Geek of the Week - Carol Shaw

Ravenclaws love to blaze trails through new frontiers and defy expectations – and this week’s Geek of the Week is no exception! Carol Shaw is credited with being the first female video game designer for her work on 3D Tic-Tac-Toe on the Atari 2600 system in 1978.

Shaw was born in Palo Alto, California in 1955. As a child, she enjoyed computers and railroad sets, and gained an appreciation of technology from her father, who was a mechanical engineer at Stanford. She used a computer for the first time in high school, and decided to focus her further studies in the field of computers. She graduated from Berkeley with a BS in Electrical Engeering and Computer Science, and then completed an MS in Computer Science, also at Berkeley.

After Berkeley, Shaw began work at Atari, where she wrote several games for the Atari 2600. In 1980, Shaw moved to Tandem Computers, and then Activision in 1982. At Activision, she programmed and designed Happy Trails and the popular game River Raid.  

As a trail-blazing game designer, Carol Shaw is a very fitting Geek of the Week!

For more information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Shaw_(video_game_designer)

http://www.stuffmomnevertoldyou.com/blogs/stem-women-hall-of-fame-the-first-female-video-game-designer.htm

Geek of the Week -- Lin-Manuel Miranda

A debate about monetary policy framed as a rap battle; George III cast as a petulant, abusive, ex-lover; lily-white American history brought to life by an exuberant multicultural cast...Who does that?

Our latest Geek of the Week, Lin-Manuel Miranda does!

Born in NY to immigrant parents, Miranda developed a love of musical theater early on.  He performed in student productions in elementary and high school and majored in theater studies at Wesleyan College.

Miranda began to develop his first production, In the

Heights, while still a sophomore in college.  It related the happenings over three very hot summer days in Washington Heights, NY.  The show eventually landed on Broadway and was a great success, earning four Tony awards.

In the Heights introduced his name to Broadway but it was his next show, Hamilton, that really catapulted Miranda to international fame.  

Inspired by Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton, Miranda re-imagined the story of this founding father, casting actors of color and using rap and jazz in addition to traditional musical theater themes.  By casting and scoring the show as he did, Miranda made history relevant to many who had felt marginalized in the past  While it does take some liberties with the truth in the service of theater, it does teach that history is for ALL of us.  He humanizes these figures from the (seemingly) distant past and, through the use of popular music forms, allows their story to be told in ways that engage people who would have previously written off history as irrelevant.  

             

For taking a crazypants idea and making it an astounding success -- a very Ravenclaw trait -- and for his obvious talent for turning his passions into projects that can teach as well as entertain, Lin-Manuel Miranda is a most fitting (and long overdue) Geek of the Week.

Learn more about Lin-Manuel Miranda and his work:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin-Manuel_Miranda

http://www.biography.com/people/lin-manuel-miranda-041416

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Heights

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_(musical)

In the Heights poster: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15564854

Geek of the Week -- Emma Willard

In conjunction with the Detention Badge (get those projects in by February 23!),  this week we will be profiling a pioneer in the fields of women's rights and education.

At a time when many in power thought it was against God's will to educate females,  Emma Willard was lucky enough to be born into a family that valued her intelligence.  Though he was a farmer, her father encouraged all of his children to read and think for themselves.  Emma was allowed to take part in dinner-table discussions on subjects such as mathematics, politics, and philosophy, which were thought unsuitable for women at the time.  She attended and soon taught at a school in her home town of Berlin, Connecticut.

Willard went on to work at a number of girl's schools, but decided to found her own school when she became disillusioned with what passed for women's education.  She wanted young women to be able to learn the same subjects as young men, not just the finishing school niceties that were thought suitable for them.  With help from New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, she was able to open the Troy Female Seminary in 1821.  The school, which still exists, was renamed the Emma Willard School in her honor in 1895.

Emma Willard retired from the school in 1838 and traveled the world promoting education for women.  She fought for the right of women to have "primary existences...not (as) the satellites of men."  In addition to her women's rights work, she wrote several books on history, science, geography, and other academic subjects.  She also published poetry and a book about her travels. The proceeds from the last were donated to fund a women's academy in Greece.

