The Carnival has come to town! Well it at least has come to San Francisco so I decided to go to it. Just didn’t sound as good to open the post with “I have come to the Carnival!” Not the same ring.
I had the pleasure of attending a wonderful briefing with Cisco and VMWare out in the San Jose area over this past week. Hoping to bring back several things to put in place at the ESC though the focus of this post is centered around the weekend event prior to the briefing known as the STEAM Carnival.
I decided to fly into California two days early to visit and review an event that was introduced to me by some friends at Cisco and iSchool Initiative. The STEAM Carnival was founded by two guys name Eric Gradman and Brent Bushnell who run Two Bit Circus. These guys were running around the place having so much fun and making minor modifications to the attractions in the process as well. It was a pleasure to actually get to meet them briefly in passing and then have a sit down with Brent a couple days later. More on that shortly.
The Carnival was so amazing that my oldest son bought his own plane ticket and flew to California on his own to join me. Seeing the Carnival through this perspective made this something that I HAVE to bring back to the students of Region 11. This has to happen!
I can’t describe all of the great things that we experienced at the Carnival without going on and on forever. I will say that a couple of highlights of the event included the Dunk Tank Flambe, the Wave Pendulum, the button wall, and this rocket ship game where Cooper and I dominated several small children. Play to win!
Two days later I had the privilege to sit down with Brent at a small coffee shop and share my idea of bringing the Carnival to DFW. The conversation started slow and then picked speed as I learned of his fondness for STEAM education. Come to find out his dad is Nolan Bushnell who invented Atari. What a cool family!
Fingers crossed we can make this happen in the future in DFW. I want this experience for our kids!
