The blog is not teaching in the stolid Tory grind-the little-beasts style, but it is clearly educational, in the classical sense of "leading out". In my world, my mind, education involves a bit of
teaching and loads of wisdom, knowledge, learning, culture, training, understanding, thinking, insight and
erudition, but most of all we must foster enthusiasm—and wonder and curiosity.
This new (actually old) collection is for people like me. Now, a word
to teachers:
Pedant: “But where do these things fit in the curriculum?"
Me: “They fit in the slot marked Wonder…”
Pedant: “But there isn’t any slot marked Wonder!”
Me: “Then
you must make one.”
OK, I am an educator/teacher, and like Chaucer's Clerk of Oxenforde, Gladly Wold I Teche.
I rather hope that once we get into May, the navigation will be easier. If it does not play nicely, I will apply brute force.
In other words, it took off, and then in 2019, I was at a writers and kids luncheon, and a Year 6 boy who had found the website urged me to make it a book. (The sort of kid that goes to things like that is always book-oriented, just as I was, and am.)
The one after that will be art from a bacterium called Leptothrix. That was never there before, but the marks of Leptothrix on water look very like oil slicks: look at this example.
To find out what this collection sets out to do, read this. I have to say that right now, navigation in the new blog is proving difficult, as there are already more than fifty entries, and there is no easy way of listing them
The new blog is based on an earlier website that had more than 4 million views. Back when the Internet was a pup, Science Playwiths was about all of the curious bits you could explore, in or out of the classroom and the main aim was to show K-6 teachers how easy it was to write HTML. Back then, it was the only one of its kind.
I worked on the book in a basic sort of way until covid-19 started closing schools, and then I rushed it out as both a print book and an e-book.
In that iteration, though, I set out consciously to go beyond STEM (Science, Technology, Engineerings and Mathematics), by adding in some assorted arts, making it STEAM.
Everything was tested, and my twin granddaughters at age two and a bit were coopted to try out some of the bits, like the water-powered turbine, below. The very last link (Hero was here) in this blog entry tells you how to make one of those.
Those granddaughters are now eight, and I have started doing photo essays for them from my Sci/Tech/Nature collections, like this one: bendy rocks. This isn't my first album: when my now out-of-print Australian Backyard Earth Scientist came out, I released five albums of earth science shots that you can find from that last link, or from this one.
This next picture is the next job (or soon, anyhow) on the slab: creating art from microphotographs of conchoidal fractures in glass. There is STEAM in everything, and everything shows up in STEAM.
The one after that will be art from a bacterium called Leptothrix. That was never there before, but the marks of Leptothrix on water look very like oil slicks: look at this example.
After that, echidnas, volcanoes, waratahs and flannel flowers, probably, and definitely something about ant lions and wombats.
I kept the website up, and reminded people that the source material was all available for free, but then my ISP treacherously dumped the whole lot. So no more free stuff, but now I am liberating all my work again, and adding to it, and if you look at the top of any page, you will find a SEARCH box. To get a sample of what is there, look for ARTS or MATHS or SCI or TECH or ENG.
Or search on Chemistry, Physics, Rocks... you will be surprised.
The thing is, I am back, trying to get a free version out there. Here are a few recent additions: there are now about 82 in all.
By the way, the sort of mind I am after is the sort who knows what I had for lunch: there is a 20-cent prize for all correct answers written in pencil on a $10 note.
No comments:
Post a Comment