Directions for Book Blogging

Welcome to our summer book blog! Unlike most blogs that have one blogger- everyone gets to blog about the book, To Engineer is Human, and share ideas about K-12 engineering education and the "human side" of engineering. To reply to a post, click on Comments at the bottom of the post. To start a new post, click on New Post at the top right. However, to start a new post you have to have a Google account. If you don't want to register on Google, you can send me the text for your post and a title, and I will post it for you.

Who do we have on the blog? Our book blog consists of 16 high school teachers, 1 middle school teacher, 7 elementary teachers, 4 faculty or engineering students from the University of Maine, 3 MMSA staff, and 2 DOE staff. We have a diverse and well-rounded book group which should lead to some interesting conversations. One thing to remember- the most recent post is always at the top of the blog. If you haven't been on for awhile, scroll down and work backwards.

If you start a new post you also have the option of adding photos or other graphics as well as making a hyperlink. Play around with it a bit to get to know how it works. Try a test post- you can always delete it afterwards. Also, you will notice we will build a collection of links listed on the right. Since only the person (Page) with the Google account can add these, if you have any you would like to share, just send them to me at pagekeeley@gmail.com and I will post them for you. This is the first time we have ever tried this as a blog, so we're all getting our feet wet. Don't hesitate to wade right in!

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Crystal Palace

As I read I had to remind myself that the design and construction took place in the 1800's. That was amazing.  I researched the Crystal Palace and it was beautiful. To think that the engineers were so innovative and reached out in so many new directions even when so many doubted them. The connection to the classroom for me would again be to provide opportunities for the children to be daring and ambitious so that they can take their learning in new directions.
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1 comment:

  1. Judy KaberJuly 28, 2012 at 7:43 AM

    It was interesting reading about the Crystal Palace and as I read about it, I realized that I had also read about it previously. I've tried to remember where this was and I think the most likely candidate was in "The Devil in the White City."

    http://www.amazon.com/Devil-White-City-Madness-Changed/dp/0375725601/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343486042&sr=1-1&keywords=devil+white+city

    If you haven't read this, I strongly recommend it! A lot about engineering in this book, which includes the construction of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.

    In thinking about the Crystal Palace, one thing that amazed me was that this building enclosed 19 acres. Nineteen acres! Wow! That's huge. I also liked the way Paxton used a design in nature (the water lily) for his model.

    In thinking about how this applies to my teaching, what impressed me was that the motivation for this imaginative leap in engineering was motivated by the upcoming Great Exhibition (or World's Fair) of 1851. I think it's important to give our students a similar motivation by providing a potential audience. A school, or even district, engineering fair would be a great motivating factor. I'm thinking along the lines of displaying accomplishments rather than as a competition. What do you think?

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