Essential Question: How do stories of cataclysmic events help inform students about geosciences and cultures?
Stories about cataclysmic events helps to inform student by showing them what happens during such events.
Stories can make an event that seems otherworldly more personal. Something that happened hundreds of thousands of years ago does not seem very relevant to a student. If you can make it relevant to the student by using stories to make a personal connection, students are more likely to internalize the information. The 1964 Earthquake was more real to me after I heard a staff member talk of her personal experience. I had a personal connection to it. I listened more intently when I heard it mentioned during my summer class or the videos shown on TD. I took more interest in the why and the what. Recently with the heart breaking stories coming out of Haiti, the media coverage brought something that happened thousands of miles away and made it personal to their viewers. If an event is thought to be relevant by a student, the student is more likely to pay attention, study and research the event.
Stories about cataclysmic events helps to inform student by showing them what happens during such events. By knowing what happened to the dock in Valdez, we know what was taking place underneath. We know that pressure was built up in the earth and had to be released. We learn of the process that turned the loose sediment to liquid. We learned that the ground dropped and tsunamis came as a result. We can learn this by studying the stories of what happened to the docks.
Stories are also important in the traditional to inform us of what is going on. Before the class started I watch a program on the devastating tsunami of 2004. A small section of the program was about a scientist who was studying a primitive tribe on an isolated island. The tribe had no warning system, and no way of being warned, even if there had been time. The scientist fully expected to be met with total devastation when he went to check on them but was surprised to find that no one was killed. Everyone in the tribe had survived by going to higher ground before the big waves struck the beach. They knew to leave the beach when the water receded due to a traditional story. The forces of the earth and water were tugging and pulling on the tree that the world is balanced on. Their wisdom said that it was not safe to be by the boundaries of earth and water until the fighting was over.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Essential Question: How are landscapes formed and how, in turn, are cultures shaped by their landscapes?
Landscapes are formed, first, by the movement of the tectonic plates. The plates here move together and push one plate above another. This raises part of the landscape while at the same time pushing the other out of existence, no longer the surface of the earth. The friction of the plates causes earthquakes and volcanoes, each in their own way shaping the landscape. Water (in all of its forms: running water, waves, glaciers, ice) and wind also play a part on the shape the skin of our planet takes. The “Big Earthquake” in the 1960’s changed the shape of Alaska’s coastline in a matter of minutes. Here on the lower tundra trees are more bushes than real trees (despite what the kids call them!) because of the harsh winds and temperatures.
Landscape can determine a lot about a culture. Waterways make travel, trade and war easier. Mountains are obstacles that are not always passable. Landscape effects weather that in turn effects food supplies.
On one of the clips on TD that was assigned to us to watch a woman from the upper Yukon was talking about the concern about enough salmon getting to her area. They depend on this fish but because they are further in-land if the fish are all harvested on the lower river than her people would not have the fish they need for the year.
During my Alaska History class last summer I learned the tribes that lived near volcanoes in the lower southwest of Alaska mummified some of their dead. Mummies and Alaska are not usually thought of together in the same sentence. If not for the geological feature of the volcanoes, then the mummies would not have been possible.
This afternoon while at a neighbor’s house the subject of caribou hunting came up. It was asked if it was common to bleed and quarter the caribou before its brought back. Someone else said that it would be easy to bleed, just cut the throat, but then it was pointed out that the heart is no longer pumping and the blood won’t drain. This caught my attention. My family butchered our own meat when I was growing up and Dad always cut the throat to bleed and skin the animal. I realized that he had strong trees and other things to hoist the carcass up. Here there is not a tree strong enough to hold a small child much less a full-sized caribou or seal.
Landscapes are formed, first, by the movement of the tectonic plates. The plates here move together and push one plate above another. This raises part of the landscape while at the same time pushing the other out of existence, no longer the surface of the earth. The friction of the plates causes earthquakes and volcanoes, each in their own way shaping the landscape. Water (in all of its forms: running water, waves, glaciers, ice) and wind also play a part on the shape the skin of our planet takes. The “Big Earthquake” in the 1960’s changed the shape of Alaska’s coastline in a matter of minutes. Here on the lower tundra trees are more bushes than real trees (despite what the kids call them!) because of the harsh winds and temperatures.
Landscape can determine a lot about a culture. Waterways make travel, trade and war easier. Mountains are obstacles that are not always passable. Landscape effects weather that in turn effects food supplies.
On one of the clips on TD that was assigned to us to watch a woman from the upper Yukon was talking about the concern about enough salmon getting to her area. They depend on this fish but because they are further in-land if the fish are all harvested on the lower river than her people would not have the fish they need for the year.
