Meeting 5 • 22 January 2013 • Tuesday
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pictures of the week
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thought-bite of the week: "[I]n these countries nobody would dream of going out to look for alpine plants, or to study rock strata, or take barometers up to high altitudes. They are used to a dull domestic life; [apparently] they live not to enjoy life but to prolong it."(Humboldt, "Personal Narrative", from Jaguars and Electric Eels, ed. & trans. Wilson, p. 12) |
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mini-text of the week (start): "The farm we lodged at was a fine sugar-cane plantation.… The owner's house is situated on a hillock surrounded by huts for the negroes.…"Humboldt, "Personal Narrative", from Jaguars and Electric Eels, ed. & trans. Wilson, p. 22 (read more) |
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(10') Thought-bite of the week: a) plants, rocks, altitudes, and facts, opinions, and values – We're getting to the meaning of "sustainable environmentalism", in the sense of using knowledge and reasoning to examine decisions about how to manage (or not manage) our surroundings. How much do we really know about the data – what it is, how much there is, how it was gathered? Data points vs data ranges: |----•----| What they knew then, what we know now (and how much of what we know now is based on incorrect knowledge). Mini-text of the week (maybe save for next meeting): 1) What sorts of people did Humboldt encounter in Venezuela? (=an informal quiz on the Jaguars and Electric Eels reading). 2) What do we know about prices in the past (food, housing, wages, etc.), and how much can we compare them to the present (= yet another dimensions of "interpreting the past"). 3) The tricky topic of slavery. |
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(30') Review of last week's quantitative activity and expansion to applications related to travel, exploration, and sustainability (basic quantities worksheet, stage 2 • later: basic quantities worksheet stage 3 • basic quantities worksheet stage 4). Comment: Last week people filled in a fair amount of quantities, but indicated very little about how they actually determined those quantities (whether by showing calculations or by giving the sources of their information, for example "personal experience on a flight" or "remembered from middle school math"). Preview: SINQing the Humboldt canoe: a) symbolically; b) actually? I'm discussing it with the gym people. Ten people in our class said they'd get in the water. |
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(10') more about Humboldt-named schools and their role in this course; featured schools: PDX (now closed - summer of 2012), Arizona, CA (Humboldt BAY HS), Illinois (AvH Chicago), NYC, Saskatchewan, Mexico City, Puebla, Berlin-Tegel, Hamburg, Rüsselsheim, Kazakhstan; reinterpreting the past better for ourselves by (re)interpreting it for others. Upcoming: choosing your Humboldt-named school |
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(10') presentation about educational standards and their parts in the course: 1) evaluating own education; 2) helping others to learn; preview of upcoming writing assignment and skills questionnaire. Documents: Oregon preK-12 standards for Visual & Performing Arts (0693), especially pp. 8-10, 12, 14, & (especially) 26. Discussion topic: which standards were addressed by writing about the Humboldt portrait? |
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(10') about writing skills and critical thinking: how to structure "Leaving Home"; importance of an concept of change (in our individual lives, in development of human thought, in study of origins of sustainable environmentalism) - Anindita will also do some of this in the workshops. |
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(5') Previews & announcements:1) Mentor workshops and next class meeting; note also how I have annotated the outlines for previous meetings with comments (key to symbols) about what happened during them; 2) Portraits of ourselves as environmentalist-explorers. 3) Upcoming: choosing areas of specialization for individual reading, lesson-plan project, team project. 4) Keeping up with the reading – see "schedule" page; maps now available; pagination of printed vs. e-books. 5) a leftover from the Hawaiian trip - while you're thinking about such things as chocolate, macadamis nuts, and coffee, look at Jaguars and Electric Eels (p. 21) and these links (link 1 • link 2) to see how modern AvH was in his beverages, and read Jaguars p. 44 about his fashiona |