Day: February 11, 2008

Chain Reaction part 2 – Rube Goldberg machines

One of my very first blog posts was about a Chain Reaction project which I carry out with Transition Year students.

The technical term for these things is actually Rube Goldberg machines.
From Wikipedia:

A Rube Goldberg machine is an incredibly overengineered apparatus that performs a very simple task in very indirect and convoluted fashion (thus absurdly violating the principle of parsimony).

I like this too (also from wikipedia)

It has been argued that fissioning uranium to boil water under tremendous temperature and pressure renders nuclear power a Rube Goldberg machine.

One of these was featured recently on youtube:

I continue to believe that it’s a wonderful way for students to carry out project work, and I would certainly have no problem employing this guy as an engineer ahead of someone with similar qualilfications but higher grades.

There is even a Japanese Championship involving these contraptions.

Apparently learning can be fun after all . . .

We are all monkeys

This is a wonderful four minute clip which trys to dispel the myth that humans and monkeys are completely different.

Or that we are supposed to be the clever ones.

I play this regularly at the end of a class. It doesn’t seem to have the same affect on students as it did on me when I first saw it.

But I still keep playing it. It’s one of my favourites.

CESI conference 2008

I attended the CESI conference over the weekend.
It was a wonderful occasion. I hope to blog about the various presentations over the next week or so. I have been to plenty of conferences in the past but can never one where
there was such an amount of energy coming from the floor. I think it was helped greatly by the fact that there were so many presentations, and because nearly all of these were ‘regular’ teachers themselves they tended to  stay for both days so there was plenty of opportunity to ask questions during coffee breaks.

The other eye-opener was the number of Primary school teachers. They probably out-numbered us two or three to one. This was partly explained by the fact that at primary level you have more time and opportunity to engage with ICT projects, and the class doesn’t move on after 40 minutes, but still . . .???

The most memorable presentation was from Tommy Maher about what his school got up to over the last year or two.
Unbelievable stuff.

For another day.