The K12 Geek

BLC08 - Had the extreme pleasure of attending John Davitt’s keynote this morning. Currently I’m sitting in his ‘after keynote’ session. He has a ‘Learning Event Generator’ that with one click, it creates assignments that make students think, design and create an end product. (Email him and he’ll share it with you.) Our group was assigned to:

Do: “How Hitler was defeated” As: “a three-frame storyboard”

Here’s our go at it:

I’m quite proud of my Photoshop work, and Shelley Paul introduced our group to Pikistrips which is a neat way to create comic strips. Once challenged with our assignment, you could see our group come together and start to flesh things out. Each person contributed to the fray - some with knowledge of events, some with web researching skills, some with skills to create the parts, and some to finish off the design and deliver the content. It was learning… and it was fun!

Why is it that more teachers don’t equate fun with learning? Why does learning have to be so passive and dry?

John’s message: Make learning active. He talked about how the media would like us to be passive consumers, but in reality the fun and learning comes from active participation. He also talked about struggleware - software that challenges students to think. What a concept?! He uses Flash quite a bit in his quest for creative and active learning. I’m hoping to sit in on a small get-together later with his leadership on Flash.

So - why not get John to send you the Learning Event Generator? (Or just run it from his site.) You can customize it with your own ideas to make it fit to your curriculum. You’ll engage your students and make learning fun! And if you ever get the chance to see John talk - run, don’t walk, to see/hear him.

John makes learning fun.

It’s my wife’s birthday today, so I took off Friday and Monday and told her we could do anything she’d like to (within reason, of course.) She’s a big lighthouse buff and has been wanting to visit The Twin Lights at Navasink, NJ and also Sandy Hook lighthouse for quite a while now. So that’s what we did on Friday.

As a good husband, I’ve been trying to stay ‘disconnected’ from my network this weekend and have all attention towards her. Little did I know that from her love of lighthouses I’d be learning something new about wireless technology to boot!

We made the 3-hour or so trek from Lancaster to Navasink and arrived around 12pm at the Twin Lights. What a cool piece of architecture! Perched up on the highlands the Twin Lights look out over the Atlantic with a nice view of the NYC skyline. We entered the free museum and took a look around. To my delight, the museum featured a small exhibit on the first wireless technology in US history! Here I am, ‘off the grid’ for the weekend, but I get to learn a bit about Marconi and wireless from way back in the 1800s! Long story short - Marconi built a radio station to chat with incoming ships to the NY harbor. This made the Twin Lights the nations first wireless telegraph station capable of sending and receiving messages on a regular basis! COOL!

They have a neat display of the original equipment used in this era in the museum. Pretty amazing stuff when you look at it. The examples of the batteries he used were dumbfounding. They looked like two pickle jars with some metal plates and electrodes protruding from the top - with the name “Edison” molded in the top! Wild stuff - but I’m easily amused by such displays! (I would have taken my own photos, but you are not allowed to photograph the exhibits - so the previous link is the closest to what the batteries looked like.)

To keep this short, I’ll keep moving - but if you get the chance to visit the Twin Lights, it is a fun and educational experience - I highly recommend it.

So on we went to the Sandy Hook lighthouse, (beware the mosquitoes!) then traveled leisurely down the coast to Asbury Park. My wife actually wanted to go see it - she also knows Bruce is one of my favorite musicians, so I was all for it.

It was nice to see that Asbury Park is now being revitalized - unlike the state of disrepair it has been in for many years. LOTS of construction going on down there. It was also nice to see that the Stone Pony and Madame Marie’s shack was still there (though she died earlier this year.) I didn’t stop for a reading — but it topped-off a fun day.

But the cops finally busted Madam Marie - for telling fortunes better than they’d be….
- 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy), on The Wild, the Innocent, & the E-street Shuffle.

Who knew that exploring lighthouses could be such fun?!

This needs to be shared: One for Us…

Lee, you ROCK!!! I’m proud to be your friend!

Just a quickie for today:

oculture.com - Open Culture explores cultural and educational media (podcasts, videos, online courses, etc.) that’s freely available on the web, and that makes learning dynamic, productive, and fun. We sift through all the media, highlight the good and jettison the bad, and centralize it in one place. Trust us, you’ll find engaging content here that will keep you learning and sharp. And you will find it much more efficiently than if you spend your time searching with Google, Yahoo or iTunes.