What is this all about?

As the hours of sunlight are on the rise and spring is knocking on the door "normal" academic courses are interrupted at Hanover High School.

MARCH INTENSIVE as arrived!

What is March Intensive? It is four days of diverse course offerings, organized and taught by staff and community members.

This year two colleagues, a professional builder/designer and myself are offering a course titled The LONGBOARD COLLECTIVE!

Dave Holloway (Industrial Technology Teacher)

Wayne Gallipoli (Illustrator, graphic designer and owner of Surf-Rodz)

Uwe Goodal-Heising (German Teacher)

Kevin Lavigne (Science Teacher)

At the end of four days, 17 students will have designed and handcrafted a longboard using local renewable resources.

Through this experience we hope to provide an opportunity for students to develop skills with hand and power tools, an understanding of building materials, longboard shaping and design, the history of longboarding, and concepts of renewable resources. Emphasis will be placed on the idea that expensive tools are not needed...just creativity and "Old School" techniques can be use to create amazing rides!

Additionally, we want to link our local community of like minded individuals with the larger growing longboard community through the use of social networks.

In the meantime this blog will be updated with cool links and happenings (local/global). Once the course gets rolling (pun intended) this blog will be dedicated to sharing the "in-class" experience with the global community.

What is this all about?

What is the Collective?

It's 2009 and it's a brave new world... global temperatures are up, biodiversity is down, and the papers are full of doom & gloom. Stricken from the news, however, is a new movement of small-scale garage builders constructing amazing, environmentally sustainable rides! It may be a bad time to be a polar bear but it's a great time to be a skater!

This course will bring together people with a common interest in exploring the design, product and lifestyle of longboarding in a hands-on workshop. Participants will design and handcraft a longboard around the goal of replacing as many environmentally harmful materials as possible, with functional, ecologically based alternatives using wood from local New England forest.

Wayne Gallipoli, Owner & Designer of Surf Rodz, will come up from Connecticut and help us with design and craft aspects of the building process.

What is the Collective?