School for Pirates

An adventure in alternative education with a ten year old boy

[schoolforpirates]

Take Your Kids Out To The Park -- And Leave Them There!

[thesunproject]

How To Build Your Sun Project Pinhole Camera:

Aaron, Jon and I put together this how-to video on building a pinhole solargraphy camera out of aluminum cans. We used beer cans because we like beer. You can use anything, really. It doesn’t have to be a can, just rigid and water and light-proof. (If you choose a thicker container or one that you can’t poke a needle through, cut out a larger hole and then tape in some aluminum foil to make your pinhole). Here’s some alternate directions on building a camera using an old film canister.

We certainly aren’t Martin Scorcese or anything, but hopefully this vidoeo will give you all you need to know to build your own camera. The solstice is only a week away, so grab some friends and get started! We want to get representation from around the world!

If you need help finding non-glossy black & white photo paper, call a local art or photo store. Here’s one online retailer and some different brands. It’s pretty cheap. You’ll want to make several cameras in case some don’t work or they get lost (it happens).

Thanks for reblogging and sharing this project with your friends. Let us know if you have any questions.

-Joe

[itsokaytobesmart]

Have you taken a look at my new science/art citizen science project? Give it a follow and join us! We want to track the sun using pinhole solargraphs from solstice to solstice. The resulting pictures are amazing.

Here’s a how-to video we put together on assembling a pinhole solargraphy camera from household items. We chose beer cans. Just because.

[itsokaytobesmart]

More science/photo experiments from Caleb Charland. Couldn’t resist.

This is a simple battery made from a stack of coins and saltwater-soaked paper. A grade-school science experiment, but a photo that captures the simple “wow” feeling of an experiment, don’t you think?

FastCo.Design has a gallery that you won’t want to miss. He is one of the most creative capturers of curiosities working out there, if you ask me. And no Photoshop on any of them!

(via Co.Design)

[itsokaytobesmart]

A collection by Edward Purcell of incredibly interesting, incredibly insightful and incredibly educational problems worked out as if on the back of an envelope.

Some favorites:

A baseball thrown from a spacecraft

Change in the length of a day due to two cars

The entropy of adding cream to your coffee

The odds of breathing in a particular molecule in the air

The number of electrons in one raindrop

Printing the Library of Congress on a postcard

[reiddossinger]

This stupid, snobby, pointless (unless you consider desperate trolling for visits a point) article from a couple days ago has really been sticking in my craw. “Please don’t learn to code” could be alternately titled “why people hate developers”. The insecurity and elitism oozes out of every word here. “My craft is far too complex and precious for someone as stupid as you to learn it,” it says. Let’s just be clear that there’s a HUGE difference between saying that everyone should be a developer and everyone should learn to code. The former is a dumb statement and no one would ever say it. The latter is simply that the concept of coding has become an extremely important knowledge to understanding the world around us. I’ve spent years of working around people who work on the web for a living who still think that writing programs and web code is like writing an email in another language: that you just kind of move things around on a page. It’s not until you see how it functions—even basically—and have gone through troubleshooting even something as simple as an HTML table that you start to get different writing code is from writing words, and start to appreciate the knowledge that goes into it. Just as a tiny percentage of people who learn math go on to be mathematicians or engineers, teaching people basic code doesn’t mean they’ll all go off to be developers, and we don’t need them to. But we do need more people to stop segregating coding as something that only “techie” people do and they can remain willfully ignorant of.

Reid Dossinger: Please learn to code 

I don't actually think the piece on Coding Horror is as bad as Reid seems to think it is.  

I do think that the "real coders" v. "people doing Codeyear" thing is going to end up looking exactly like "bloggers v. journalists," only much, much smaller.  

Steve Meyers rounds up the reaction from a journalism point of view, tackling the newly-perennial "should journalists learn to code" question  (My answer?  No, absolutely not.  Only if you want to have fun and enjoy some shred of job security.  Otherwise, carry on with your badass narrative journalism, friend).

[bbbrad]

Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories 

Visual nerdery from Kurt Vonnegut? You’re welcome.

[offto]

Algorithms & Data Structures (37) Artificial Intelligence (21) Concurrent, Parallel & Distributed Systems (18) Databases & Information Retrieval (25) Information & Coding Theory (22) Information Science (12) Modeling & Simulation (15) Programming Language Theory (28) Security & Cryptography (23) Software Engineering (25) Theory of Computation (8)

[schoolforpirates]

Reciprocal frame bridge - 4 verticies by ganast on Flickr.

