[MWForum]Introducing MW @.0
Harvey Bornfield
mwforum@lists.mathcats.com
Sun, 1 Sep 2002 01:54:22 -0700
--Apple-Mail-16-1023655742
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=US-ASCII;
format=flowed
Dear Lauren:
The homework which underwrites and guarantees successful integration of
Microworlds into a school system is, in the initial phases, much more
about conjuring attitude than superimposing strategy. Many teachers
regard any new analytically-challenging, concentration-intensive
programs requiring long-range commitments in an unfamiliar experiential
theater as ranking up there almost as high on the top 40 desirability
list as say, a firing squad, unpaid leave a midnight visit from the KKK,
an Afghanistan Honeymoon, a swig of Socrates-quality hemlock. So the
lion's share of your efforts to engage prople will be campaigns of
enchantment rather than arsenals of strategy. One needs to find ways to
camouflage the labors with charm. Define concrete, creatively
visualizable activities and their fruits, the deliverables, and make
them teacher-friendly, turbo-charged with inspiration, and the rest is
footnotes. No clipboards, no 'death by details', no talk of 'one size
fits all'. Create an alternative to sterility, people will begin
'jumping ship' in growing numbers. The innovation diffusion mode. And it
is the children who will do your charming, and let their laughter voice
the intrinsic merit of creativity as higher a motive than the
acquisition of skills and knowledge. More about how to involve the kids
later in tomorrow's post..........
From the PR point of view, I have found in 9 years of managing
elementary school computer labs using Microworlds , that individual and
collaborative authoring both in creative writing and in social studies,
makes the most graceful justification-exempt way to bridge from a
concentration-camp gradebook food-chain mentality to authoring, i.e., to
working out of imagination. So what's to publish?
Recipe books (a digital camera, capturing kids with waffle batter up to
their third knuckle)
Stationery, customized, at Parent Meetings, available to peruse at the
online web site.
Downloaded and/or postmarked stamp collections, turned into turtle
shapes, used in a template of a postcard or an envelope. The advanced
kids get to scanning, sizing, and launder the postmarks, and put their
own names on stamps.
Maps of villages, cities, states, countries. A map of Europe or the US
can feature Flags, downloaded, and edited into shapes. Make different
sized diamonds to reflect city population size. Icons to show various
economic enterprise,
(factories, mining, agriculture) Topographic Keys (mountain, forest,
desert, swampland, plain, tundra)
Civilization Map Keys (National Parks, Camping facilities)
By 6th grade, kids can reuse other's works or their own last years works
(plan on longevity, on building a permanent, inter-school sharable
library, internet accessible), Map skills prepare the way for
integration of a math component, of estimation, and simulating travel
agencies to various places can fill a month or three. Collaborative
groups plan itineraries, use a variety of vehicles on routes (on foot,
horseback, llama, camel, bikes, rental cars and jeeps jeeps, chartered
helicopters, planes, boats) (if you're NASA, you create vacations on
different planets). (If you're Tolkien or George Lucas, you have to know
what kind of vehicles to use) Itineraries can also include ships
exploring the New World, Marco Polo's voyages, the settlement of the US.
Lots of inert 8 and a half by eleven to be set in multimedia motion.
Kids have to plot distance and aim, switching shapes, from horse to
bike, ship, jeep. railroad, when necessary. The Math-Expert member(s) of
the team, use glide, and set up a movement that reflects accurate
comparative speed of vehicles. Say, for example One minute = one hour's
travel, as coordinated with the map scale. Several itineraries on the
same map. Not just to execute. Team members make their projects for
others, who have to use stop watches to figure out mileages, given
observation of times as the independent variable. Add to this The
Money-man. (Ken Lay not available) Rents the vehicles on an hourly or
daily basis. Hotel, motel, hostel, campground, food fees have to be
figured out. Kids might have to get brochures, and search the internet
to acquire real rates. They create tabs, and create receipts. Online
cash register programs. Use Turtle shapes worth a thousand words,
calculate change. There's your gifted program.
For your offroad kids, create Original lands and maps of unknown places,
and vehicles, science-fiction inspired. Create stories, and at each
place you click on a map, a text or movie comes up dynamic dioramas.
An ambitious third grade class sized their faces, pasted them on scanned
dinosaurs, and taught the dinosaurs now to speak by clicking on the
face. Juraissic Interviews 101. Then merged the pages into a book.
