[MWForum]Cosmic Thinkers, web games, getting schools enthused
Harvey Bornfield
mwforum@lists.mathcats.com
Sat, 15 Feb 2003 10:09:47 -0700
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Lisa:
Welcome. It is awesome to find another prophet in a world of mannequins.
If these opening remarks seem for now but largely philosophical, let
them be 'oceanically so'. Then launch your ship on these waters.
I agree that the optimism is wings, labor boots. Between these two
pulsing poles we navigate mortal waters. And so, for starters, entertain
the notion which Papert spawned, and hold to it as a 'basal metabolism'
for what follows: that the relationship between teaching and learning is
in long overdue need of chiropractic realignment. And so it follows as
true also that if we indulge time to reflect upon the notion of the role
of teacher as "boss", borrowed from top-down hard-core industrial models
of western externally-driven ambition, to an invitation to view the
teacher as a mentor, as Socrate's Ethereal Daemon, as a facilitating
voice of genius within, then the outer person, the warrior who must
survive and triumph, finds a connection to the cosmos, and discovers the
lyric poet within, elastic, mysterious, elusive, a would-be immortal.
Syrveyed in this way, so now an intense imagination appears to visualize
this turning point in time when schools must learn how de-mechanize
their operating premises, and divest themselves of the euphoria and
obsession with the promulgation of machine-based visions of what
education really is, if civilization itself is to survive and thrive:
So I imagine, and offer this for your consideration:
Educational Bureaucracies are habit-driven, dogmatic, heavy-handed, and
their way of life is like brushstrokes of a the sledge-hammer, and like
stampeding rhinos in the Ewok forest, the thunder of fear-based
assessment, standardization associated with norms-based testing deafens
most to the flutter and flight of celebration-based sharing. To
suffocate enchantment, and the arising of daring and courage which lives
in unrehearsed oral tradition energy, and replace it now with a system
of thought that deserves the noble name philosophy, but instead is
downsized to policy and formula which commends and applauds knowledge
and skills as weapons rather than instruments of wonder, this is the
very crux of the malaise, and its utter reversal the greatest challenge
in our schools today.
To toast the wonderful intent of your site, one entertains an
interesting, expansive notion: "All Thinking is Cosmic Thinking."
Otherwise one has but rote. But to kindle, to engage, to sustain on a
long-term-basis a durable curiosity in those who have inadvertently
bought into the slave mentality of business-as-usual, which, to coin a
new verb, "Darth Vaders" most institutions of higher learning, and
trickles down, like the gait of a solemn pall-bearer, into the
shrapnelled, jigsawed wasteland of public education, - this is a noble,
desirable idea; More, it is indeed an inspiration, a
consciousness-leavening paradigm whose time has come. Nonetheless,
here's the rub:
First go upstairs where the (Cosmic) Thinking should be occurring, and
observe: Snow White's spinning wheel is still spinless, numb, and like
her, frozen in carbonite, lies inert in an attic of human abstraction,
and for most of the Snow Whites in the world, trapped in same-old
same-old, the gleam, the promise, the adventure of a Prince Charming,
the voice which lives in muses and bursts misgiving, the taste of his
kiss, is still but a lifeless, hypothetical speculation!
To overcome taking on educational systems, with whom I have been
sparring and jousting for the greater part of the last 14 years on
various reservations throughout Arizona, I have found that setting up
energy-enthusiastic communities of teachers, parents and students who
engage in authoring and pioneering and count bravery as an acceptable
cover charge to the arena of exploration, and letting these communities
of computer, constructivist-saavy enclaves live modestly in parallel,
perhaps better, in an inner concentric circle with traditional teaching
modalities, like lighthouses pouring out their wares upon the land,
setting up working models of the alternative, in what some educators
call the "Innovation Diffusion" model, I have found that this works well
to welcome those who would jump ship in search of vibrationally greener
pastures.
