PBL: I Come to Understanding by Making

Matthew ShlianWatch this short video as Matthew Shlian talks about himself, how he learns and the role that curiosity plays in his work. Then think about the kind of classroom that would foster Matt and learners like him. Matt states: 

I failed at math. I failed at Algebra. But I can understand things if I can see them. And I can actually understand them better if I can hold them in my hand. … A lot of my work is about curiosity. I come to understanding by making. If I can see what something’s going to look like when it’s finished, then I don’t want to make it. That would be like filling out a form.

Ghostly International presents Matthew Shlian from Ghostly International on Vimeo.

If I can see what something’s going to look like when it’s finished, then I don’t want to make it. That would be like filling out a form.

As the video description notes:
Matthew Shlian works within the increasingly nebulous space between art and engineering. As a paper engineer, Shlian’s work is rooted in print media, book arts, and commercial design, though he frequently finds himself collaborating with a cadre of scientists and researchers who are just now recognizing the practical connections between paper folding and folding at microscopic and nanoscopic scales.

An MFA graduate of Cranbrook Academy, Shlian divides his time between teaching at the University of Michigan, mocking up new-fangled packaging options for billion dollar blue-chips, and creating some of the most inspiring paper art around.

Ghostly teamed up with the Ann Arbor-based photographer and videographer Jakob Skogheim, to produce this feature short, which combines interview and time-lapse footage of Shlian creating several stunning new pieces. 

Learn, Share and Win an Apple TV at edcampPDX

edcamppdxCalling all educators! Here’s your excuse to come to Portland Ore and have a great time while expanding your PLN. I’ll be there with a very talented group of Pacific NorthWest educators who are interested in sharing ideas for creating engaging classrooms. You’ll have a good time and leave with loads of great ideas for the classroom. 

Creative educators + free lunch + shot at an Apple TV + hanging out in Portland = best PD around

Join us for EdCampPDX, the FREE, unconference-style, collaborative, educator-driven, customized professional development day. Enjoy a day of sharing ideas, networking, and collaborating with your peers – teachers, administrators, pre-service teachers and anyone interested in teaching and learning.
Lunch is provided by an awesome sponsor. And yes, there are door prizes, including an Apple TV. 

Wednesday, August 7, 2013
9:00 to 4:00
at LaSalle Catholic College Prep
11999 SE Fuller Rd.
Portland, OR 97222 MAP

Photos from previous edcampPDX
Follow Twitter updates at #edcampPDX
Join the edcampPDX Google Group to network and keep up with our news and notes.

Here’s a few of the sessions we’ve got planned so far – but it’s an edcamp, so who know what else we’ll add when we get there?

  • Using apps such as Minecraft (coming soon to an ORVSD server near you!)
  • The new Google Maps, and Notablity in the classroom
  • Getting started with iBooks Author – bring your iPad and I’ll give you a copy of Recruiting Rosie – my latest iBook
  • Using iPads and Chromebooks with Vernier probeware
  • How to make a living in education outside the classroom
  • Thinking differently about education via SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition)
  • PBL lesson planning hack-a-thon
  • Creating a professional learning plan incorporating SAMR and CRCD frameworks
  • Speed-Geeking App share
  • What are the best tools to create infographics in the classroom? How do you incorporate them into the classroom?
  • How do we use high tech and no-tech strategies to keep our students engaged and self-selecting reading material? Discussion open to all grade levels.
  • EdmodoCon hookup
  • Learn how to use Celly
  • Beginning with Tech in Your Classroom
  • Your PLN is Yours!
  • The STEM Lab of the Future
  • Scoot and Doodle collaboration tool

Invite your friends, colleagues, and administrators by simply forwarding this email!
Sign up here and while you’re there, please add your session ideas on the session page.

Invite your friends, colleagues, and administrators! Hope to see you there!

Cool boots from November’s edcampPDX. But it’s summer, I’ll bet we’ll all be in flip-flops.

