From: rdshydur@MIT.EDU
Message-Id: <9312242203.AA14395@carbonara.MIT.EDU>
To: espadmin@MIT.EDU
Cc: espeople@MIT.EDU
Subject: kids' take-apart at e-club annual, sat 15 jan 4pm onward ...
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 93 17:03:33 EST


... maybe _noon_ onward depending upon how this year's party evolves.

brief review for those who missed last year's multi-purpose party:

	150 members of the mit community, including alum families,
	kids and friends, came through the combined mit e-club 5th-
  	birthday-and-networking party, which included mixing-it-up
	among kids, parents, teachers and mit students interested in
	working to help kids understand technologies by "guided
	dis-assembly" and reverse-thinking-about what-things-do-and-
	how (useful for numerous parents and k-12 teachers btw)
	and how the original designers may have thought, and why;
	(nn-thinkers' comments to me by e-mail please).

this year JOOST BONSEN, course 6 '92, e-club co-director and chair of 
the 5th annual mit $10k student competition, is designing and organising
this annual event, which will again be held in morse hall.

joost has a number of ideas for hands-on computer-aided, graphics,
simulation and educational gaming project demos for all ages, but
i'm only offering a small part related to k-12'ers below.

please contact joost directly for details on the bigger-picture
at <jpbonsen@athena.mit.edu> or leave him voice mail on x3-2000,
or on x8-5084 or call him at home on 864-4039 in cambridge.

my own draft thinking-out-loud follows:

all kids' activities, including-but-not-limited-to live acoustic music and
story telling, computer aided gaming and simulations, board games,
robotics, computer graphics, networked gaming (and on-line internet
navigation-and-information-resources-discovery tutorials, with "field
trips" for kids and teachers to the private athena teaching classroom
in the basement of building 14, a mere three-minute-walk from morse hall,
unless we succeed in getting athena drops into morse for the day :-))
and of course the long-standing take-apart party (based on two decades
of thursday night sessions in a big-old-cambridge-house in which 
numerous of us did some considerable "growing up" in the hands-on sense)
take place in morse hall.

this iap my participation will be representative of my humble and
somewhat infrequent offerings of seminars on the subject of k-12
education, from my particular perspective, which includes that of
being a parent of four kids (m-9, f-8, m-7- and f-4++, for those of
you who have not met them) who truly enjoy a well-guided canabalisation,
uh, i mean take-apart, of some interesting technologies from time-
to-time, as well as hacking on athena and the internet, and 
new ideas and technologies for home schooling and distance learning.

i am also inviting the h.s. kids from north attleboro, massachusetts,
with whom some of us have been slowly working to develop a non-
profit kids' sci-tech center, the joint idea of on-leave sixth grade
science teacher karen cella and recently retired superintendent
of n. attleboro schools bill kelly, who have formed the corporation,
got the land and are doing ongoing grant writing and fundraising.

(you can ask me for more about this project by e-mail too;  additional
participation is certainly welcome and crucial, as always).

so, kind esp'ers and friends, if you're interested in designing
and offering some component of this year's multi-purpose party please
get in touch with joost bonsen, or if you're interests are in
some more specific k-12 area, please send me e-mail, or better
yet, just cc your offers, thoughts and comments to both of us.

thanks, and have a happy holiday break and a safe new year!

see you during iap!

	- richard shyduroff, co-founder, co-director, the mit e-club
	  humble esp seminar director, 
	  hssp and splash teacher,
	  and other tasks on-demand ...

	  <rdshydur@athena.mit.edu>
	  e15-443,  x3-2000, h: 864-4039

	  joost p. bonsen '92
	  <jpbonsen@athena.mit.edu>
	  x3-2000, x8-5084, h: 864-4039
.