Thus it came to pass in many of the schools within the Navajo and Hopi
reservations in which I taught computer to elementary school children,
that from one to three days a week, community nights where parents and
their children could mint fresh money, impressed in various
denominations with the faces of a digitally-photographed family, or a
revolving solar system whose planetary velocities were slider-adjustable
in a one-minute equals one year swerve rate, or dinosaurs with the faces
of children who spoke when clicked, found their way south from realms of
joy and created learning climates and ambience of unrivalled spark and
spunk.
It is creative visualization which melts the ice, and replaces the
military siege-mentality of schools with "the first day of spring",
which Tucson sports at least 180 days a year.
Wam regards,
Harvey Bornfield
www.mythologics.org
On Friday, February 7, 2003, at 09:51 AM, LRichter99@aol.com wrote:
> Wendy:
> Thank you for the positive comments about Cosmic Thinkers. Your own
> site is quite phenomenal. I enjoyed it immensely..particularly the
> variety and depth of what you cover. Your accolades are clearly
> warranted.
>
> Dale:
> Yes, my games can hang up the computer. I appreciate your disgust.
> I'll add a comment to my web page warning viewers that with a dial-up
> (or 56K) connection, patience will be of the essence. (I've recently
> switched to a cable modem, and the projects run within seconds. I am
> aware, however, that high-speed connections are not the majority.) As
> Wendy mentioned, there is a trade off between beauty and practicality
> (isn't there always?). My games are not geared toward the general
> public; I have them out there as examples to my students (or potential
> students) and therefore wanted to show them the full range of
> possibilities. And to me, a project without music is one terribly
> lacking.
>
> Wendy:
> As for converting parents, I find that nothing sells like genuine
> enthusiasm. I have it, my students have it, and when I invite the
> parents in on the last day of class for a special presentation and
> hands-on look at what we do and WHAT THEIR CHILDREN have accomplished,
> they all buy a copy of MicroWorlds on the spot. As for convincing
> educators, I can't imagine that if a hands-on MW workshop were offered
> locally at a convenient time and at an acceptable cost (i.e., free)
> that many wouldn't jump to incorporate it, assuming of course that
> their curiosities were engaged beforehand.
> What are your thoughts? How have you met with success?
>
> Thanks --
> Lisa Richter
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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
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Lisa:
Welcome. It is awesome to find another prophet in a world of
mannequins. If these opening remarks seem for now but largely
philosophical, let them be 'oceanically so'. Then launch your ship on
these waters.
I agree that the optimism is wings, labor boots. Between these two
pulsing poles we navigate mortal waters. And so, for starters,
entertain the notion which Papert spawned, and hold to it as a 'basal
metabolism' for what follows: that the relationship between teaching
and learning is in long overdue need of chiropractic realignment. And
so it follows as true also that if we indulge time to reflect upon the
notion of the role of teacher as "boss", borrowed from top-down
hard-core industrial models of western externally-driven ambition, to
an invitation to view the teacher as a mentor, as Socrate's Ethereal
Daemon, as a facilitating voice of genius within, then the outer
person, the warrior who must survive and triumph, finds a connection
to the cosmos, and discovers the lyric poet within, elastic,
mysterious, elusive, a would-be immortal.
Syrveyed in this way, so now an intense imagination appears to
visualize this turning point in time when schools must learn how
de-mechanize their operating premises, and divest themselves of the
euphoria and obsession with the promulgation of machine-based visions
of what education really is, if civilization itself is to survive and
thrive:
So I imagine, and offer this for your consideration:
Educational Bureaucracies are habit-driven, dogmatic, heavy-handed,
and their way of life is like brushstrokes of a the sledge-hammer, and
like stampeding rhinos in the Ewok forest, the thunder of fear-based
assessment, standardization associated with norms-based testing
deafens most to the flutter and flight of celebration-based sharing.
To suffocate enchantment, and the arising of daring and courage which
lives in unrehearsed oral tradition energy, and replace it now with a
system of thought that deserves the noble name philosophy, but instead
is downsized to policy and formula which commends and applauds
knowledge and skills as weapons rather than instruments of wonder,
this is the very crux of the malaise, and its utter reversal the
greatest challenge in our schools today.
