[MWForum]Introducing MW @.0

[Lauren Pacini]

A lot to direst, Harvey, but some really worthwhile
"stuff!" Right now I have a group of teachers who
would rather see technology fizzle and go away,
except, of course, for their own personal
convenience!! I knew I was in trouble last year when I
put out a plea for participation on the Technology
Steering Committee. The few who agreed to participate
contributed even less. So much for the notion of
"buy-in!" 

I concur completely with your notions of attitude
creation. Grades 4-6 offer a far better opportunity
that does 7-8, so the Upper Elementary is this years
target. The hope being that next this years 5th
graders, being next years 7th graders, will take the
attitude with them.

I will report my progress at appropriate intervals!!

Thanks to all who have contributed their thoughts!

Lauren

--- Harvey Bornfield <earlyfire@earthlink.net> wrote:
> 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]
> 
=== message truncated ===


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