A world without math?! Say it ain’t so!
In the Morning
Posts tagged great ideas
Apr19
Feb11
![unconsumption:
While traveling in India, Adital Ela came across a chai vendor who sold his tea in small, clay cups that patrons could use and then simply toss on the ground when they were done. These cups didn’t create any waste, because it was earth returning to earth. This sparked a question for Ela: “How can products, like people, come from dust, and return to dust?”
[This set her on] a mission to make products out of compressed earth and agricultural waste. A self-proclaimed designer-gatherer, her title is as organic in nature as her found materials.
Ela’s first product for her line, Terra by Adital Ela, was a stool made from dirt heaps that construction sites had dumped in the forest. …
Making a Terra stool creates no pollution. It requires no energy and uses only local and organic materials. If a stool is no longer useful, the owner can simply leave it in the garden and let it deteriorate back into the earth. Or they can add water and mold it into another functional object.
(via Dust to dust: TED Fellow Adital Ela makes products from compressed dirt)](http://24.media.tumblr.com/83a5e8797bca805e02d71b82e02f2781/tumblr_mhp7n53t8n1qzv12bo1_500.jpg)
While traveling in India, Adital Ela came across a chai vendor who sold his tea in small, clay cups that patrons could use and then simply toss on the ground when they were done. These cups didn’t create any waste, because it was earth returning to earth. This sparked a question for Ela: “How can products, like people, come from dust, and return to dust?”
[This set her on] a mission to make products out of compressed earth and agricultural waste. A self-proclaimed designer-gatherer, her title is as organic in nature as her found materials.
Ela’s first product for her line, Terra by Adital Ela, was a stool made from dirt heaps that construction sites had dumped in the forest. …
Making a Terra stool creates no pollution. It requires no energy and uses only local and organic materials. If a stool is no longer useful, the owner can simply leave it in the garden and let it deteriorate back into the earth. Or they can add water and mold it into another functional object.
(via Dust to dust: TED Fellow Adital Ela makes products from compressed dirt)
Feb10
Why This 10-Year-Old Will End Up Running The World→
Jan23
“Nine years ago someone sent Bronx high school teacher Stephen Ritz a box of spring bulbs. “I didn’t know what to do with them, so I stuck them behind a radiator, and they got forced”—meaning they sprouted into bloom from the heat. That accidental sprout was the germ of an idea that has rocketed Ritz and his students into new lives of growing hundreds of thousands of pounds of fruit and vegetables, operating farmers’ markets in food deserts, learning science, improving their health, getting certified to build mobile urban farms and green roofs for A-list clients from Rockefeller Center to the Hamptons, earning a living wage, and transforming their neighborhood, all in the poorest congressional district in America.”
“The Green Bronx Machine Transforms Kids’ Lives with Vegetables,” Anya Kamenetz for Co.exist
Dec3
The Surprise Package Company
I’m having an inspired Monday. All because of a statement which was meant to a link to an article about a secret Santa. I liked this story better.
When my sister and I were little girls, we created The Surprise Package Company. We would make handmade gifts, wrap them and write an anonymous note that said from The Surprise Package Company. We would leave the gifts on doorsteps, ring the bell and run. I would like to rekindle that excitement and think of an act of kindness, however small, to share.
From Teachers Uncovering Greatness
I don’t know the name of the person whose story this is, but a quick search led me to a different surprise package story (where the photo above came from).
Nov27
Say goodbye to your fears
Schools, colleges, workplaces as well, would do better with a wall like this one from the 2006 Burning Man Festival.
Photo by Gabe Kircheimer. I saw this on a link from a link from a blogger I read. Blogger Clarence Ceniza (the second link) shares an online version of this wall as well.
To the artist/designer who created this installation, great job!
Oct3
I would add “awesome” to this list.
I subbed in this ninth grade classroom last week. I LOVE the teacher’s idea of dead words! Dead words = overused words that are not descriptive enough. (The teacher also adds some incorrectly spelled words.)
According to my seventh grade English teacher, I would also like to add very to the dead word list.
Sep20
Pinterest bulletin board to “pin” pictures of math found in everyday life
Sep17
Sep3
Start the year with an empty jar and fill it with notes about good things that happen. On New Years Eve, empty it and see what awesome stuff happened that year.
(via kmartqt)
Aug16
(Source: educationcreateshumanimagination)
Jul4
Univers Revolved
Letters are an inherently two-dimensional affair. They can convey deep meaning, but are confined to the flat surface of the page. Ji Lee, a designer now with Facebook, was playing around with some 3-D software and noticed that he could rotate litters around their central axis. All of a sudden, they became toy-like shapes.
He was able to use the letter as a physical object, to break away from the linear and build visual representations made from the actual letters of the word.
For starters, can you figure out the words in the lower left? If you feel like that’s too easy, Lee created the world in the bottom right for you to explore (Hint: Try to find “ROCKET”).
See more at Univers Revolved, test your 3-D knowledge, and check out the book on Amazon.
Jul3
OUT OF THE BOX
After school teachers lessons.
We have started a new project in the school working with the student council. Teachers at the school who wanted to learn more about art have been invited to after school teachers lessons where they can learn about different art techniques. The students from the school have been teaching the teachers and the role reversal has worked very well. Me and the other artists working on the project are there for support at all times - but the students don’t seem to need it! They have been fantastic and it has really brought some of the students out of their shell.
The students all said they had gained a lot of confidence in teaching their teachers and it seems to have given them a mutual respect for one and other: the students can see how hard it is to teach when people are talking over you etc and the teachers have really seen the most engaging ways to be taught.
Here the students are giving a lesson on textile art.
(via revolutionizeed)
Jun24
What a great idea! Might as well use facebook…
This would work in History as well: What would Lapu-lapu and Magellan post as their facebook status on the night before the Battle of Mactan?
(via classroomcollective)
Jun14
The best way to encourage reading? Give books to those who may not otherwise pick one up.
Florida Teen Starts ‘Giving Library’ for Homeless Kids
Fifteen-year-old Florida resident Lilli Leight wanted to help provide homeless kids in her community with access to books, so she created a “giving library” at a Miami homeless shelter. To staff the library, she formed a teen book club to encourage her classmates to volunteer. Her effort won her the National Book Foundation’s Innovations in Reading prize, which recognizes individuals and institutions for developing ways of instilling a lifelong love of reading.
photo via flickr:CC | a.saliga
