ABOUT PROJECT
Our site is about sundials and the time they tell.
Since 2007 when it was launched we have always been driven by this idea expressed by a Soviet writer Michael Ancharov:
"Understanding atom is a child Game being compared to understanding child’s Game"
Unfortunately, there are no contemporary literature about sundials in Russian.
So, the goal of Russian version for 9 years was to find,
translate and share as much technical
and practical information about sundials, as possible.
There is absolutely no sense to re-translate all such articles in English,
because in most cases there are
much better explanations from the mediums of native language.
The only reason we launch English version is the motto of the project.
Knowledge is useful, but game is joyful! Sundials combine both.
Let us explore them from the interesting side.
It is practically impossible to explain to young people how useful
sundials are (they are not),
but it is possible to show, how interesting
it may be to make sundials and live in true time.
True time workshop
An ambitious name "True time workshop" was given by pupils to one experiment, which begun in a Moscow school with intensive English teaching in 2008. The idea was to stimulate children's curiosity towards sundials and combine translation tasks from English with practical skills development during handcrafting. In reality lessons on sundials turned out to be impossible in the rhythm of the school curriculum and under conditions of compulsion. Finally, it became an extra-curricular course, free for attendance on the base of school's workshop and has lasted on regular basis till 2011. Most of the participants were boys of 13-16 years of age (not surprising) and most of them were interested more in history than in math (it was surprising). The topics discussed for self-reflection purposes are listed at the end of the articles about ancient timing systems, sacral rituals and more in menu section OLDS . It may be interesting for adults too.
We left the traces of "synchronicity" game,
which was suggested to the pupils in order to make classes more interesting.
Some random information on our site
may be in a strange relation to
what happens around. You can switch off all panels, if they are distracting you
from reading.
Such game is similar to some sacral practices of Buddhist monks in the monasteries,
which are used to expand consciousness.
Another approach to synchronicity phenomenon was explored by Carl Jung.
It is a traditional western astrology!
We think both views are very close to the origin of sundials - the Time. It is
very interesting matter for children of certain age,
and absolutely not for the majority of adults. They just don't have enough time .
FREERIGHT
It is quite easy to explain to children that spreading of ideas is different from distribution of apples
(Bernard Show did it first):
If we have two apples, they can be distributed among two kids.
Each of them will stay with one apple after that.
But, if we distribute two ideas among two kids, each of them will stay with
two ideas!
We can add that after distribution of two ideas, we'll have six in fact!
Two original ideas plus two different reflections of two original ideas of two kids.
A bit similar to jazz jam session, or brainstorming. Who is the author? Canny children suggested to call such type of knowledge spreading - freeright, or just ©. We are not sure that such principle is applicable in mordern world, but for ancient knowledge of gnomonics it is. The knowledge about sundials had existed in Sumer culture more than one thousand years before Greeks gave the name to it...
From a legal point of view that means, that any information from our site (not copyrighted in usual way, which we almost respect) may be freely used and shared without any additional permissions or conditions, with or without reference to our site.
TEAM
These are the people who have contributed to the True Time Workshop their passion, skill, and wisdom. They are the last of Magic(i)ans:
