Instructors’ Teaching Experience

This is a great story to teach toward the end of the semester, when the students are restless. You can go really into cool sci-fi discussions, and really relate to the modern day world! [V. Sprow, victoria-sprow@uiowa.edu]

Classroom Strategies

Looking at the Future of the Past

There are great YouTube videos on Disney’s House of the Future from the 1950s; you can compare this to the true house of the future, i.e. the Smart Home. A great exercise for this is to have students research Smart Homes, and you can talk about Bill Gates’ home as an example. Also, discuss the poem that is the title of the story (by Sara Teasdale) – the poem was written after WWI, and the short story was written after WWII -interesting how people had the same fears… One other fun exercise is to ask students to get into groups and come up with the one most meaningful invention they think will exist 50 years from now. [V. Sprow, victoria-sprow@uiowa.edu]

Bill Gates

A good house to compare with the story is Bill Gates’ house, and you can find the layout of the house as well as a papercraft model description. [V. Sprow, victoria-sprow@uiowa.edu]

External Article

It might be worth having your students look at what is growing more possible with smart houses. Articles that discuss Bradbury in looking at modern and future housing technologies can be found. [V. Sprow, victoria-sprow@uiowa.edu]

Poem Inspiration

The poem may be necessary to bring into discussion. [V. Sprow, victoria-sprow@uiowa.edu]