Paul Allison's Blog (15)

In 3010, maybe they will remember that we started a garden in the Southeast corner (bottom left in this photograph) of the Kissena Corridor Park Gardens. They will have a big celebration to mark the 100th year of gardening there.

Take a look at our videos from the first weeks of this effort:…



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No matter what crisis hits NYC the mass transit system will probably shut down. One of the memories I have from 9/11 is that of people walking everywhere. No matter what the crisis, it will stop mass transit. To be resilient, we need to learn to get places without subways and buses and cars. We need a system of bikes and walking paths and other alternatives.

Here's a map of my daily commute via bike. It may seem a little crazy, and maybe it is just a coincidence of history, but I've been biking or running to and from work ever since 2002. I started running right after 9/11, slowly increasing my distance until I was able to bike or run quickly enough to… Continue

Where will you be when Earth Day starts at Zero Hour - Greenwich Mean Time (also known as 9 p.m Eastern / 6 p.m. Pacific USA) ?



We'll be listening to the 2010 Keynote Earthcast speaker, Jason Czarneki at http://earthbridges.net/live.…

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It could be any weekend morning. Everybody is gathered in the park, planting, tending, or harvesting from the community gardens. We are kicking soccer balls, riding bikes, and hitting baseballs, and with each play, a bit of electricity is gathered into thin, large capacity batteries. We take these batteries and put them into lights that allow us to continue playing, planting, and singing late into the night.

I would like to invent a power generator that would collect into an electric battery some of the energy produced while riding a bike. It would have to be extremely light-weight, easy to attach to the back tire, and aerodynamic. There are a couple of places to start with this idea.



Look closely at this image. This solution has a stationary bike.







The Pedal Power Generator is almost what I'm envisioning. I would love to… Continue

Robin is playing Evoke, and on this podcast he tells us why. Robin is in Paul Allison's English class. He's a tenth Grader at the East-West School for International Studies, and on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Robin talks about his experiences in the first couple of weeks of playing… Continue

In order to imagine a meal from the future, I'm going to refer to a list presented by two NYC environmental activists, Anhthu Hoang and James Suvudhi, from WE ACT. In the March 24, 2010 Green Times (NYC), they describe their "Top 10" ways for NYC "to reduce GHGs [Green House Gases] and improve the…

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• I'm inspired by this challenge because it's a small, but important way to suggest to my students how they can take more ownership of their space on Evoke! -- and that's a
  
  lesson they can take into other social networking spaces online.
  
  http://www.urgentevoke.com/forum/topics/challenge-the-network-your…

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It's a small step, but we are making a proposal to the Community Board in which our school is located to plant a garden in the Community Gardens across the street from our school. I'm doing research into it, but I also have to get the proposal written. Here's what I'm studying now:

A Guide to Resources.



I'm also reading, and re-reading Jonathan B. Wallach's and Mariano J.… Continue

Questions for our gardening project

1. What's good to grow in Flushing, Queens?
2. How deep does the soil need to be? How deep is our plot of land?
3. How long does each item that we want to plant take to grow?
4. How do we control pests?
5. What tools do we need? Who can we get them from and where?

Possible sources for answers

We can interview or do research with or…

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When I get Alchemy's call, I'll be working with students at the East-West School of International Studies in Flushing, Queens, where I will have been teaching for the past dozen years. I love this place, especially after the state gave us that waiver from testing, and we eliminated subject areas and age divisions between students. When the call comes in my students, ages 11 - 18, will be working on wall-sized multi-touch screens, the kind that Jeff… Continue

I spent my wh*** Saturday morning, today (3/13/2010) working with 5 of the

best educators I know. We're bringing gaming into the classroom. Once Suzie Boss pointed me to Jane McGonigal, I became a follower. So yeah, can I follow McGonigal for Act1 in Evoke? Why not? After all she says things like this:

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I'm learning more about what it means to be a social innovator right now, and in particular what I'm wondering about is: Must change always be rooted in what is known? I was doing the first Evoke mission this blog post was part of my learning for that mission. Both the quote from Dave Tait below and an early "secret" for becoming an effective social innovator ("Innovate on existing platforms.") had me feeling frustrated about the slow wheels of…

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