Cool boot optional

Work, Duty, Glamour: How They Sold War Work To Housewives

Rosie the Riveter is an American icon that symbolizes the hardworking and self-sacrificing women who left the household and filled the war jobs that turned America into WWII’s “Arsenal of Democracy.” Most people’s visualization of Rosie is based on J. Howard Miller’s poster “We Can Do It!” Lacking copyright protection, it’s everywhere from history textbooks to coffee mugs. (I confess to using it for my cover below) But it’s a much bigger story than Rosie. The era is rich with public domain films, posters, pamphlets and cartoons that provide the contemporary reader with insights into the gender, race and class stereotypes of the period.

recruiting rosie cover

I’ve been exploring Homefront America WWII in three media-rich, multi-touch iBooks – Why We Fight, Workers Win the War, and now Recruiting Rosie: The Sales Pitch That Won a War. (All are free at iTunes.)

The Homefront series use WWII-era media to document the US government’s propaganda efforts. “Recruiting Rosie” focusses on how Washington’s media campaign targeted women – first coaxed them out of their homes to fill the jobs left vacant by men going off to war – then reversed course four years later to convince women to give up their factory jobs to returning servicemen and return to the roles of wife and mother in the home.

While there was great diversity in the women who did war work, the media campaign almost exclusively featured white women.

Women have always been employed in the workplace, especially minority and lower-income women. They needed little encouragement to move to higher paying war jobs. But the demand for wartime labor was so great that the US government launched a propaganda campaign to recruit previously unemployed middle class women into the workplace.

I'm proud... my husband wants me to do my part2

There was little reference to women working to make money – not traditionally an acceptable role for married middle class woman. Instead, propaganda was filled with themes of patriotism, sacrifice and duty that depicted war work and military service as fashionable and glamorous.

The documents in “Recruiting Rosie” explore the many facets of the campaign to mobilize women in WWII. For example, an often neglected part of the story is the extensive effort that was put into convincing factory owners and male co-workers that women could make efficient employees. As a foreman at an aircraft factory noted, “I honestly don’t believe any of us expected them [the women workers] to last the day.”

“Women scare me … at least they do in a factory.”

“Supervising Women Workers” a 1944 film designed to train plant managers opens with a male foreman telling his boss “women scare me … at least they do in a factory.” His boss replies “women are not naturally familiar with mechanical principles or machines .. you have to separate every job into simple operating steps.”

women want to get it over-4

A 1943 article called “Eleven Tips on Getting More Efficiency Out of Women Employees” includes:

Tip #1. Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they’re less likely to be flirtatious, they need the work or they wouldn’t be doing it, they still have the pep and interest to work hard and to deal with the public efficiently.

Tip #3. General experience indicates that “husky” girls — those who are just a little on the heavy side — are more even-tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.

WWII-era middle class couples needed to be convinced that it was acceptable and safe for women to take jobs outside the house and work in a factory. A well-coordinated sales campaign churned out films, new stories and posters that lauded former housewives who readily mastered new industrial tasks.

It's Your War TooWomen were also needed to fill the ranks of many service jobs on the homefront, as well as enlist in the military to replace men who were being moved to the war front. The glamour of travel and the chance to meet men reoccur as dominant themes. “Its Your War Too” a recruitment film for the Women’s Army Corps (WACs) spends much of the film proving that WACs are fun, feminine, and glamorous – they get to wear makeup, choose their own hairstyles, and travel the world – always with handsome male officers as escorts.

Free Bomber Trip to Berlin

Out of the Frying Pan Into the Firing Line

WWII required an enormous commitment of American resources and labor. Here at home, millions of families were called upon to make personal sacrifices and work harder to provide the resources needed to fight the war. Women were told to give up all luxuries and devote their energies to help win the war. “Recruiting Rosie” documents it all from asking women to volunteer on farms to a 1942 Minnie Mouse cartoon explaining how to recycle used cooking fats for armaments.

victory girl

With women stretched between the demands of the workplace and home, childcare emerged as critical issue. “Recruiting Rosie” includes a section detailing the growing fears that without parental supervision, WWII would spawn a generation of juvenile delinquents. As one report noted, “Mothers in large numbers are engaged in full-time employment and are therefore absent from the home the greater part of the day. Home life is greatly changed for many children today, and lack of consistent guidance and supervision from their parents gives them opportunities for activities that may lead to unacceptable behavior.”

“How well a man fights depends a little on how well you’ve done your part in the USO and how nearly ideal an American girl you are.”

