What is school for? We must find a new purpose for school.
What is school for? This is the question and Seth weaves a story to explain how we got here and why we must be courageous enough to confront the reality of our school system as it currently exists.
One of the most striking points in this talk is how we have been taught to fear being wrong, to comply, to be obedient so that we will be employable for an industrial society. Obedience is not the same thing as being respectful to ourselves and to others. He also speaks about the impact of technology in education. Technology “links us all” by making knowledge accessible to all.
It is time to stop teaching children as though they lack the ability to think and problem solve in new and interesting ways. This video is from 2012, and the work of transforming our world continues to unfold.
Progress continued with Tearin’ up East Street (continued) and the dig up and pipe replacement. In reality this has been an all summer project. The street will probably be repaved at the end of August.
What a view!
I actually got a kick out of the machinery. These pics are from June 28th to July 7th.
Our friendly traffic control! Safety first!
Economic Impact
This is the NO Parking sign in front of my place on July 7th. I have only done an informal study, but this has been tough on business.
We are now halfway through August and there has been work going on off and on through last week. Now there is something of a lull which is great!
It has been difficult on residents and businesses wherever this work has been going on. We know it has to be done, and certainly this is far better than having pipes fail in the winter. Still, I can certainly say that I will be happy when all is back to normal!
It was June 26, 2015 at 7:00am and workers are commencing with replacing water pipes that had been installed way back in 1906. Several other locations are also being worked on this summer, all of are important to the community. Now, early in the morning I can see the workers digging up the street at the intersection of Route 12 and East Street. They look like a small crowd of yellow jackets!
We knew this was coming, and had also received a reminder notice from the Town Manger, Jeff Schulz. At the other end of East Street the road forks into steep Turkey Hill and also King Street. King Street happens to lead to the Memorial Park. (Town swimming pool and baseball fields) Pipes will be replaced going down these streets as well. The Memorial Park was unavailable for some time and also Turkey Hill could not be used. I don’t know how they could of done that any other way though. The town did have an emergency medical rig available just in case someone needed help while Turkey Hill was not passable.
Looking down the other way I see this big metal thing. Still don’t know what it is called, but it looks like a trash bin.
A couple of days later…
Now it is July 29th at 9:30 AM and up “my” street they came, steadily progressing along, tearing up the pavement with care.
Close to 5:00 PM and quite a bit of digging, replacement and then packing the street back down has occurred.
My impression so far is that this kind of project is not always a simple process and of course you can run into unexpected difficulties.
It was occasionally rather loud when they were using the cat and then covering the pipes back up. This sent vibrations through the buildings that reminded me of a thunderstorm, but with more shaking! It was really something you don’t experience everyday and seemed a bit bizarre since I spend alot of time down there.
I didn’t take pictures every day and the project progressed in stages over a month or so. After about three weeks there was a lull and then they came back and dug the street up again to hook up the pipes to the buildings.
The workers were very nice and they entertained my occasional questions about the process.
Two of my WSSU Bridges Afterschool students decided to have a friendly robot build competition in MinecraftEdu. These screenshots are from last session.
3….. 2…. 1… Go!
This took place in our “Horses Yay!” world Build Challenge area. It started out as a 15 minute competition, but we ended up extending it to 20 minutes. I spectated, and it was a fun build challenge to watch.
The boys decided that they did not want to see each other working, so we put up the pink wool wall.
Bridges Afterschool MCEdu Build Challenge – Oliver and Devon begin!This is Devon’s robotThis is Oliver’s robotGetting interesting now! Pew, pew, pew!Hmm what will this end up looking like?
Oliver is almost done! A change of plans with the robot’s head, instead of a red top we have an antler like antenna.You can almost here to thumping of the giant bots as they come to life! Here is Devon’s all complete.
Interiors
I do have a shot of the interiors!
The interior of Oliver’s robot.The interior of Devon’s robot.
Who will be victorious?
It was not easy to judge the best build, they were super close! Each robot also included an interior with some Redstone (Minecraft energy source) components and even decorations. Redstone allows you to build mechanicals and circuits in Minecraft. In this case, the Redstone provided some lighting and firing mechanisms.
Oliver was the victor!
So very close too!
I had to choose, difficult as the choice was! Both builds were dramatic and well-executed.
10/6/2015
