As we have come to expect, Maker Faire this past weekend was a feast for the inventive, the curious. I think we can now say without fear of contradiction that “Makers” are not merely a sub-category of geekdom, but a … Continue reading
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Yesterday’s Editorial Observer column of the New York Times carried an interesting and through-provoking piece by Verlyn Klinkenborg on “Some Thoughts on the Lost Art of Reading Aloud.” In it Klinkenborg compares the growing popularity of audio books with the … Continue reading
A typical binocular spotting scope, soon to become a nifty telephoto lens. If you are visiting some open space district or county or state park where public telescopes like the one shown in the photo on the left. You might … Continue reading
A couple of weeks ago the New York Times ran an opinion piece by Virginia Heffernan entitled “Let Them Eat Tweets: Why Twitter is a Trap“. This article was, in turn, a response to a presentation by author and idea … Continue reading
Note: I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the role of mentors in one’s educational development and remembered the following essay I wrote for the Virtual Conference in Informal Science Education, sponsored by the Society for Amateur Scientists in … Continue reading
Amazon’s second generation Kindle, the D00511. Recent months have seen an increase of posts and news items on the coming eBook revolution. This way of delivering books has been a bit slower to catch on than proponents had hoped. The … Continue reading
This past weekend, my spouse and I recently had the pleasure of hearing the Bay Choral Guild in a concert of music by French composers. If you haven’t had the chance to listen to the Bay Choral Guild, you’re missing … Continue reading
A view from the balcony of the Exploratorium on Pi Day. Photo by the author. Last Saturday we accompanied some friends of ours on a trip to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Many, many years ago the science show Nova … Continue reading
Elsewhere I have written about the power of projects. There is no educational experience that quite matches making an example of what you are studying, or even a model of it. But the experience of building or making something goes … Continue reading
Every age has its cadre of doom-sayers, partly because every age has its own brand of crisis that might look like the End of Days has come. The current recession (or proto-Depression, if you will), is prompting a lot of … Continue reading