Ryan McFarland

Two years ago the Alaska Recreation and Park Association Conference was in Homer. One of the activities i participated in had us divide into teams, armor and arm a teammate (me, naturally) with aluminum foil, and then battle until the armor was gone. This was a rather unusual activity for the conference although there are usually some fun classes mixed in with hours of discussion. I taught a class on the use of Nerf guns for programming in an effort to point out the need to provide programs that appeal to youth instead of avoiding “violent” activities. We sort of made it a theme for the programmers to focus on embracing things that we normally view as problems.