This is me at my job. Yeah, I'm a lucky duck. On Friday, I had the awesome opportunity to join our new head of research and sustainability Dr. Meg Lowman for some tree climbing in the Cal Academy's east garden. Dr. Lowman, also known as "Canopy Meg," is a champion for forest preservation and …
Are you a Bay Area teen who loves science, wants to geek out about technology, and is interested in making digital media with other teens? The Academy wants you! I’m excited to announce that Digital Learning at the California Academy of Sciences is launching a new program for high school-aged youth called the “TechTeens.” We’re …
To get this blog started, I wanted to provide some background on what the Digital Learning program at the California Academy of Sciences has been doing since it was launched about three years ago. Over that time, I’ve loved getting to design fun and engaging youth programs that combine my interest in tech and my …
Welcome to my new blog, RangerRik.com! This is where you will find my thoughts and activities from my work as a digital learning educator and program developer at the California Academy of Sciences. This is also where I am going to share out lots of the awesome work, tools, approaches, conversations and events happening …
On Thursday, the California Academy of Sciences hosted a fun coding workshop for middle schoolers that I helped facilitate. The occasion was the visit of five young programmers from Cork, Ireland to the Bay Area, along with the Deputy Lord Mayor of Cork, and various other dignitaries from Ireland. The sponsoring organization was called CoderDojo, …
First post!
It’s stuff like that that reminds me why I have the best job ever. Just for fun, a group of our summer TechTeens at the California Academy of Sciences created different variations on the popular kids game “Ninja” (or “Ultimate Ninja”). It started as a lunchtime activity to get them physically interacting and playing, and …
In the museum and informal science education field we often place ourselves in opposition to amusement parks and theme parks. My own museum’s ED has said to our staff, “we have no pirates” in our museum. From a certain perspective I think that makes sense. Amusement parks as private ventures have as their primary mandate …
In the museum and informal science education field we often place ourselves in opposition to amusement parks and theme parks. My own museum’s ED has said to our staff, “we have no pirates” in our museum. From a certain perspective I think that makes sense. Amusement parks as private ventures have as their primary mandate …
Today was so strange I don’t even know where to start. I’m in Ivano-Frankivsk, a small city in Western Ukraine, where I was brought by the US Embassy to lead some trainings in digital media for local NGOs. I’ve done a few of these technology trainings for civil society organizations around the world, and had …