Byxbee+Park

> //Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think// ~ Christopher Robin to Winnie the Pooh (A.A. Milne)

The primary purpose of this wiki is to record and share information about open education and K-8 STEM teaching and learning. This is follow-on work to research and writing at CSU Hayward / East Bay, and continuing as faculty at DeAnza College and advisory committee for WikiEducator.org (and OERu open university). Higher education as we know it is changing and working with kids currently in innovative K-8 STEM programs will be important for the future development of practitioners in these fields.

I have been integrating technology in teaching and learning for many years, as a distance learning student (Masters of Education on Online Teaching and Learning), as an instructor (Higher Education Distance Learning courses in technology), as a professional development mentor to primary and secondary educators, and as a lifelong learner in global communities with broad interests in technology for teaching and learning. Personally and professionally, there is so much to do, so little time...

**[|Byxbee Park]**, Palo Alto, CA - Coordinates: 37.450849 -122.103655

The first phase was completed in September 1991 at a cost of $1.4 million and covers 30 acres.

[|Byxbee Park] sits atop a reclaimed landfill at the edge of the San Francisco Bay. On two feet of soil, over a one-foot-thick impenetrable clay cap, the park rests over as much as sixty feet of garbage. Hargreaves Associates, in collaboration with artists Peter Richards and Michael Oppenheimer designed the park to not only provide the people of Palo Alto with opportunities for recreation and contemplation of the bay marshes, birds and wildlife; but to also respond to the conditions of landfill below within the context of the surrounding confluence of complex ecosystems.


 * [|Byxbee Park] is named in honor of John Fletcher Byxbee Jr. (1878-1947). A Palo Alto High School and Stanford graduate, Byxbee served as Palo Alto's City Engineer from 1906 to 1941. He later served on the Planning Commission until his death in 1947. He was responsible for the development of the Palo Baylands as a recreation area, which he originally proposed in1921. In 1930, he submitted a plan for the area. The airport, duck pond (originally planned as a swimming pool), golf course, and the yacht harbor (now a marsh) were part of those plans. The official name for the Baylands is actually the John Fletcher Byxbee Recreation Area, named in 1968 to honor John Byxbee. However, today his name primarily appears on the park on the southeast corner of the yacht harbor basin.


 * [|Land Art: Palo Alto's Byxbee Park] - Byxbee Park is both perfectly obvious and perfectly bizarre. Obvious, because it’s in the middle of the Baylands and offers spectacular views of the bay in all directions. Perfectly bizarre, because it is full of machinery and mysterious artifacts that have an allure similar to Stonehenge. Clearly these things were built by humans, and at some effort, but to what earthly purpose?


 * [|Baylands Nature Preserve] - City of Palo Alto, CA - 1,940-acre Baylands Preserve is one of the largest tracts of undisturbed marshland remaining in the San Francisco Bay. Fifteen miles of multi-use trails provide access to a unique mixture of tidal and fresh water habitats. The preserve has a substantial resident population of birds as well as being a major migratory stopover on the Pacific Flyway.