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How to Fix a Monarch Butterfly's Wing (and Other Random Tales)

October 7, 2007 By Will Richardson

A couple of stories from the road…

In Chatham, NY, some 4th graders found an injured Monarch butterfly and brought it to class the next day. Seems that it was unable to fly because its wing had been damaged. When they saw their teacher, they showed it to her and said “We want to fix it! We want to make it fly again!” The teacher was dubious that such a repair could happen and told the students so. But they quickly responded that it was indeed possible, and they had pulled up the YouTube video to prove it. Pretty cool…

Since the little “2.5 Cubs Fans in a Bar” UStream episode from last Wednesday, I’ve had two occasions to tell the story of how in this world, we can set up our computers in a brewery with wifi and within minutes be broadcasting live and interacting with an audience from literally around the globe. And on both occasions, from my presenters’ viewpoint, I could see dozens of people turn to the people next to them, stare at them for a moment, and begin to shake their heads in that “omg” sort of way. Fun moments.

“Bag it? Borrow it? or Buy it?” That’s how my friend Warren Buckleitner asks his “Serious Games Testers” to rate the games that he lets them play with at the Mediatech community technology center that he started in our little town here in NJ. For those of you who saw the live stream from there yesterday, first, my apologies for all of the technical difficulties (and for not recording it.) But there were enough interesting responses from kids to make it worth it in the end, I think. I hope to be back there next week to do some more “interviewing” and I hope to be better set up at that point. But gaming is something that I just haven’t really gotten in to and I’m realizing I have this incredible raw resource of kids that I can tap into to learn. Just like fixing Monarch’s wings, there is much to be learned from children.

Technorati Tags: learning, education

Filed Under: On My Mind

Comments

  1. stephen fink says

    October 7, 2007 at 7:51 pm

    The butterfly story is a great metaphor. Do you have the source for the story?

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