To toast the wonderful intent of your site, one entertains an
interesting, expansive notion: "All Thinking is Cosmic Thinking."
Otherwise one has but rote. But to kindle, to engage, to sustain on a
long-term-basis a durable curiosity in those who have inadvertently
bought into the slave mentality of business-as-usual, which, to coin a
new verb, "Darth Vaders" most institutions of higher learning, and
trickles down, like the gait of a solemn pall-bearer, into the
shrapnelled, jigsawed wasteland of public education, - this is a
noble, desirable idea; More, it is indeed an inspiration, a
consciousness-leavening paradigm whose time has come. Nonetheless,
here's the rub:
First go upstairs where the (Cosmic) Thinking should be occurring, and
observe: Snow White's spinning wheel is still spinless, numb, and like
her, frozen in carbonite, lies inert in an attic of human abstraction,
and for most of the Snow Whites in the world, trapped in same-old
same-old, the gleam, the promise, the adventure of a Prince Charming,
the voice which lives in muses and bursts misgiving, the taste of his
kiss, is still but a lifeless, hypothetical speculation!
To overcome taking on educational systems, with whom I have been
sparring and jousting for the greater part of the last 14 years on
various reservations throughout Arizona, I have found that setting up
energy-enthusiastic communities of teachers, parents and students who
engage in authoring and pioneering and count bravery as an acceptable
cover charge to the arena of exploration, and letting these
communities of computer, constructivist-saavy enclaves live modestly
in parallel, perhaps better, in an inner concentric circle with
traditional teaching modalities, like lighthouses pouring out their
wares upon the land, setting up working models of the alternative, in
what some educators call the "Innovation Diffusion" model, I have
found that this works well to welcome those who would jump ship in
search of vibrationally greener pastures.
Thus it came to pass in many of the schools within the Navajo and Hopi
reservations in which I taught computer to elementary school children,
that from one to three days a week, community nights where parents and
their children could mint fresh money, impressed in various
denominations with the faces of a digitally-photographed family, or a
revolving solar system whose planetary velocities were
slider-adjustable in a one-minute equals one year swerve rate, or
dinosaurs with the faces of children who spoke when clicked, found
their way south from realms of joy and created learning climates and
ambience of unrivalled spark and spunk.
It is creative visualization which melts the ice, and replaces the
military siege-mentality of schools with "the first day of spring",
which Tucson sports at least 180 days a year.
Wam regards,
Harvey Bornfield
www.mythologics.org
On Friday, February 7, 2003, at 09:51 AM, LRichter99@aol.com wrote:
<excerpt>Wendy:
Thank you for the positive comments about Cosmic Thinkers. Your own
site is quite phenomenal. I enjoyed it immensely..particularly the
variety and depth of what you cover. Your accolades are clearly
warranted.
Dale:
Yes, my games can hang up the computer. I appreciate your disgust.
I'll add a comment to my web page warning viewers that with a dial-up
(or 56K) connection, patience will be of the essence. (I've recently
switched to a cable modem, and the projects run within seconds. I am
aware, however, that high-speed connections are not the majority.) As
Wendy mentioned, there is a trade off between beauty and practicality
(isn't there always?). My games are not geared toward the general
public; I have them out there as examples to my students (or
potential students) and therefore wanted to show them the full range
of possibilities. And to me, a project without music is one terribly
lacking.
Wendy:
As for converting parents, I find that nothing sells like genuine
enthusiasm. I have it, my students have it, and when I invite the
parents in on the last day of class for a special presentation and
hands-on look at what we do and WHAT THEIR CHILDREN have accomplished,
they all buy a copy of MicroWorlds on the spot. As for convincing
educators, I can't imagine that if a hands-on MW workshop were offered
locally at a convenient time and at an acceptable cost (i.e., free)
that many wouldn't jump to incorporate it, assuming of course that
their curiosities were engaged beforehand.
What are your thoughts? How have you met with success?
Thanks --
Lisa Richter
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</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>
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