When you become daring, you can create "roadmaker guns". You set a
slider to a road type, 1-dotted line path,2- double dotted line donkey
trail 3-graded,........n=Interstate n+1=airplane route. Each a unique
symbol. Then aim, and "Spray out a road" in segments. You have to inlay
the coordinates of the segments into a list, and learn item. Then kids
make "Living worksheets" to stump their friends. You build a library.
Next year a teacher who needs to see the Battle of Saratoga
choreographed by infantry icons, militia, artillary, cavalry, borrows
the projects of kids. The death of textbooks.
Geometric modelling, making castles from arc, polygon and box-builders.
Learning how to create turtle-dots, miniature turtles which can be
sprayed out, creating axes of symmetry which can be "erased via ht".
It's 1:49 AM in TUCSON, 50% chance of drenching the desert tomorrow.
Drown in Dreams, and say goodbye, Earlyfire.
Tomorrow, how to get the kids to do all the teaching, how to make
pictorial gradebooks, set up merit badges, grant college degrees. and a
discussion of what can be taught simultaneously, learned in teams, and
what needs to be learned sequentially. Then on to developing
infrastructures, peer tutors, community parent/child nights, using
digital cameras to print out counterfeit money, and selling it for use
in your multimedia fairs. And to ask the forum what kinds of programs
they would like to see the University for Imagination create to enable
printing out Origami, Paper Airplane and three-dimensional architectural
foldables, obelisk popcorn containers. You must buy a proxima projector
to shout Microworlds from the Rooftops. We have dead to wake.
From all of us ABC reporter elves here at the North Pole,
op [Good Night]
warm regards,
Harvey
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> I am new to MW and am looking for some basic starter
> project suggestions for grades 4-6. Something that
> will light the imaginative fires of the students as
> well as their teachers.
>
> What is the best way to present MW as a brand new
> tool. I mentioned that I am in a Montessori school,
> and I suspect that may have been responsible for the
> lack of suggestions, but it is important that MW get a
> good launch in order to getpast the skeptics!!
>
> Suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!
>
> Lauren
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
> http://finance.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> MWForum mailing list
> MWForum@lists.mathcats.com
> http://lists.mathcats.com/mailman/listinfo/mwforum
>
> _______________________________________________
> MWForum mailing list
> MWForum@lists.mathcats.com
> http://lists.mathcats.com/mailman/listinfo/mwforum
>
>
"Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of
knowledge which comprehends mankind, but mankind cannot comprehend."
Ludwig van Beethoven
--Apple-Mail-16-1023655742
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/enriched;
charset=US-ASCII
Dear Lauren:
The homework which underwrites and guarantees successful integration
of Microworlds into a school system is, in the initial phases, much
more about conjuring attitude than superimposing strategy. Many
teachers regard any new analytically-challenging,
concentration-intensive programs requiring long-range commitments in
an unfamiliar experiential theater as ranking up there almost as high
on the top 40 desirability list as say, a firing squad, unpaid leave a
midnight visit from the KKK, an Afghanistan Honeymoon, a swig of
Socrates-quality hemlock. So the lion's share of your efforts to
engage prople will be campaigns of enchantment rather than arsenals of
strategy. One needs to find ways to camouflage the labors with charm.
Define concrete, creatively visualizable activities and their fruits,
the deliverables, and make them teacher-friendly, turbo-charged with
inspiration, and the rest is footnotes. No clipboards, no 'death by
details', no talk of 'one size fits all'. Create an alternative to
sterility, people will begin 'jumping ship' in growing numbers. The
innovation diffusion mode. And it is the children who will do your
charming, and let their laughter voice the intrinsic merit of
creativity as higher a motive than the acquisition of skills and
knowledge. More about how to involve the kids later in tomorrow's
post..........
>From the PR point of view, I have found in 9 years of managing
elementary school computer labs using Microworlds , that individual
and collaborative authoring both in creative writing and in social
studies, makes the most graceful justification-exempt way to bridge
from a concentration-camp gradebook food-chain mentality to authoring,
i.e., to working out of imagination. So what's to publish?
Recipe books (a digital camera, capturing kids with waffle batter up
to their third knuckle)
Stationery, customized, at Parent Meetings, available to peruse at the
online web site.
Downloaded and/or postmarked stamp collections, turned into turtle
shapes, used in a template of a postcard or an envelope. The advanced
kids get to scanning, sizing, and launder the postmarks, and put their
own names on stamps.