During my Alaska History class last summer I learned the tribes that lived near volcanoes in the lower southwest of Alaska mummified some of their dead. Mummies and Alaska are not usually thought of together in the same sentence. If not for the geological feature of the volcanoes, then the mummies would not have been possible.
This afternoon while at a neighbor’s house the subject of caribou hunting came up. It was asked if it was common to bleed and quarter the caribou before its brought back. Someone else said that it would be easy to bleed, just cut the throat, but then it was pointed out that the heart is no longer pumping and the blood won’t drain. This caught my attention. My family butchered our own meat when I was growing up and Dad always cut the throat to bleed and skin the animal. I realized that he had strong trees and other things to hoist the carcass up. Here there is not a tree strong enough to hold a small child much less a full-sized caribou or seal.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Essential Question: How is everything connected from the perspectives of indigenous peoples and Western scientists? What are the advantages to knowing both ways?
Both perspectives have many things in common. The main similarity that I see, is that both perspectives study the world around them to better understand. One is to broaden understanding in general, the other, originally, to survive. The Western viewpoint is much more methodical and clinical. The indigenous viewpoint is more flexible and fluid. Both take what is observed and use it to better understand the world.
Both approach this from different directions. In the Traditional, everything is important. Earth, sky and everything in between is important. Knowing the overall picture is paramount to survival. Not having a working knowledge of weather patterns, animal behavior, plant development, and natural forces would have been a death sentence. The Big Picture is more important than any one part. Each part, a key piece of the survival puzzle.
The Western approach has had the luxury of taking a small part and studying it exclusively. Each aspect of study is divided into its own field. Some scientists choose to study a small part of a specialized science, with little thought of how it fits with other areas of study. A botanist cares little about what an astrologer finds in the stars and visa versa.
The advantage of knowing both schools of thought is a greater chance of learning more than by studying one alone. Limiting ourselves to one perspective is just that, limiting. Each perspective has a wealth of knowledge to benefit from.
A quick, slightly related, side note thought:
The Western viewpoint of the modern person, I believe, is more likely to be compartmentalized. Work is work, home is home, fun is fun, and nature is nature, all different, separate things. We rarely see any of these things as connected. In the traditional perspective, things are more interconnected. If work goes badly, one does not eat, or goes cold. Most modern “western” people do not see the different parts of their lives as a connected whole, where as a more traditional view does see these things as connected.
This wasn’t always so. It is something that has been lost to most the last few hundred years or so as we move more and more away from an agricultural country to an industrial. Growing up a farm I know how dependant people are on the natural world whether they know it or not. We have been lucky, for the most part that we live in a country that has been able to provide for our needs. Yes, there has been years of drought and flood but never has it been to the total devastation of our country (the Dust Bowl being the closest we have come and, thankfully, our grandparents eventually overcame). The slack is picked up by other parts of an area or region. Do we realize how dependent we are on the natural world?
Both perspectives have many things in common. The main similarity that I see, is that both perspectives study the world around them to better understand. One is to broaden understanding in general, the other, originally, to survive. The Western viewpoint is much more methodical and clinical. The indigenous viewpoint is more flexible and fluid. Both take what is observed and use it to better understand the world.
Both approach this from different directions. In the Traditional, everything is important. Earth, sky and everything in between is important. Knowing the overall picture is paramount to survival. Not having a working knowledge of weather patterns, animal behavior, plant development, and natural forces would have been a death sentence. The Big Picture is more important than any one part. Each part, a key piece of the survival puzzle.
The Western approach has had the luxury of taking a small part and studying it exclusively. Each aspect of study is divided into its own field. Some scientists choose to study a small part of a specialized science, with little thought of how it fits with other areas of study. A botanist cares little about what an astrologer finds in the stars and visa versa.
The advantage of knowing both schools of thought is a greater chance of learning more than by studying one alone. Limiting ourselves to one perspective is just that, limiting. Each perspective has a wealth of knowledge to benefit from.
A quick, slightly related, side note thought:
The Western viewpoint of the modern person, I believe, is more likely to be compartmentalized. Work is work, home is home, fun is fun, and nature is nature, all different, separate things. We rarely see any of these things as connected. In the traditional perspective, things are more interconnected. If work goes badly, one does not eat, or goes cold. Most modern “western” people do not see the different parts of their lives as a connected whole, where as a more traditional view does see these things as connected.
This wasn’t always so. It is something that has been lost to most the last few hundred years or so as we move more and more away from an agricultural country to an industrial. Growing up a farm I know how dependant people are on the natural world whether they know it or not. We have been lucky, for the most part that we live in a country that has been able to provide for our needs. Yes, there has been years of drought and flood but never has it been to the total devastation of our country (the Dust Bowl being the closest we have come and, thankfully, our grandparents eventually overcame). The slack is picked up by other parts of an area or region. Do we realize how dependent we are on the natural world?
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