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Topics
“Stuff You Can’t See”
“Let’s Open Beakman’s Mail”
“Just One Teacher”
“The Tao of Beakman & Jax”
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Jok Church receives more mail from children than anyone does ...
well, except maybe Santa Claus. And he depends on those letters.
They all contain questions about the world and how it works. Jok
answers those questions from children in newspapers, in books and
software, at science museums, and on the Internet and TV. Jok uses
his great appreciation of learning to deliver an engaging presentation
to students, educators, children and adults ... anyone with a bit
of curiosity.
Jok’s father liked to build things and he was helping him
hammer down floors and mix cement by the time he was in the fourth
grade. While his father didn’t know it, he was beginning Jok’s
education in physics and chemistry. Jok’s mother always made
sure he had chemistry sets, telescopes, microscopes and whole sets
of books available.
While studying for his master’s degree at California State
University at Sacramento, Jok became the News Director for the campus
radio station. Soon, he was offered a paying job of News Director
at a Sacramento radio station and helped launch a new station north
of San Francisco in Marin County.
Jok made the move, thinking if the station went bust he could somehow
get a job with George Lucas. After three years, the station did
go broke, and his entrée into Lucasfilm was a job answering
George Lucas’ fan mail.
Eventually, the fan mail was turned into a magazine that Jok wrote
and edited. At its peak, the Star Wars Fan Club Magazine was selling
225,000 copies. Jok’s job was to explain very technical things
in a comprehensive, entertaining and humorous way.
Jok eventually became Lucasfilm Special Project Manager, and it
was his job to devise new uses for the company’s characters.
Jok developed an education television show starring R2-D2 and C-3PO
to be called “Here’s How.” Also incorporated with
the educational TV show was the development of a comic strip. In
nascent form, it featured C-3PO teaching foreign language and R2-D2
explaining the more physical world of how things work.
After this project was shelved, Jok began to focus on developing
his own learning tool for kids. The result of that effort was “You
Can With Beakman,” a weekly syndicated newspaper feature that
answers questions from children all over the world. “You Can
With Beakman” currently appears in nearly 300 newspapers. Jok
also created the CBS television series “Beakman’s World”
based on the feature and has helped create the museum exhibit that
has toured science centers and museums continually since 1998.
Jok is also the author and narrator of classroom CD-ROMs from the
National Geographic Society on plant life, systems in the human
body and on sex education. He consults as an early education specialist
for clients such as Apple Computer and Leap Frog.
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