#WeirdEd Week 14- Aliens

This week you need to get your tones, lights, bicycles, and power loaders ready because we are talking about aliens.

So much of #WeirdEd is about being slightly different. Weird. Not fitting in or being one of the group. And through that learning acceptance, flexibility, and empathy. So basically, being an alien and learning to cope.

Let's talk about different aliens and what they represent in pop culture.

There's the ones we are supposed to fear, the titular Alien of Riley Scott's (mostly) excellent series, Klingons from Star Trek:TOS and the Cardassians from Star Trek:TNG, Pacific Rim's kaiju, and the Vogons.*

The lovable aliens like Alf, Paul, Micheal Jackson, Zoidberg (because why not Zoidberg), and tribbles.*

The ones who help us and teach us like Ford Prefect, Nibbler, Vulcans, Yoda, Valentine Micheal Smith (not technically an alien but so very alien), and The Doctor.*

And the ones we are supposed to help like E.T., The Little Green Aliens (pictured above), Nibbler again, and the little bots from Batteries Not Included.*

We are and we have these aliens in our classes and in ourselves. That's why we like writing about them so much. It's why so many great movies (E.T.) and awful movies (Transformers) are about aliens. We can project anything we want on to them. Our hopes, our fears, our aspirations, our wish to have sex with a very tall blue monkey lady (looking at you James Cameron). These things (with the exception of the last one [probably...hopefully]) show up in our kids all the time. They show up in our teaching. We can learn from them.

So pull on your ultra-tight Starfleet uniforms, grab your towel, make sure to fill out form 3652A in triplicate and submit it to the proper authorities before close of business, and don't forget your sonic, because we're getting out there.

***Things to Think About***
Pretty much the four types of aliens I named up there. They will be the basis for the questions and the thrust of the thinking.


*I thought for a second about linking to each of those, but you have the Google. You do the work if you don't know.