After the Covid hiatus I’m busy working on a variety of projects. Here’s what I’m doing this fall.

I’m part of an educational outreach team working on the new Moonshot Museum that celebrated its first birthday this fall. 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. In November I joined Justin Aglio for Penn State Days at the Moonshot Museum. At the end of December Astrobotic hopes to send the Peregrine lander to the moon with the first archive of Hope Moonshot dreams.

This fall I’m working with the River Valley School District and the Quakertown School District on several projects including the World of Work. I had a chance to join the Quakertown team at the Moonshot Museum and traveled to the South Fayette School District with both teams for a look at how South Fayette is building upon the Computational Thinking Pathway that Aileen Owens created for South Fayette and is now part of a Digital Promise initiative.

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 and pre-conference award-ceremony and networking event happens on January 14 at the Entertainment Technology Center of Carnegie-Mellon University. We’ll build on the success of the 2023 conference looking at the World of Work and add some new twists. Take a look at this year’s line-up with featured speakers, keynote speaker, Ed Hidalgo, and presentations.

After a 4 year hiatus I helped to get a Design Challenge for the region off the ground. In October I joined the Consortium of Public Education team at the Energy Innovation Center for a Sustainability Design Challenge. The Design Challenge included 16 teams of middle and high school students from four different counties in the region who worked with 20 professionals with Sustainability initiatives from higher education, the corporate sector, and the nonprofit world.

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.) Here’s a link to my Flickr album of Fall images. In October I travelled to Quakertown to join Ed Hidalgo for a workshop on using the RIASEC framework to build a common language to talk about strengths, interests, and values. Here’s a documentary I created to capture the fun-filled event: