Power of the Paperfuge

“The NVIV (Next Vista Inspiring Video) series of posts are written by Rushton Hurley and designed to provide students and teachers with fascinating discussion prompts.”

In The Power of the Paperfuge, Rushton features a Stanford researcher who uses paper and string to create a paperfuge.

He gives the following prompts to accompany this video:

“What is something you rely on that is complex and expensive? With some classmates, come up with a list. Share your list with others in the class, and then try having a brainstorming session to see if you can come up with a different way of creating one of those things.

How would you learn whether your idea can work? Can you try it yourself? Can you find someone who can help you experiment with it?

Do you learn something new just by engaging in a brainstorming session?

One thing you might learn is that the people who created the paperfuge must have been really good at asking, “What if?”

It’s amazing how simple yet powerful this creation is! It reminds me of a saying a learned many years ago - Keep It Simple, Silly! (KISS). Sometimes I wonder if we make things more complicated than they should be. Students can look at this video and realize that any of them could be the discoverer of a life-changing invention.

Please check out the video and think of other prompts you might come up with. Please share.

Let the Robot Drive

“The NVIV (Next Vista Inspiring Video) series of posts are written by Rushton Hurley and designed to provide students and teachers with fascinating discussion prompts.”

In Let the Robot Drive, Rushton features Zoox, a company working on self-driving cars.

He gives the following prompts to accompany this video:

“This story is from 2018, so one challenge you might take on is to see what you can learn about the company’s progress in the last few years.
In addition to learning some pretty cool engineering concepts, this video might help you think in new ways about old stuff, such as school. If you were told to create a school of the future, would you tweak the engine, or start over?
What do you know that could use a completely new approach?”

I think this is a great video to inspire students because I believe there is a high interest in self-driving cars. With this interest, students will be motivated to find out the latest information about them. I remember watching the cartoon “The Jetsons” and believing that none of that would ever be possible. I also think students have great imaginations and they will start thinking about ways to make old stuff better or even a newer useful version of them. It would be fun to have them get in groups to share their ideas and brainstorm together things that seem impossible but may actually be possible.

Please check out the video and think of other prompts you might come up with. Please share.

Be Imaginative

Recently I watched the movie The Imitation Game that tells how Alan Turing created a machine to break the code on the Enigma machine during WWII. One quote really stuck with me.

“Sometimes it’s the very people who no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. - Christopher Morcom”

Many students spend too much time and energy trying to be like everyone else. Yet, they will never be like someone else because each person is unique.

I was the student who was the last person to be picked for a sports team. I wasn’t very confident in my abilities.

I hated to work in groups because I was shy and not very confident that I measured up to everyone else.

No one would have ever imagined I would actually be a teacher. It was a dream of mine but even I wasn’t certain that I deserved to be a teacher. How could I teach others when I was so afraid to take a risk? Gradually my yearning conquered my fear and I worked hard to become a teacher.

I believe I have made a difference in many student’s lives. Although no one thought I could be capable of anything, I was capable of whatever I worked hard to accomplish.

Many of my students have doubts and fears also. It is my job to help the students to imagine the possibility of achieving whatever they want to do. I need to help them push fear to the back and help them work towards success.

I want students to look at successful individuals and ask them if they think the person just woke up one day and was successful. No, it took hard work and possibly multiple attempts before they were able to accomplish their goals.

How do you help your students imagine the possible? Please share.

Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash

Cardboard Inventions

When I was a child I used to love to play with old cardboard boxes. I guess I was just like a kitten who liked to use the cardboard box as a toy. Whenever someone in the neighborhood would get a new refrigerator or washing machine, the big box was given to the neighborhood children. I remember one year when we took all the boxes and put them together in a yard and made little cities out of the boxes. We decorated the boxes as individual houses and apartment buildings. We even cut doors into them and would go in and out of the different buildings. Then eventually we would make up stories of the residents of each building. This kept us busy and entertained for weeks or until it rained and all the boxes got wet and soggy. Then we would wait impatiently for someone to get another new appliance so we could begin a new adventure.

Recently I learned about this Instructables site that has a Cardboard Speed Challenge. So far there are only 13 entries and the challenge ends in 7 days but it was fun to look at the individual entries. There are some projects that I would never have thought about doing.

I believe this would be a fantastic challenge for the classroom. Let students use their imagination and discover what they could come up with. The main material would be cardboard which should be easy to get. Anything else the students would have to supply such as glue paper clips or any other material they might need for attaching things. I would give them a deadline on when their projects would have to be done and then have them present their project to the class. You could even have judges come and judge the best project with the winner getting a prize.

Or you could have students chose one of the projects already entered and have them try to make one of them. Students would follow the directions given and see if their project turns out like the original one. This is a great exercise for reading and following directions.

What would you make with cardboard? Please share.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Fairy Tales are Becoming Extinct

I remember growing up and hearing tons of fairy tales. My parents read me these or gave me books that I could read on my own. Even in school, many of the stories that we learned to read were fairy tales.

When my husband and watched the movie Hook with Robin Williams, he was a little lost because he didn’t even know the story about Peter Pan. Just recently we watched the movie Peter Pan and he liked it better than Hook because it made more sense. I began to run down the list of all the fairy tales I remember and tried to see if he would recognize them but he hardly knew any of them. This made me think back about my own teaching career and how many times I thought students had contact with fairy tales. It shocked me to realize how little there was.

Now it seems like we are getting back to fairy tale times with the TV shows Grimm and Once Upon a Time. When we watch an episode, my husband asks me which fairy tale is being referenced. Then I have to give him a recap of the fairy tale as I remember it.

I wonder if society has realized that children need fairy tales. Pretend and make believe are important in a child’s development. Those were happy times for me and bring back many good memories.

Maybe we need to reintroduce them more in our curriculum. They are wonderful ways to teach reading. Many of the fairy tales even have great moral lessons to learn.

Do you use fairy tales in the classroom? Which ones do you use and why? Please share.

Image: 'Grimm's Fairy Tales'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45097561@N00/2483997193

My Special Super Power

In Super Powers from So You Want To Teach?, Joel asks,

“ if you had one super power, what would it be? How would you use it? Discuss in the comments…”

If I could only have one super power, I would want it to be able to fly like superman.

I love to travel so I would be able to see the world and go anywhere I wanted to go. I wouldn’t have to worry about paying for my luggage on a plane or going through security or worrying about my plane crashing.

I would be able to visit relatives whenever I wanted to because time would not even be an issue.

I could enjoy hiking because I would know that I could go as far as I want and if I got tired, I could just fly back. If someone got hurt, I would be able to fly them home or to a hospital. We wouldn’t have to worry about a shuttle and could do so many more one way hikes.

If we went tubing in the river, I would be able to fly to the beginning and float back to my car.

I would save on gas by not having to worry about using the car.

I would also be able to bring my students on field trips to anywhere in the world and they wouldn’t have to worry about the cost.

I just hope that I wouldn’t be scared of heights…

Posted on the Successful Teaching Blog by loonyhiker (successfulteaching at gmail dot com).

Original image: 'Flying High....'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/66164549@N00/2334005733 by: Keven Law

Using Your Imagination

In Is that a hat? from 21st C Literacy Ave Home by vanhookc, the author states: “This is how creative thinking works. When one looks at things freely and imaginatively, no telling what can be created. So seeing a brown hat, in many shades of brown, with a grey band makes a fun thought. Or could there be a hint of another hat within. What was an ugly rock in the road is now something much more beautiful and worth pondering…Creative classroom activities work in the same manner. Imagination within study and play is stimulating and brings forth success, new ideas, and perhaps even a hope for a better world.”

I remember when I first started teaching; I used a lot more imaginative strategies back then than I do now. For awhile there was a giant push to get away from encouraging students to use their imagination. I work in a very conservative state where many believed that using the imagination was wrong.

When I was growing up we used our imagination a lot with huge refrigerator or washing machine boxes. We made buildings and created towns so we used our imagination tremendously without spending any money. I had a basic Lego set that I created my own things and there were no directions or pictures to build something specific. One day I could create cars with special powers or furniture for a miniature house. Things could be whatever I wanted it to be. An old discarded rug could be a magic carpet that could take you anywhere your mind wanted to go. We used to dress up and pretend to be lots of different characters and really developed social skills.

Now it seems like children watch a lot of TV and lots of toys are marketed on these TV shows that children watch. Lego now come in sets that build something specific. I don’t see a lot of teachers encouraging students to use their imaginations because they are so concerned with increasing test scores. Students are taught to make certain things or expected to arrive at certain outcomes.

I feel that developing a child’s imagination will help problem solving as well as critical thinking skills. Successful students are the ones who know how to think outside the box. I think this will also build collaborative skills among the students. Here are some suggestions to encourage students to use their imagination. Students could write, draw pictures, or make a video of any of their answers.

1. If you had a magic carpet, tell where you would go and why.
2. If you could be any occupation (fireman, teacher, astronaut, etc.), what would you be and why?
3. Give students a group of objects and tell them to create something new. Then present it to the class and tell what its function is.
4. If students could have any super power, what would it be? What could they do?
5. If you had a billion dollars, what would you do with it?
6. If you were President of the US (or head of whatever country you live in), what would you want to do to help the country?
7. If you were stranded on an island with no electric power, what 10 things would you want to have stranded with you and why?
8. If you could be any animal, what would you want to be and why?

Do you feel that imagination is important in the classroom? If so, what kinds of things do you do in the classroom to stimulate a student’s imagination?

Original image: 'magic carpet' http://www.flickr.com/photos/68848647@N00/2157471844 by: Rod McLatchy