Emma Willard valued education and fought all her life so that other women could be educated, too.  She believed that women's minds were equal to men's, and that, whether they became housewives or scientists, women deserved the opportunity to study challenging subjects, whether or not men thought they were suitable.  For those reasons, I am happy to name her a Ravenclaw Geek of the Week.

Learn more about Emma Willard:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Willard
https://www.emmawillard.org/about-emma/emma-hart-willard
https://www.nwhm.org/html/exhibits/education/Biographies_Willard.htm

Photo: Public Domain

Geek of the Week - Elizabeth Magie

Continuing with our theme of games for this term, today’s Geek of the Week is Elizabeth Magie, the creator of the first version of Monopoly!

Magie was born in Illinois in 1866. Her father was a newspaper publisher who introduced Elizabeth to many of the new ideas of the times, including the work of Henry George (an economist who was an early proponent of a single “land value tax” which would require wealthier landlords to pay more taxes).

She moved to Washington, D.C. in the 1880’s, and worked as a typist. She filed her first patent during this time (for a type writing machine). During this time, she came up with the idea to create a board game to teach her friends the basic principles of Henry George’s theories. She filed a patent for a game known as “The Landlord’s Game” in 1903, and was granted that patent in 1904. That game would go through several revisions and eventually become the Parker Brothers’s game Monopoly.

Two additional games designed by Magie were published and marketed by the Parker Brothers as well: King’s Men and Bargain Day.

Her dedication to finding new and novel ways to teach economics, as well as her status as a woman inventor at the turn of the century makes Elizabeth Magie a fitting Geek of the Week!

For more information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Magie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_board_game_Monopoly

http://invention.si.edu/woman-inventor-behind-monopoly

Geek of the Week -- Malala Yousafzai

Our Geek this week is famous not for being an educator, but for fighting for the right to be educated.

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani student who has become a leading advocate  for educational rights for girls and women.  She first rose to prominence at the age of 11 when she wrote a blog for  BBC Urdu describing daily life under the Taliban. Despite the fact that girls' schools had been closed and her family displaced by the fighting, she continued to study and speak out for the right of girls to be educated. 

Eventually the girls' schools were reopened, but Malala and her father persisted in their advocacy for educational access for girls. Their work won them much acclaim -- she was awarded Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize and other awards -- but it also earned them enemies in the Taliban. They received death threats, but when her father suggested they move or discontinue their campaigns for human rights, Malala refused.

The Taliban tried to make good on their threats in October, 2012. The then 15-year-old Malala was shot in the head on the way home from an exam. Though gravely wounded, she eventually recovered and continued to campaign on behalf of educational and womens' rights. She is the youngest person the be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (which she shared with Indian children's rights advocate Kailash Satyarthi) and has received numerous other awards for her work.

For her determination to get an education, even at the risk of her life, and her continuing campaign to guarantee all children everywhere the right to an education, Malala Yousafzai is a most worthy Ravenclaw Geek of the Week. 

Learn more about Malala Yousafzai:

http://www.biographyonline.net/women/malala.html
http://www.biography.com/people/malala-yousafzai-21362253#after-the-attack
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-23241937

Photo credit: By DFID - UK Department for International Development - Malala Yousafzai: Education for girls, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44577822

Geek of the Week - Milton Bradley

In keeping with our term theme of games, today’s geek of the week has a name nearly synonymous with American board games – Milton Bradley.

Bradley was born in 1836 in Maine. He started a career as a draftsman, and eventually moved into lithography. In 1860, he opened the first color lithography shop in Springfield, Massachusetts. He had initial success after printing an image of Abraham Lincoln, but after Lincoln grew his beard the prints were extremely unpopular. He decided to pursue other options, and released a board game that he called The Checkered Game of Life.

The game was an instant success – by 1861, Bradley had sold more than 45,000 copies. It’s popularity may have stemmed from the fact that, unlike previous “board games,” the goal of the game was to WIN, not just to demonstrate moral values.

During the Civil War, Bradley shifted his focus to creating small games that soldiers could play during their long periods of tedium, including games like checkers and chess.

