Description
“To all that come to this happy place, welcome. (This school) is your land. Here you relive the fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. (Our School) is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created (this reality)... with hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.”

That’s a paraphrase of Walt Disney’s welcome message at the opening of Disneyland in 1955. Do you think it could be a motto for your school? Do you think it should be? Today on the podcast we’ll think about how imagineers used technology to drive the theme park experience and wonder how we might apply some of those design principles to the ways we integrate technology at our schools. After all, shouldn’t  schools be among the happiest places on earth?

 
Lessons Learned
Dennis -  iPhone screen shot - capture a full page in Safari.

Chris - Wondering how to tell facts from fiction, simple truth from spin, online? The wonderful team from SHEG (Stanford History Education Group) just released a four-minute video showing us how to search laterally, a powerful corrective to online manipulation. Check it out, and explore the many other videos in SHEG’s Civic Online Reasoning  series!

Daniel - Plex Media Server - Your own personal Netflix/Prime Video server.   I set one up this week.  Install the software on  your old mac mini or a Network Attached Server.  Software is free….mium.   Home videos, old movies. I can share my library with anyone around the world.

 
Fun Fact
Robotic Clones of Real Persons, Touch Sensitive Plants, Life Saving Wristbands, 3D-Rendered Eyeballs and more.  These are just some of the inventions created by . . . wait for it . . . Disney.  That’s right.

Part of keeping up to date and creating a unique entertainment experience means you have to dream up new technology.

Tech to scan a human face and create a replica animatronic character.

A censor that pipes a low voltage current through plants so a computer (and park security) can know when and where someone is touching it.  Useful to know when someone is climbing the trees or hedges to enter your property.

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/tomorrowland/walt-disney-science-inventions/ (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/tomorrowland/walt-disney-science-inventions/)

 
Notes & Links
Disney Plus Documentary -  “The Imagineering Story”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imagineering_Story (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imagineering_Story)

 

“Imagineering is Disney's right brain, the place where technology and creativity combine for a singular, higher purpose - to tell stories.”

 

“That famous Arthur C. Clarke quote about any sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic, that's a mantra we live by.”

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/future-of-marketing/digital-transformation/a-world-of-pure-imagineering/ (https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/future-of-marketing/digital-transformation/a-world-of-pure-imagineering/)

 

In school it should never be tech for tech’s sake, the technology should drive the learning experience, without being the learning experience.