Calculators for kids!

At home now with my love of calculators, it is time to share them with the children. Yes, the children.
The Whipple Museum has a wonderful wealth of calculating tools from the past few centuries of the western world. There are slide rules (including groovy circular and cylindrical one which boost up the multiplication power), abacuses, tiny little Napier's bones, big clunky mechanical calculators from the early- to mid-twentieth century, little stylus slide adders and Curta calculators (exceptionally cool) from the 1950s. And of course, a bordering-on-incredible number of hand held electronic calculators from the 1970s and early 80s, some remarkable for being the first of some kind or other (scientific, programmable, touch sensitive, etc), some remarkable for being sensually either thrilling or distasteful to a high degree, some for visual flair, some utterly unremarkable apart from their adding to the general impression of the sheer quantity of these things that so flooded the markets, and some that from a great distance look like flies.
Via the medium of the video-conference, I am going to talk about these tools of calculation to classes of 12-14 year olds, from four different schools all at once. Magic. Then they are going to get together in little groups and do their own research project on them, including designing a mathematical game based on their tool, and in a second video-conference they can present the fruits of their labour to me and the other classes so that we can all discuss. Hopefully it will be fun and give them happy enthusiasm beans.

Silence of

Silence of the children-thought
as blown on carriage train to nought,
with buckets from the mind-well slowly
brought to stretch the light of dusk where
shadows pierce a heart of sorts
and salt marks out the eyes.
Smite not now the over-pass,
where thundered air can breathe at last,
where distance flies us close enough for
bruised lips to return to laugh
and delight is compromise.