DUN DUN DUN DA DU DUN DA DA DUUUUUUUNNNN….
Alex is our resident Webcomic creator. He grew up in Puerto Rico, but didn’t reach true Nerdom until he came state side when he was in middle school. He’s been drawing since he was five, but has only started posting Webcomics in the past year. You can check out his amazing and original work at tapastic.com/gomezalexj.
During my day job of substitute teaching, I’ve noticed a wonderful trend: classrooms are getting progressively geekier. Teachers can use geek culture to connect with their kids, but they’ve also been using it to help kids connect to the world.
For example…
You know how in elementary school, desks are usually clustered into small “tables” for group work? The tables are usually distinguished somehow, either numbered or given a color or something of the sort.
Well, teachers have started going the extra mile and separating their kids into Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin.
The first time I saw this I thought it was clever. The teacher had printed out the house crests and hung them over each table, and my inner child just danced when I called Ravenclaw to line up first for PE.
The second time, though, I was actually a little appalled: I was in for a teacher’s assistant (meaning the teacher herself was present) and within about ten seconds of being in the classroom it was apparent the teacher had actually Sorted the students. Gryffindor was full of popular kids, Slytherin was constantly trying to get out of work, Ravenclaw had all five hands constantly in the air, that sort of thing. It boggled my mind. Usually teachers make an effort to avoid troublesome combinations.
Then they started working in pairs, and she told all the Gryffindors to pair up with a Slytherin, and all the Hufflepuffs to find a Ravenclaw.
In this case, I don’t know how the seating arrangement worked out, since I was only there for a day. But that’s a great way of getting kids to work with someone they usually wouldn’t — while still giving them the agency to choose a partner.
I’ve seen other creative uses of table-naming, too: art classes where tables are named after famous painters, for example, or classrooms where they use book titles.
Computer clubs are nothing new, but technology has gotten far more accessible over the past decade. The wandering laptop cart I grew up with has been upgraded to a tablet cart, for one, and whiteboards are rarely used in favor of Smart Boards.
(Digression: I was in high school when Smart Boards came out. Our teachers made a video in which they came alive, HAL-style, and took over the school. There were lots of ZAP noises and teachers dying dramatic deaths. This was presented to the entire school, and is evidence that the dorkiness of teachers isn’t entirely new.)
The computer clubs I’ve seen lately have access to some awesome toys, including things like the Raspberry Pi and 3D printers. Kids now have access to more than just sandbox coding and the internet: they can build things completely on their own.
With the advent of the mini-computer like the Raspberry Pi, kids can learn to build their own computer and have complete freedom when it comes to coding. The club I saw was building the computer as a group and letting the kids each have their own “hard drive” on a USB stick, which was an amazing idea.
And the 3D printer clubs are half-programming, half-art-class. I got the chance to see some of the things a group of middle-schoolers cooked up, since a library I was working in had them on display. The figurines included a dragon, a giant heart, a bunch of complicated bits that someone eagerly explained would make up a Transformer (no idea if it actually worked), a Pokeball, and a trophy.
Classroom libraries seem to have become a work of art. I’m not sure if it was the same back when I was in elementary school, but I’ve seen some amazingly creative ones.
My personal favorite (so far) was made to look like the TARDIS: three bookshelves in a U shape, with construction-paper police box siding taped to their backs. Above, in a banner, the teacher had written out the quote “In all of time and space, I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important.”
Inside the U was a pile of pillows and beanbags and blankets, so the kids could read all over the classroom during book time.
Other favorites: The three-shelf classroom library based off the original Pokemon starters, with easy books under a plushie Bulbasaur and hard books under Charmander. Or a Hogwarts-themed corner: similarly-designed to the TARDIS, but with a castle, and little wands you had to take when you “checked out” a book.
Or the Redbox-based corner (“Bookbox”). Or the one just covered in Minecraft figurines for no reason other than the kids liked it– and I think the teacher wanted an excuse to have a ton of Minecraft toys.
I’ll admit it: it still takes some mental re-framing to think of myself as a teacher whenever I enter a classroom. Stuff like this doesn’t help: I would be perfectly happy to sink down in the TARDIS book corner and read all day.
