Mites Cubes
I’m not currently positioned to buy the preschool near Whittier, keeping it going but doing more school supply research and teaming up with schools above the preschool level, in Greater LA. Maybe you are. My sister works there. I’m basing my brand of science fiction in the real world, per usual.
People know I’m of the mixed use office tower school of thought, promoting gamer pods in place of cubicles on some floors, with dorms, not necessarily apartments, on other floors.
What distinguishes a dorm from an apartment?
A dorm is more like a hotel room in having a microwave and a few supplies, but the cafeterias are elsewhere in the building. Kitchens may be supplied at the floor level, with floors organizing group meals, per the curriculum we’re developing.
You may have seen about my Food Not Bombs background, and Gathering of Western Young Friends before that.
I think of my sister’s school because of her work in an educational supplies store, which in turn has me thinking of Math ‘n Stuff, Northgate, Seattle. A specialty curriculum store stocks the kinds of toys and kits I’ve been curating a few samples of, such as the Mites Cube, Zome, Lux, Tensegritoy, other Design Science Toys products.
DST is defunct, but the ideas, and its collected products, live on. Full disclosure: I worked with DST on Strange Attractors, the toy that was going to save the bacon. Yes, a real Toy Story.
The point of field testing new products, in the context of new lesson plans, is to get it down to a replicable format and segments, easily transmitted to other classrooms. We have the Lux Blox example. I’ve been tracking Accera and testing his company’s product, in the context of Martian Math. However my gigs have been infrequent, unable to keep up through the iterations.
C6XTY sits idle, much of it in landfills by now. As a one many show, I’m able to juggle only so many balls. Sam keeps a small exhibit space at the farm.
We may be overdue for a next math, as distinct from the New Math of the 1960s, and the New New Math that LAUSD has been revamping and/or fighting over. Remember what sparked New Math in the first place: a sense of falling behind in the aerospace sector.
The preschool I’m brainstorming about is private. The private sector has more freedom to innovate sometimes, depending on its management hierarchy.
I’ve been a critic of the “charter school” namespace as it can’t seem to make up its “mind” about too many key issues (is a charter school really public or really private?). We don’t have infinite time in which to our resolve our issues. Time to remap to new namespaces. I go back to my Pirate Party planks.
