The Rokenboker - March 2009

Technorati Tags: rokenboker,hobbies,hobby shop

March 2009
Mr. Rokenbok's Corner Of all the fun things I get to do, participating in the Rokenbok Forums is one of my favorites. The Rokenbok Forums is where we host our Architectural Building Challenge and watching the new builds go up in the Building Challenge over the past month has been a blast! We simply had no idea how creative Rokenbokers could be and what they were able to build.  Take a look at these photos recently posted to the Architectural building Challenge, and you can see why I love our forums so much: NASA's Space Shuttle Crawler NASA's Crawler in Rokenbok Monorail Station with Conductor Rokenbok Street Scenes Cathedral "Rokenbok" There are a lot more great entries and dozens of photos you can see Cheers, Mr. Rokenbok (a.k.a. Paul Eichen)
Building the Brain A Low Floor and a High Ceiling - Construction Toys Provide An Ideal Learning Environment Obviously, children learn by playing in all sorts of ways. A child can benefit by chasing a ball, talking with a teddy bear and playing checkers. Seymour Papert, a renowned MIT professor and a seminal figure in the field of technology and education, set out on a mission years ago to determine what a child's optimum creative environment might be. He ultimately concluded that a toy or technology presents the ideal creative environment for children when it offers what he calls a "low floor" and a "high ceiling." What does Papert mean by that? A toy that possesses a low floor allows a child to play without needing a lot of advance experience or knowledge. Blocks provide a wonderful example. Even toddlers with pudgy fingers can stack blocks and knock them down. What makes toys like Rokenbok and other sophisticated construction toys ideal is that they also possess a "high ceiling." As a child ages, the toys grow with them and provide tougher challenges. While a two-year-old might not be able to stack more than a handful of blocks, his older sister might be constructing block skyscrapers or, with Rokenbok, complete interactive cityscapes. The best construction toys offer progressive levels of challenge. Many children end up playing with Rokenbok, LEGO, and K'NEX well into their teen years by making increasingly more challenging and intricate structures.
February's Rokenbok Hall of Fame We are pleased to announce February's Rokenbok Hall of Fame inductees, David and Ben from Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, for their entry 'Tri Rock'. David and Ben wrote: The reason this build is called Tri Rock is because it is built on top of 3 different tables, all at a different height. There is one long drive you can take that goes to each table, but it is to be driven by professional Rokenbokers only. Every chute system in this creation leads to the 3 conveyors where the ROKs will be recycled and processed continuously. We ran out of room on the tables, so we made a path containing many ramps down to the ground. Down on the ground is the mine, where the monorail dumps ROKs into a continuous sorting chute system. Building on top of these tables with limited space was a challenge, but the result was awesome! In addition to their induction unto the Hall of Fame, David and Ben received a $50 ROK'n'Buks gift certificate: