for donating the beautiful cake. And of course to all the other community members for their support. If you were unable to attend this event contact Elisha Durrant at 509-744- 0972 if you are interested in having your military memorabilia photographed or scanned and put online. We also record veterans, and civilians' oral histories.
INMP continues to work with small and community museums to help them learn to digitize their collections and publicize their activities. So far INMP staff has traveled to the following museums: Pend Oreille Historical Society Museum, The Bruce Memorial Museum (Waitsburg Historical Society), Cheney Historical Society, Ritzville Museums (Burroughs Home and Railroad Depot Museum), North Spokane Farm Museum, and Kirkman House Museum. This project is made possible by a grant from Humanities Washington, "Small Town Museums: Reflections on Community Life". In addition, Tincan will make a documentary showing the activities of participating museums and the significance of small museums in preserving their community's heritage. If any local museums or historical societies want to participate, they can contact Elisha Durrant, the project director, at 509-744-0972, elisha@tincan.org.
As always INMP, an online archive of local history, is looking for individuals that would like to share their story, photographs, letters, etc., that relate to the Inland Northwest. Please contact Elisha Durrant to share your information.
The Inland Northwest Memories Project
SubVERSive Poetry Program Showcase
 The Subversive Poetry program will wrap up at the end of this month. Four sets of teens, representing groups who often experience prejudice, read and wrote poetry exploring the experience of prejudice. Each group picked one of their poems, and then created a video of their chosen Spokane word poem. Two of four groups completed their videos this summer. Behind the scenes pictures from the making of those are online now at
www.virtualteencenter.org/project_subversive. Students from Central Valley High School are finishing up their videos this month. The teens will be sharing their poems and videos at a showcase December 5th at 7pm at the Empyrean (154 S. Madison) in owntown Spokane.
Virtual Teen Center
eMerge News is online!
 After much hustling and bustling the teen news crew got their first newscast up online last week. The newscast, aimed at Spokane area teens, covers global, national and local headlines, as well as original local reporting. The crew's goal is to disperse news of interest to local teens, in a format they can connect with. To make this happen the bi-weekly cast can be seen on myspace, youtube, and on the news website, www.emergenews .org. Viewers will also be able to download the show for play on ipods and other portable devices. The second newscast will go up Thursday the 15th and you can expect to see a youth perspective on the local election results.
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