[SPAM] Re: [Phono-L] Young Collectors & middle school kids

[David Dazer]

That's why I am glad I no longer teach high school and for the last 17 years have enjoyed middle school kids. I used to joke with my high school kids that if I brought them a keg of beer, they would complain about the brand.
Dave

--- On Sun, 6/28/09, Robert Wright <esroberto at hotmail.com> wrote:


From: Robert Wright <esroberto at hotmail.com>
Subject: [SPAM] Re: [Phono-L] Young Collectors & middle school kids
To: "Antique Phonograph List" <phono-l at oldcrank.org>
Date: Sunday, June 28, 2009, 11:16 PM


I find it difficult to find ANYTHING high school kids will openly show interest in.  It's always been that way -- I think it would be the case with just about anything.


----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Baron" <andy at popyrus.com>
To: "Antique Phonograph List" <phono-l at oldcrank.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2009 6:09 PM
Subject: [Phono-L] Young Collectors & middle school kids


> Jim's observation reminds me how incredibly receptive the middle  school kids were to a presentation on the Maillardet Automaton that I  did last March 31.
> 
> I was brought out to Connecticut for this for this event, which  entailed presentations to three middle schools with auditoriums filled  with 13 year olds, and one impromptu partial presentation that I was  asked to do for a very small hand-picked gathering at a high school  that was associated with one of the middle schools.  All in all, some  800 kids saw this presentation.
> 
> The presentation involved lots of still images and a number of video clips of the actual artifact, and touched on its connection to, and my involvement with, the book "The Invention of Hugo Cabret", by Brian Selznick.  This book was the selected title for a "one town, one  read", or "town-wide read" program, and was the reason they brought me  out.
> 
> I was nervous about this age group, but the response was  overwhelmingly positive and my host forwarded a number of emails from  teachers at these schools who also were amazed that the kids emerged  talking excitedly about historical perspective and antique machines.
> 
> Maybe it's no coincidence that many of us discovered our own first attractions to antique phonograph and music machines at about that age.
> 
>  The Maillardet Automaton is sort of a distant cousin to a music box, built in the early 19th century, and although it has mechanism that's familiar to most of us (main springs, gears, governors, levers, etc.), the mechanism us put to an extraordinarily different use.  Some of the more hard-core music box collectors and historians are aware of it,  and some computer folks who view its extensive mechanical memory as  being a forerunner to modern computers.
> 
> Needless to say, it was humbling and extremely rewarding to have  gotten such positive feedback from this age group on such an esoteric  subject, and a subject completely outside their usual frame of  reference.
> 
> Andy Baron
> 
> On Jun 28, 2009, at 4:46 AM, edisonstuff at comcast.net wrote:
>> Hello Group,
>>              Recently a local newspaper did a story about my  collection of Edison Phonographs & that resulted in some school  children visiting with their teachers, I had two groups middle  school & High school. The middle school kids were fascinated by the  machines especially the coin operated one, The HS kids couldn't have  cared less ! The middle school class went on to visit "The Johnson  Victrola Museum " at a later date & were just overwhelmed, Did we  recruit a new age of collectors ? Who knows but the seed was at  least planted, since then one child has brought his parents back to  show them & we talk from time to time.
>> 
>> Jim G.
> 
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