Don't Eat the Daisies: Building Legos with 6,000 friends

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Building Legos with 6,000 friends

We did something new last week. I don't remember now where I saw it, but I read somewhere (I think it was in my Facebook feed) that CurrClick has clubs that you can join. Specifically, a Lego club. All you do is register and it's FREE. You don't have to bundle up your kids, (hunting down coats, mittens and snow boots), just to drive across town and mess around with millions of tiny pieces of Lego and referee the occasional disagreement between kids and stretch the truth about it being an 'educational' endeavor. Nope. We got to stay home, commute to the computer desk, log in and click a couple of links and we were golden.

It is my understanding that this online 'club' meets live, twice a month - the second Monday and the fourth Wednesday. Both classes are exactly the same, so if you miss one, you can do the other - AND, the classes are recorded, so you can actually do it any time you please - if you don't really care about the live chat bit.

The moderator is a homeschool mom of two boys, and she runs the class. There are several windows open on the screen during class - a window with a webcam on the moderator, a large screen that displays videos and various graphics that relate to that month's build, a live chat window, and a window that shows who is present for the current class. The attendees can communicate via the chat window, either with the moderator or the other club members.

Each month has a different theme and build that goes with it. This month the theme is snow, and the kids constructed a rather intricate snowflake. Next month it is a section of the Great Wall of China. The moderator posts a materials list (various Lego pieces) way ahead of time (like weeks), so you have plenty of time to gather the correct number of pieces before the class. The color of the pieces do not matter in the builds. You can, if you choose to, order a kit for that month's build - and the prices seem very reasonable. Fortunately our kids own an obscene number of Legos, so I think we will be okay.

For our class (we did this last Monday), we got our pieces gathered up over the weekend. We logged in five minutes before class, and things were already up and running, with more attendees logging in at a fast pace. I think there were about 50 in attendance by the time the class started - and there are over 6,000 in the club worldwide. The moderator came on right at 2 pm, the appointed time for the class (which lasts an hour long). She introduced the month's theme, did a little bit of housekeeping, and then launched into the subject: snow. We first watched a video about the formation of snowflakes, and looked at a series of microscopic images of snowflakes - all categorized by structural form. They were absolutely breathtaking. Then a short presentation about the different types of snowfall, avalanches and the destructive force of massive amounts of snowfall. Finally we got to the build. The pace was reasonable and the difficulty level was fairly easy for Jordan. Rylan....not so much. I think she was frustrated by the constant chatter from the instructor as she helped other students, and got lost fairly quickly. An advantage of watching a recorded session versus live, is that you can pause the video and take your time to complete a step before you continue on.

The kids enjoyed it very much (when they weren't busy fighting over the chairs and grouching at each other). I enjoyed the fact that the other people in the session could not hear the kids bickering and my subsequent yelling at them to pay attention to the moderator. A win-win situation all around!