The session began with a look at the trailer / titles to a 1951 hollywood film titled "The Day the earth Stood Still". This classic film sets the stage for the traditional view of UFOs and visitors from outer space. The music for this film was composed by noted film composer Bernard Herrmann, who introduced a new instrument, the theramin, to provide the eirie mood of the tense setting. (Note how easy it is to find relevant clips on YouTube.
Chris Rutkowski then took over and spent an hour exploring UFOs as a "teaching aid". He argued that teachers need to take advantage of topics with built in interest ... such as UFOs. He demonstrated how issues of scale can be demonstrated with such simple "teaching aids" as a poppy seed bagel, where the poppy seed and bagel can represent in scale the earth and the sun. Several demonstrations expanded this idea.
The demonstration also drove home the point that technology is more than computers. When we move towards new names such as ICT, something gets lost (a la McLuhan). In this case, simple "non projected materals" and "teaching aids" get thrown out as we attempt to move towards a high tech definition of educational technology.
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