Maps of villages, cities, states, countries. A map of Europe or the US
can feature Flags, downloaded, and edited into shapes. Make different
sized diamonds to reflect city population size. Icons to show various
economic enterprise,
(factories, mining, agriculture) Topographic Keys (mountain, forest,
desert, swampland, plain, tundra)
Civilization Map Keys (National Parks, Camping facilities)
By 6th grade, kids can reuse other's works or their own last years
works (plan on longevity, on building a permanent, inter-school
sharable library, internet accessible), Map skills prepare the way for
integration of a math component, of estimation, and simulating travel
agencies to various places can fill a month or three. Collaborative
groups plan itineraries, use a variety of vehicles on routes (on foot,
horseback, llama, camel, bikes, rental cars and jeeps jeeps, chartered
helicopters, planes, boats) (if you're NASA, you create vacations on
different planets). (If you're Tolkien or George Lucas, you have to
know what kind of vehicles to use) Itineraries can also include ships
exploring the New World, Marco Polo's voyages, the settlement of the
US. Lots of inert 8 and a half by eleven to be set in multimedia
motion.
Kids have to plot distance and aim, switching shapes, from horse to
bike, ship, jeep. railroad, when necessary. The Math-Expert member(s)
of the team, use glide, and set up a movement that reflects accurate
comparative speed of vehicles. Say, for example One minute = one
hour's travel, as coordinated with the map scale. Several itineraries
on the same map. Not just to execute. Team members make their projects
for others, who have to use stop watches to figure out mileages, given
observation of times as the independent variable. Add to this The
Money-man. (Ken Lay not available) Rents the vehicles on an hourly or
daily basis. Hotel, motel, hostel, campground, food fees have to be
figured out. Kids might have to get brochures, and search the internet
to acquire real rates. They create tabs, and create receipts. Online
cash register programs. Use Turtle shapes worth a thousand words,
calculate change. There's your gifted program.
For your offroad kids, create Original lands and maps of unknown
places, and vehicles, science-fiction inspired. Create stories, and at
each place you click on a map, a text or movie comes up dynamic
dioramas.
An ambitious third grade class sized their faces, pasted them on
scanned dinosaurs, and taught the dinosaurs now to speak by clicking
on the face. Juraissic Interviews 101. Then merged the pages into a
book.
When you become daring, you can create "roadmaker guns". You set a
slider to a road type, 1-dotted line path,2- double dotted line donkey
trail 3-graded,........n=Interstate n+1=airplane route. Each a unique
symbol. Then aim, and "Spray out a road" in segments. You have to
inlay the coordinates of the segments into a list, and learn item.
Then kids make "Living worksheets" to stump their friends. You build a
library. Next year a teacher who needs to see the Battle of Saratoga
choreographed by infantry icons, militia, artillary, cavalry, borrows
the projects of kids. The death of textbooks.
Geometric modelling, making castles from arc, polygon and
box-builders. Learning how to create turtle-dots, miniature turtles
which can be sprayed out, creating axes of symmetry which can be
"erased via ht".
It's 1:49 AM in TUCSON, 50% chance of drenching the desert tomorrow.
Drown in Dreams, and say goodbye, Earlyfire.
Tomorrow, how to get the kids to do all the teaching, how to make
pictorial gradebooks, set up merit badges, grant college degrees. and
a discussion of what can be taught simultaneously, learned in teams,
and what needs to be learned sequentially. Then on to developing
infrastructures, peer tutors, community parent/child nights, using
digital cameras to print out counterfeit money, and selling it for use
in your multimedia fairs. And to ask the forum what kinds of programs
they would like to see the University for Imagination create to enable
printing out Origami, Paper Airplane and three-dimensional
architectural foldables, obelisk popcorn containers. You must buy a
proxima projector to shout Microworlds from the Rooftops. We have dead
to wake.
>From all of us ABC reporter elves here at the North Pole,
op [Good Night]
warm regards,
Harvey
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<excerpt>I am new to MW and am looking for some basic starter
project suggestions for grades 4-6. Something that
will light the imaginative fires of the students as
well as their teachers.
What is the best way to present MW as a brand new
tool. I mentioned that I am in a Montessori school,
and I suspect that may have been responsible for the
lack of suggestions, but it is important that MW get a
good launch in order to getpast the skeptics!!
Suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!
Lauren
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
MWForum mailing list
MWForum@lists.mathcats.com
http://lists.mathcats.com/mailman/listinfo/mwforum
_______________________________________________
MWForum mailing list
MWForum@lists.mathcats.com
http://lists.mathcats.com/mailman/listinfo/mwforum
</excerpt><fontfamily><param>Times New Roman</param><bigger><bigger>"Music
is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge
which comprehends mankind, but mankind cannot comprehend."
Ludwig van Beethoven
</bigger></bigger></fontfamily>
--Apple-Mail-16-1023655742--