Bradley went on to found the Milton Bradley Company, which then released many of the century’s most popular board games. He also became very involved in promoting kindergarten, and the company began manufacturing colored papers and paints for educational purposes. He was posthumously inducteded into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame in 2004.

To learn more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Bradley

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Bradley_Company

Geek of the Week -- Fannie Jackson Coppin

  

In conjunction with the Class Tetris team's Detention badge, this week we are profiling African American educator Fannie Jackson Coppin as our Ravenclaw Geek of the Week.

Fannie Jackson was born into slavery in 1837, but was freed at the age of 10 or 12 (sources differ) when her aunt was able to purchase her.  By the age of 14, she was working as a domestic and fitting in education however she could.  She was eventually able to attend the Rhode Island State Normal School and Oberlin College in Ohio. As a junior at Oberlin, she became the first black student instructor, taking on two classes for Oberlin and organizing evening classes for freedmen.

Upon graduation, Fannie began teaching at The Institute for Colored Youth, now Cheyney University.  Within four years she became the principal of the school, the first African American woman to hold that position.  She spent 37 at the Institute and greatly expanded the curriculum at the school, adding industrial arts, a normal school (teachers college), and a practice teaching program.  In addition she persuaded employers to hire her graduates and established a home for girls and young women to have safe accommodations while they were working.
     
Fannie Jackson married the Rev. Levi Coppin in 1881. She continued with her work at the Institute as well as advocating for civil and women's rights. She retired in 1902 and journeyed with her husband to South Africa, where they founded a missionary school in Cape Town. Fannie Jackson Coppin died on this day, January 21, in 1913.  Coppin State University in Baltimore is named in her honor.

For her determination to acquire an education and her lifelong zeal for helping others do the same, Fannie Jackson Coppin is a most deserving Ravenclaw Geek of the Week!

Learn more about Fannie Jackson Coppin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Jackson_Coppin
https://www.coppin.edu/info/200178/
http://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-381

We are featuring people who help us learn and play this term. Got a Geek you’d like us to feature? Tell us about them here.

Geek of the Week -- Ken Burns

Our first Geek of the Week for this term is not an educator in the traditional sense, but through his documentary work, filmmaker Ken Burns has managed to make us all students of that most vital of subjects, our history.

While not the first, Burns is certainly an important popularizer of the notion that history is more than regurgitating dates and facts and naming three proximate and five contributary causes of the American Civil War, it is about people and their stories.  Using the words of both historical figures and ordinary citizens and a technique of panning, fading, and zooming in on still images -- known as the Ken Burns effect -- Burns is able to bring life to stories for which moving images are not available. His documentaries cover a diverse range of subjects,  from sports to politics, conservation to music, travel to wars. But in addition to the subject they are ostensibly covering, each is a tiny time machine; a brief but vivid journey into to the eras they are depicting.  While they are about the United States of America, they explore universal themes and examine why the knowledge of our past is vital to each and every one of us.

For his diversity of interests, his obvious passion for his subject matter, and his devotion to sharing his passions with us all, Ken Burns makes a most fitting Ravenclaw Geek of the Week!

Learn more about Ken Burns:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns_effect

http://kenburns.com/

We are featuring people who help us learn and play this term. Got a Geek you’d like us to feature? Tell us about them here.

Photo credit Cable Risdon

Geek of the Week -- Althea Sherman

Today’s Geek of the Week was an illustrator and a self-taught ornithologist whose work convinced the Iowa Legislature to adopt the American goldfinch as the state bird – Althea Sherman!

Althea Sherman was born in 1853 in Clayton County, Iowa. She studied art at Oberlin College, and went on to teach as well as continue her training as an artist. She was a dedicated observer of nature, and after her teaching career began studying and illustrating birds. She believed in studying birds in their natural habitats, rather than as stuffed specimens, and spent many years studying birds in nest boxes and maintained feeding areas.

In 1915, Sherman had a wooden tower built at her family home in order to attract chimney swifts. This led to her being the first to fully observe and document the chimney swift’s lifecycle. The tower has since become a tourist attraction.

All of her research and over 70 journal publication resulted in Sherman being elected as a member of the American Ornithologists’ Union.

Her dedication to art and to ornithology makes Althea Sherman a fitting Geek of the Week!

