A marshmallow world

Though not what Carl Sigman, Peter DeRose, Bing Crosby, or Dean Martin meant by the phrase, we created our own marshmallow world in class this morning. Graduate students in a multi-disciplinary course in Innovation and Creativity took The Marshmallow Challenge.  It was engaging, fun, and a good way to start a snowy, cold Monday.

The best educational experiences provide both the experience itself and a tool for later use.  Building a free-standing structure of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow (which must be on top) in 18 minutes is a quick way to illustrate the value of  prototyping, the importance of diverse skills, and the many marshmallows we encounter in whatever work we do. The students enjoyed the challenge and the winning team (all male) sent photos to their moms.

It's a marshmallow world in so many ways.

The winning tower at 28 3/8 inches.

Our childhood stories

The majority of the 35 graduate students who were asked to write about a children's book--a book which might hold lessons for their professional life--chose to write about their favorite book from childhood.  I'm not sure why that surprised me, but it did.  And I was equally surprised by how many of their selections are on my own list of favorite books:

• Encyclopedia Brown by Donald J. Sobol
• The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
• If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff
• If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss
• Curious George by Margret and H.A. Rey
• Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
• You're You, Charlie Brown by Charles M. Shultz 
• The Tale of Benjamin Bunny by Beatrix Potter
• The Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room by Stan and Jan Berenstain
• The Missing Piece and the Big O by Shel Silverstain

What touched me were the personal stories woven into the beloved books from childhood.  Books read by mom or dad...the first book they remember reading alone...the book that helped make sense of the world.  One student told me about going home over the previous weekend and asking her mother about Plateo.  Mom had forgotten about the book and, once reminded, didn't know where it was.  But the student searched, found the book, wrote her assignment, and brought the book to class. 

One doesn't expect a graduate student in accounting to bring a children's book to share with her teacher.  And I didn't expect to see her eyes light up when she talked about Plateo (Guy Gilchrist's Plateo's Big Race: A Tiny Dinos Story About Learning), her memories of the book and the character, the scribbling (her own) she'd found in the book, the message she remembered, or how happy she was to have reclaimed this piece of her childhood.  She brought the book to class so that I could see it, touch it, and read it. She brought a reclaimed piece of herself to class and it was the best moment of my day.

Who knew work could still be fun?

During the past week, I've taught myself to use Prezi (you can see my first attempt here), created a web site to use for a high school technology program, and installed Google Chrome (that was actually today).  The week before, I finally mastered the web cam I blogged about earlier and actually used the administrator rights for the Facebook page for that same high school technology program.  And it's all been fun.

Fun is not a word I hear my colleagues use very often. We tend to use more academic terms such as intriguing, useful, invigorating, stimulating, challenging, cutting edge, or (if we're really going out on a limb) refreshing.  All of those are swell words--really, they are.  But multi-syllabic words don't capture what you see in a girl's eyes when she talks about how much FUN she just had at the park...or what you hear in a boy's voice when he tells you how much FUN it was to go fishing.

Call me old-fashioned, quaint, anachronistic (if you must, but not in my hearing, please), but don't take the joy out of learning something, accomplishing something (I had to create the Prezi twice, thus, twice the satisfaction of finally getting it right), or finishing something.

Life isn't, can't be, shouldn't be all about fun.  But there are places for sheer joy--and learning should be one of those places.  If we allow the fun to flourish where it can, it is partial recompense for those inevitable places where learning is just difficult.  And I do love that Prezi...