This would be a fun thing to do at School for Pirates.

[schoolforpirates]

"But nobody believes it's my idea."

My kid came home from school a month ago, upset about bullies.  He's not the target of bullies -- but his best friend is.  He came up with an idea, "Bully Busters," and we mocked up some pins for it.  He went to school and talked about the idea a little bit.

It's a month later, and he comes home from school -- with one of what I assume are a pretty large number of pins -- with a sherriff's star and a banner across it reading "Bully Busters."  

I was pretty impressed.  Apparently they liked his idea so much they spent enough money on it to get one for every kid and staffer in the whole school.  This isn't a school with tons of money, so any out-of-the-ordinary expenditure is unusual.  

I congratulated him, but later on I saw him looking kind of bummed out.  I asked him why.  "Nobody believes it's my idea," he says.  "We have proof, though," I say.  "Remember? You put up a blog entry more than a month ago, way before anybody had buttons."  "Yes!" he said, punching the air in victory.  

I printed out a copy for him but I told him that the success of the idea is probably more important than getting credit for it.  

I also told him about Gandhi's saying: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."  

I guess he's in the "First they ignore you" stage.  

[schoolforpirates]

[schoolforpirates]

I guess this “lack of lectures” is pretty cool as long as you’re never formally required to demonstrate that you’ve learned anything whatsoever. *Of course, once you abandon the need to demonstrate any formal understanding of the nature of microbiology — hey! Have at it! A vast new dawn beckons! The hardware’s dead cheap now, and it’s not like anybody can stop you.

Bruce Sterling, on an "all lab, no lectures" biology curriculum being published by O'Reilly.  Wonder if I should look at it?

[chrislkeller-deactivated2016111]

Looking for a Fusion Tables project?

RT @wjchat: Here’s a great hack to see the Knight #NewsChallenge submissions: bit.ly/GDSOSR #wjchat

— Knight Foundation (@knightfdn) March 22, 2012

RT @ wjchat : Here’s a great hack to see the Knight #NewsChallenge submissions: bit.ly/GDSOSR #wjchat — Knight Foundation (@knightfdn) March 22, 2012 … - http://www.chrislkeller.com/looking-for-a-fusion-tables-project

[schoolforpirates]

Oh, we have to do this!!!

[archiemcphee]

[schoolforpirates]

OMG!  Weapons of Mass Instruction!!

Raul Lemesoff converted a 1979 Ford Falcon into an awesome open-air tank bookmobile. He drives around Buenos Aires offering books to anyone who wants them. The Weapon of Mass Instruction, as Lemesoff calls it, promotes “peace through literature.” Lemesoff has already driven it to remote regions of Argentina and hopes to expand the project into other nations.

Reading is awesome and so is this bookmobile tank!

[via Neatorama].

[schoolforpirates]

Gap year...before middle school

Sometimes when people ask me why I'm thinking about taking my ten year old out of conventional schooling for a year, I answer this way: 

You know how some people take a "gap year" between high school and college?

Well this is the same thing.  Except it's a gap year between grammar school and middle school.  

Because really, does anybody want to hurry up and get to middle school?  Many people, me included, remember it as a cross between the Land of Sauron and Lord of the Flies.  I do feel a little bad writing that, because I know how many dedicated teachers there are teaching in middle and junior high schools.  

Right now, I'm researching curricula, and putting together a schedule of hands-on learning adventures, as well as instructors (since I will continue to work).   But I'm still looking at all the options, including our local public school and private schools.  

[independently-my-own]

“If you’ve been looking for a crash course in basic logic — or just want to explain to a friend exactly what a logical fallacy is — turn your attention to these simple, easy-to-understand videos, which lay out the basics of critical thinking.”

[schoolforpirates]

Bullying at my school

At my school, some kids are different, and they're being bullied for that reason -- I hate it and it has to stop.  

My best friend is bullied for being different.  I'm not treated differently, but my friends deserve the same respect.  (Although sometimes kids call me The Human Calculator and that's mean!)

I am making some buttons and making a list of kids at school I can give them to. I saw a video on Brainpop that said that one good way to stop bullying is to get into a big group. I want to create a group of kids at school who are anti-bullying.  

The buttons say I am a Bully Buster.  If I see something, I say something.  

-- Rowan