For more information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Althea_Sherman

http://althearsherman.org/

Geek of the Week -- Toshisada Nishida

 This week's Geek is Japanese primatologist Toshisada Nishida.

Nishida started his career in the early 1960s researching macaques in Japan, but he is most famous for the work he began in 1965, observing chimpanzees in the Mahale Mountains of Tanzania. Working at the same time (but in a different place) as Jane Goodall, he was able to demonstrate that some chimpanzee behaviors were cultural, not innate.  At a time when these great apes were thought to be solitary nomads, his research showed that not only did they live in groups, they were territorial, and would even fight other groups

to defend their territory.  Nishida's meticulous and detailed observations showed that chimpanzees -- who were thought to be less closely related to humans than baboons -- shared many traits with humans, such as tool using, food sharing, territoriality, cooperative hunting, cultural traditions, and the ability to plan ahead and to conceive of others as having thoughts and feelings.  He was also among the first to observe chimpanzees using plants in a medicinal capacity.

Jane Goodall and Toshisada Nishida

For this work, Nishida, along with Jane Goodall, was awarded the Leakey Prize, which recognizes accomplishments in the field of human evolutionary science, in 2008.  He worked to bridge the gaps between Japanese and Western scientists, encouraging his students to write in English to make their discoveries easier to share. He was instrumental in persuading the Tanzanian government to declare the chimpanzees' habitat a national park and lobbied UNESCO to declare the great apes a World Heritage species.  Even after he retired from Kyoto University, he still returned to Mahale to study the chimpanzees, making his final visit in 2009.  Before he died in 2011, he expressed a wish that the work at Mahale would continue for at least another century.

His lifelong dedication to the study of our closest living relatives, his devotion to preserving the environment in which they live, and his enthusiasm for sharing his discoveries with colleagues around the world make Toshisada Nishida a fitting Geek of the Week!

Learn more about Toshisada Nishida:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshisada_Nishida
http://www.emory.edu/LIVING_LINKS/publications/articles/Mitani_etal_2012.pdf

Got a geek you'd like us to feature?  Tell us about them here. This term, we are concentrating on Geeks who work with Fabulous Beasts.

Top right photo By Frans de Waal - Plos Biology, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21951490

Geek of the Week - Jeanne Villepreux-Power

This week’s geek of the week is Jeanne Villepreux-Power! Known as the “Mother of Aquariophily,” Villepreux-Power was a French marine biologist who was the first scientist to use aquaria to experiment with various aquatic organisms.

Villepreux-Power was a Parisian dressmaker, famous for creating the wedding gown worn by Princess Caroline when she married Charles-Ferdinand de Bourbon. After her marriage to James Power in 1818, Villepreux-Power moved to Sicily, where she began studying natural history.

She focused particularly marine life – to that end, she created three different types of aquariums. A glass aquarium for indoor use, a submersible aquarium for undersea observations, and a larger cage-aquarium to observe large mollusks. She performed extensive research on the paper nautilus Argonauta argo, a cephalopod that closely resembles an octopus. She discovered that the “shell” of the paper nautilus is produced by the organism itself, rather than borrowed from another animal (like the hermit crab).

 Villepreux-Power was the first female member of the Catania Accademia Gioenia, and a correspondent member of the London Zoological Society.

When Villepreux-Power and her husband moved from Sicily to London, all of her scientific work was lost in a shipwreck. She stopped researching, and never published again.

Her ground-breaking research, early crafty skills, and love for cephalopods makes Jeanne Villepreux-Power a Very Ravenclaw Geek of the Week!

Want to learn more?

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jeanne-Villepreux-Power

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/19th-century-shipwreck-might-be-why-famous-female-naturalists-name-faded-obscurity-180955468/?no-ist

http://mentalfloss.com/article/64704/woman-who-invented-aquariums

Geek of the Week - on Hiatus

Our Geeks are all working madly to get those last minute classes and Quidditch in! Join them and you'll be in good company!

The feature will return next week! 

Geek of the Week -- Charles Henry Turner

This week's Geek was an pioneer in the field of invertebrate behavior. He was the first to discover that honeybees can see color, that cockroaches can learn by trial and error, and that insects can hear and distinguish pitch.  All of this was accomplished despite the fact that no university would or could hire him.

