It’s good to spend time with kids and educators after more than a two year hiatus. Here’s what I’m doing this fall.

I’m part of an educational outreach team working on the new Moonshot Museum that opened to the public on Saturday, October 15, 2022. The museum is located in the Astrobotic: Pittsburgh Aerospace Company site on the North Shore of Pittsburgh. Astrobotic won the NASA contract to send a lunar module to the moon in 2023. My colleague, Justin Aglio, offered me the opportunity to work on this project representing the Readiness Institute Outreach project for Penn State University. I work on the Hope Moonshot program that is a permanent exhibit at the Moonshot Museum. My photos were used for the exhibit of the Hope Moonshot. This year I’m taking photos and making movies for the Moonshot Museum and Astrobotic with educators and students from the Manchester Academic Charter School (MACS) and the Manchester Youth Development Center MYDC).

In the coming months Astrobotic hopes to send the Peregrine lander to the moon with the first archive of Hope Moonshot dreams. This summer I had a chance to capture 45 high school students in the Readiness Institute program interacting with the exhibits and volunteers at the Moonshot Museum.

This summer I headed to Washington, D.C. as part of a team from the River Valley School District. We had a chance to visit the White House for a Rural Tech showcase sponsored by the Department of Education (DOE). The DOE invited River Valley to become a Community of Practice (CoP) rural district. River Valley, in a virtual session, shared the impetus for their STEAM pathways work, some of the challenges they’ve face in implementing it, as well as some of the successes they’ve seen so far. This summer I documented the summer administrative retreat River Valley had at the Children’s Museum with Ed Hidalgo. The administrative team looked more purposefully at the World of Work. On the second day the team worked with John Balash at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center using “Serious Play” as team-building tool.

I’m working with the Three Rivers Educational Technology Conference (TRETC) advisory team to plan the 2024 conference. SAVE THE DATE! #TRETC returns to @SFHSLions on January 15, 2024. We’ll build on the success of the 2023 conference looking at the World of Work and add some new twists. Stay tuned for news about featured speakers, keynote speakers, and your opportunity to present and attend this year’s conference.

This fall I traveled to Ireland with my stepson, Jacob. We spent two days in Dublin and then joined the Joanie Madden musical tour in Galway. We traveled up the west coast of Ireland enjoying amazing people, scenery, and most of all great music. I’ve also been producing a series of slideshows, collages, and movies (see : My Gallery.) Stay tuned for my next movie about my trip to Ireland. For the next week or two enjoy my last film from this summer, Fair in the Park, which includes a great interview the Pittsburgh filmmaker, Tony Buba: