The Daily Icon has been just a bit less daily this week. My evening hours have been consumed with readying the materials for a stonework class that I led Friday morning. I discussed what good stonework is and then showed a gazillion images of what it can look like. The cross section posters were available as hand outs and people took notes as we discussed the key concepts illustrated.
Yesterday I took part in the Mt. Green Sustainability Conference at Warren Wilson College. I led a session on Sustainability in Stonework, in which I introduced the Green Target tool I recently created. I blogged about the class at Hammerhead.
Another recent project was the first edition of the Daily Sledge, the Hammerhead Stoneworks newsletter. Here’s a link to a PDF optimized for fast download.
Cross section of a drystone retaining wall.
I’ve been working on a handful of similar illustrations for an upcoming class on stonework I’m leading at the North Carolina Arboretum. I don’t label the drawings, preferring to print posters and write in the key information in the classroom. A copy sized version of the illustrations will be given as handouts for structure note-taking.
These are activity boards I made for the new woodworking table in Abe’s pre-school classroom. We chose the short, stout screwdriver to be easier to grasp for small hands. This idea was borrowed from a Montessori catalog.
Drawing with Sharpies on wood is fun.
The hex driver.
A recent question on LinkedIn asked about how people deal with to do lists and keeping things organized. I responded with a link to my galaxy. Mark Bradford of Our Web Department was inspired enough by my reply to make his own and kind enough to share it with me. And as Mark pointed out, it’s a solar system, not a galaxy.
I like Mark’s version and some of the fun things he did to make it his own. Hard to discern in this low res capture, the green planet to the top is the Tax Planet and features a huge dollar sign on its surface. There’s a comet at the bottom that represents the fun projects he has going on as well. He reported it took about five minutes and was fun to do. The next question- in a couple of weeks- will be, did it help organize things and get stuff done?
Mark, thanks for sharing.
eagles - the eagles download 
Cereal, breakfast, oatmeal. This is part of a forthcoming project called Morning Routine, a collection of icons and tools to help parents and children navigate the tricky time between waking up and getting out the door.
Yesterday I facilitated a meeting of students from Warren Wilson College’s Service Learning Office. Small groups of students researched a focus topic on a community level, meeting with city and grass roots leaders to get a holistic view of the issue. In many cases they were actively involved in school gardens and local food banks. Meeting people in the system and receiving supports was an important component of their experience. As the semester was wrapping up, the program leaders decided to use graphic facilitation to gather the learning and seek connections between the different but overlapping issues. About twenty students took part in the meeting.
Because the groups had such varying focuses, I opted to start the process at the concrete level: What did you do? What did you learn? I recorded this to the outer ring. From this we started to find themes that were recorded in the center. We created action steps for change that were recorded to a second sheet of paper.
Food security.
I have been immersed in my current project and haven’t had much time for updates. I am designing a set of cards to be used with Positive and Productive Meetings. In addition to the layout, I’ve done the lion’s share of the writing and the various illustrations. This cards details a technique called Timed Talk that can be effective at moving groups through a difficult issue. I like the detail of the color coded clock times, indicating whose turn it is to speak.
Critical mass.
New logo for my new business: Hammerhead Stoneworks.