Charles Henry Turner was born in Cincinnati in 1867.  he became the first African American to receive a graduate degree at the University of Cincinnati and the first to receive a PhD at the University of Chicago. Despite this, he was unable to get a university appointment -- the one university that wanted him, the Tuskegee Institute, could not afford to pay both Turner and George Washington Carver, and so declined to hire him.

Undaunted, Turner chose to teach high school, continuing to do his research at the same time.  Without the resources of a university at his disposal, he managed to conduct research on a variety of creatures, including ants, honeybees, cockroaches, wasps, moths, spiders, crustaceans, and pigeons. He published 49 papers and was the first African American to be published in Science.  With no assistance and limited funds, he had to fit his work in around his teaching duties, squeezing it in at night or over summer vacation.  He even brought his bees into the classroom, becoming one of the first to use experimental observation at the high school level.

In addition to his teaching and research, Dr. Turner worked to improve educational opportunities and social services for African Americans in the St. Louis area, where he taught. Several St. Louis area schools have been named in his honor.

Dr. Turner's thirst for knowledge, his perseverance through difficult circumstances, his devotion to sharing his knowledge, and his determination to make sure others had the opportunity to pursue education make him a deserving Ravenclaw Geek of the Week!

Learn more about Charles Henry Turner:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Henry_Turner_(zoologist)
http://psychology.okstate.edu/museum/turner/turnerbio.html

Geek of the Week - Mary Anning

Do you remember the old tongue-twister, “She sells sea shells by the sea shore?” Did you know that it was based on a real person? That person is Mary Anning, this week’s Geek of the Week!

Anning was born in 1799 in southern Great Britian. The cliffs along the shore where she lived contained a wealth of fossils, which Anning’s father collected and taught her to collect. The family sold these fossils to tourists as a means to support their rather dire financial situation. As she grew older, Anning took over the family business of collecting, cataloging, and selling fossils. She sold fossils to collectors, scientist, and museums around the world, and became well-known for her knowledge of fossils and anatomy.

Over the course of her lifetime, Mary Anning discovered several key finds, including a full ichthyosaur skeleton found with her brother when they were both relatively young. She is best known, though, for being the first to discover the plesiosaur - she found a complete skeleton in 1823. Her work contributed to rising ideas regarding extinction and the legitimacy of the timing of the fossil record.

In spite of the fact that Anning and her family supplied large numbers of important fossils to the scientific community, her contribution to paleontology was largely ignored during her lifetime, due mostly to her gender and her social status. Only in relatively recent times has her contribution to the modern science of paleontolgy been recognized.

Her trail-blazing nature as an uneducated, working class woman working to provide key knowledge in a male dominated field, along with her enduring legacy and contributions to science make Mary Anning a perfect candidate for our Geek of the Week!

She sells seashells on the seashore
The shells she sells are seashells, I'm sure
So if she sells seashells on the seashore
Then I'm sure she sells seashore shells.

To learn more:

http://www.factfixx.com/2012/06/20/tongue-twisters-she-sells-sea-shells/

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/anning.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning

Geek of the Week -- Neil Shubin

This week's Geek, Dr. Neil Shubin, is a paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, author, and co-discoverer of one of the most important fossils ever found. 

Shubin got his start in exploring young; an assignment to discover the history of some old paper mills near his home town of Philadelphia when he was only 16 taught him that the past was knowable, and that, while digging around in old ruins was fun and important, it was also important to do your homework on the subject you were studying.

These insights served him well when it came to his most important discovery. His research told him where to look, and his belief that if he kept looking in rocks of the correct age, he would find what he was looking for, sustained him for many years of fruitless searching. The beastie in question, one Tiltaalik roseae, bears a curious combination of features, some common to fish, others to tetrapods, (four legged vertebrates.) It had gills, fins, and scales, but it also had lungs, tetrapod-like ribs, and a mobile neck.  Other "fishapod" traits seem to be a hybrid of fish and tetrapod characteristics.  

Why is Tiktaalik such an important find? It is the only known member of a genus that represents the transition from finned fish to tetrapod animals like amphibians and reptiles -- and us!  While it might not be the direct ancestor of any animal living today -- there is some disputed evidence that seems to show tetrapods existed before Tiktaalik -- it does shows us that there were once transitional animals, and one as-yet-undiscovered fishapod might be the ancestor of all modern tetrapods.

Dr. Shubin's book, Your Inner Fish,  discusses Tiktaalik and traces the evolution of many of our mammalian traits from our piscine ancestors in an entertaining and easily understood manner.  I highly recommend it!  There is an accompanying PBS series, available on line (but possibly only in the US; I have put a link below).

As our Head Girl CathyCake says in her nomination of Dr. Shubin,

 "He embodies the curiousity, voracious thirst for knowledge, and love of writing that Ravenclaws admire." 

For those characteristics as well as for his discovery of a truly Fantastic Beast, Neil Shubin is a very worthy Ravenclaw Geek of the Week.

Learn more about Neil Shubin:

http://nautil.us/issue/33/attraction/its-a-fishapod
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Shubin
http://www.pbs.org/show/your-inner-fish/

and Tiktaalik roseae:
http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiktaalik
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1662160.Your_Inner_Fish

Thank you to CathyCake for this nomination!

Got a geek you'd like us to feature?  Tell us about them here. This term, we are concentrating on Geeks who work with Fabulous Beasts

Geek of the Week -- Georgina Sweet

This week's Geek, Georgina Sweet was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1875. Encouraged by her parents to follow a career in science, she attended the University of Melbourne, studying biology and doing research in the zoology of native Australian animals and veterinary medicine. She became the first woman to earn a doctoral degree at the University of Melbourne; her doctoral work was done on the Australian marsupial mole, Notoryctes. She won a research prize for her work in parasitology and became Australia's foremost parasitologist, publishing extensively on the subject.

After earning her doctorate, Sweet worked as a lecturer and demonstrator at Queen's College, and eventually went on the become the first female acting professor and the first female associate professor at an Australian university.

Known for her energy, organization, and teaching skills, Sweet was a member of the science, veterinary, and agricultural faculties. While she never considered herself discriminated against, she vigorously supported women's rights and served on a number of national and international committees and professional bodies. She was devoted to education and loved to travel, trekking from the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo in Africa and throughout Asia.  

Georgina Sweet's love of science, devotion to education, talent for organization, and lifelong curiosity make her a fitting Geek of the Week!

Learn more about Georgina Sweet:
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/sweet-georgina-8728
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgina_Sweet

Got a geek you'd like us to feature?  Tell us about them here. This term, we are concentrating on Geeks who work with Fabulous Beasts.

Geeks of the Week -- Jasmine Jan and Darwin's Coral Warriors

This week, we are profiling a group of crafters who have used their skills with crochet hooks to call attention a serious environmental problem, the bleaching of coral reefs.

Darwin, Australia Territory Wildlife Park crafts coordinator Jasmine Jan approached the crocheters after seeing a display of poppies crocheted for Anzac day.  She proposed an exhibit at the park showing crocheted replicas of both healthy and bleached coral to raise awareness 

of the problem. More and more crafting groups volunteered, and crocheters met at the park weekly to work on their creations.

Using both the internet and books, the crafters researched the various corals and the creatures that live among them and then adapted existing patterns to create them.

It's taken many crafters and a whole year, but the reef is now finished and on display at the park. According to Jan "It's all about creating awareness about global warming and coral bleaching through art." [1]

For the very Ravenclaw trait of using craft to educate, we are delighted to name Jasmine Jay and her Coral Warriors Geeks of the Week.

Learn more about Darwin's Coral Warriors:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-15/darwin-crochet-enthusiasts-turn-yarn-into-coral-conservation/7087156

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-09/coral-warriors-unveil-crochet-reef-climate-change/7823910

https://soundcloud.com/1057darwin/crochet-coral-for-conservation-darwins-undercover-craft-groups-unite-for-reef-awareness

Got a geek you'd like us to feature? Nominate them here.

[1]: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-09/coral-warriors-unveil-crochet-reef-climate-change/7823910.  Accessed 9/16/16