Alex Penland is currently enjoying a longtime addiction to stories, which she feeds through books, tabletop RPGs, and an excessive collection of video games. She’s currently seeking to publish a novel about a bookshop that gets abducted by aliens, loves to crochet, and blogs about it all over at https://alexpenland.wordpress.com/. You can follow her on Twitter @AlexPenname, where she spends two hours every Saturday livetweeting whatever books strike her fancy.
I have to be honest – when I sat down to write this piece, I wanted to start by explaining how I was introduced to NaNoWriMo… and then I realized that sometime between my first year participating (2012) and now, I completely forgot how I originally got involved in it. Thankfully, I do remember that that first year – I decided to participate a couple of months in advance, and spent most of October 2012 researching and plotting my first-ever NaNo project.
Unfortunately, that first year was the only year that I was also extremely involved in the local NaNo activities. I live in a small city but we have a fairly large number of participants here compared to our size, and our Municipal Leaders (MLs) were very active and great about scheduling plenty of gatherings – kick-off parties, write-ins, wrap-up parties and the like, as well as hosting online activities via the NaNo website and message boards.
But I’m the type of person who stretches myself too thin, which meant that in 2013 I didn’t get to attend any of the official events, though last year I did make it to the wrap-up party, and I’ve always been fairly active in our local Facebook group and official NaNo site message board. I have to admit that attending the write-ins were a big part of what helped me win NaNo my first year, though; I won in 2013, as well, but it was more due to my own stubborn nature than anything else, and last year I unfortunately didn’t even meet the halfway mark for word count before realizing how terribly behind I was and simply giving up entirely.
I also find it helpful that a handful of my Facebook friends participate in NaNo and post about it throughout the month of November. I may not be able to meet up with the ones who live far away, but we tend to encourage each other via Facebook posts, and even last year when I announced that I was giving up, I received plenty of messages telling me that even if I wasn’t going to go for the win, I should keep writing. I didn’t keep writing, but I DID switch back to spending my time working on other unfinished projects, so in a way, National Novel Writing Month still helped me buckle down a bit more than I would have otherwise.
And as for this year? Well, I’ve already begun my research and taken some basic plot notes, and I’m planning on inviting local NaNo friends to my house for our own write-ins, both because I hope that will encourage myself and others to write more, and also just in case the official write-ins don’t fit into my busy schedule.
I am of the belief that there’s really no one “right” way to participate in National Novel Writing Month. Yes, there are rules – you have to write 50,000 words of a new story to win, of course – but if you want to do that entirely in the privacy of your own home, do it. If you want to accomplish your word count by attending every write-in, that’s great too. If you feel like you can only win if you finish your novel, whether that’s at 50,000 words or 150,000 words, kudos to you. Or if you’re just using those 50,000 words as a jumping-off point (which is what I do) and you don’t complete your story during NaNo, it’s still an awesome way to get started.
In fact, the novel I won with in November 2012 wasn’t actually completed until March of 2013 – I added about 30,000 more words to the 50,000 I wrote during NaNo, and then took my sweet time editing it. But I did finish it, and extensive edits, and in December 2014, I published it via Amazon Kindle Direct. I’m still working on the novel that I began for NaNoWriMo 2013 – and I fully believe that eventually I’ll finish it, and edit it, and publish it, even if that means that I self-publish again.
The point of NaNo isn’t necessarily to be a social writer, or to write a full novel, or honestly – in my opinion – even to win. It’s simply to write. And it’s wonderful. So here’s looking forward to NaNoWriMo 2015!
Tara has been a geek at heart all her life. She has spoken about geek culture at several industry conventions (including San Diego Comic-Con and Dragon Con), Ohio State University, and TedX Sarasota. She also co-founded and co-organizes Ice & Fire Con, the first ever Game of Thrones/Song of Ice & Fire convention in the U.S.. She resides in lovely Greenville, SC in a house full of Star Wars-themed carpets and a plethora of dogs and cats. You can find her personal stories at her blog, A Geek Saga.
Some things you just gotta have. It’s really not up to your budget.
Alex is our resident Webcomic creator. He grew up in Puerto Rico, but didn’t reach true Nerdom until he came state side when he was in middle school. He’s been drawing since he was five, but has only started posting Webcomics in the past year. You can check out his amazing and original work at tapastic.com/gomezalexj.
Some Nerd Girl 
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