“Recruiting Rosie” features a 1943 film that depicts youngsters smoking, kids hanging out in shady bars listening to the jukebox, and young women taking up with soldiers as “Victory Girls.” “How well a man fights depends a little on how well you’ve done your part in the USO and how nearly ideal an American girl you are.” Changing sexual roles and mores of the era are explored in variety of documents from soldier-crazy “khaki-wacky” girls to a 1943 etiquette guide for teenage girls serving as junior hostesses for troops relaxing at USOs which states, “How well a man fights depends a little on how well you’ve done your part in the USO and how nearly ideal an American girl you are.”

last chance marriage

War production demanded large-scale migrations to industrial centers. With a shutdown of non-military construction, housing was limited and expensive. The wartime challenges to families are well detailed in “Recruiting Rosie.” Men and women were torn between putting marriage off or hastily “tying the knot.”

This dynamic is captured in the 1944 US War Department pamphlet “Can War Marriages be made to Work?” (illustration at left)

Front_Cover

“Recruiting Rosie” concludes with the dramatic about-face as the war came to a close. The focus shifted to fears of unemployment for returning servicemen. A 1944 pamphlet entitled “Do You Want Your Wife to Work After the War?” opens with:

Will wives be only too glad to give up their strenuous jobs in war plants to return to the job of being homemakers? … If they must or prefer to stay at home again what will be done to make the tasks of homemaking more attractive? If a woman wants to keep on working after the war what will her husband’s attitude be? If there are no longer jobs enough for everyone should a married woman be allowed to work? Does she have as much right as her husband to try to find the work she wants?

The collection is designed to allow the student to “be the historian” as thought-provoking questions guide them through the archives while building their critical thinking / Common Core skills. The book also provides web access to the public domain content so they can remix the historic documents into their own projects.

how to interpret a poster

Document analysis guides are provided in the book. “Stop and Think” prompts accompany the documents and guide student in close reading to reflect on essential questions:

  1. How did WWII impact women and the American family? What opportunities and challenges did the war create for women?
  2. How did the US government craft its propaganda campaign to shape the attitudes of women, their husbands and employers?
  3. How do the documents and their WWII-era depictions of women reflect the historic time period?

PBL in Action: Students Write, Market and Publish

Where the Roses Smell the Best

Portland’s own Roosevelt High School will celebrate the culmination of a year of hard work from students and volunteers in the Writing and Publishing Center and its first publication with a month of readings throughout Portland. Student-led Unique Ink has published Where the Roses Smell the Best, a literary companion to Portland filled with short stories, vignettes, and poems about the places, people, and activities that make Portland unique.

The book includes work from Roosevelt students alongside local authors such as Brian Doyle, Kim Stafford, Steve Duin, Renee Mitchell and Paulann Petersen. Where the Roses Smell the Best is available for purchase at local bookstores and online at Powells.com and Annie Bloom’s Books.

  • The month of readings will kick off at Powell’s on Hawthorne on Thursday, July 11th at 7:30. Oregon State Poet Laureate Paulann Petersen and Renee Mitchell will be accompanied by featured authors reading their pieces from Where the Roses Smell the Best.
  • The Oregonian columnist and author Steve Duin will join authors and student writers at St. Johns Booksellers at 7:00 on Saturday, July 13th for the second reading.
  • On Wednesday, July 17th at 5:00 students, families, and community members will gather at Roosevelt High School for more readings and a celebration of Unique Ink’s first year.
  • The fourth reading, featuring poet Laura Winter and author Emma Oliver, will take place at 7:00 on Wednesday July 24th at Broadway Books.
  • The fifth and final reading, scheduled on Monday July 29th at 7:00 at Annie Bloom’s Books, will bring back Paulann Petersen as well as more student authors and author Sybilla Cook.

Unique Ink is a student-staffed publisher based out of Roosevelt High School’s Writing and Publishing Center that was established in 2012. It’s a great example of project-based learning in action. Volunteers at the center teach publishing to high school students to improve their skills in business, editing, and marketing. Through the center’s unique hands-on approach, students learn about the publishing industry by publishing and selling their own books. Proceeds from the sales of Where the Roses Smell the Best will help the Writing and Publishing Center stay self-sustaining and continue to be a valuable resource to the students at Roosevelt High School. 

Web Marketing team

David Foster Wallace on Water and the Value of Education

This is water

Sadly, the world lost David Foster Wallace, in 2008. Fortunately, his writings live on. Recently his thoughtful 2005 Kenyon College commencement address was given new life in “This is Water” a video by The Glossary.

Wallace concludes: It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over. This is water.

Read his full address here. Listen to his full address here.