Module Seven

Explain: What new learning or reflections have you taken from this module?

When I’m mired in science and math (easy to do), I find illustrations and graphs very useful to my understanding; because of that, the Nasa graphic energy budget helped me immensely, as did the other illustrations, including the carbon cycle, with its percentages that I spent a few minutes adding up, if only to assure myself that I’ve kept at least enough of my grade-school level math to look for 100%. My high school math is non-existent, and my college math is locked up somewhere in a graphing calculator, stuck there like one of the rocks we studied in Cathy Connor’s geology class, having sunk to the bottom when I hit the wall during finals week, fighting Ron Seater’s Math 107 to a draw and vowing never to go back.

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=20186

As for whether I found other helpful Nasa illustrations, indeed I did, including the one above that reminded me of the summer a few years ago when we had lots of clear skies and smoke coming through the Chilkat Pass and making its hazy way down the Lynn Canal to our own air here in Juneau, which happens only now and then. The source under the image links to a Nasa article that explains the phenomenon. 

Extend: How might you use this week’s information and resources in your lessons?

http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/ems.html

The electromagnetic spectrum is somehow fascinating, and Teacher’s Domain, with the interesting and not –too-long videos and the clear informative background essays make it feasible that I might look at the world and see its factual manifestations. Learning and reflection are only complete when they embrace every aspect, I suppose. And any resistance to dry science in favor of elaborate sentence structure is no more than a reminder to me that my own students have their preferences as well. Off I go to teach composition and creative writing, with a new appreciation for those students who say they didn’t have time to revise their essays because they were too busy studying for their math tests. Or geology. Yes, I’ll say. Has an equation been formulated for the complex linkages between the lithosphere and the cryosphere?

Lawrence Berkeley National Labratory http://www.lbl.gov/MicroWorlds/ALSTool/EMSpec/EMSpec2.html

Evaluate: How useful, insightful or relevant are this module’s information and resources?

Although we have a number of chapters in our oral history describing the way that people came to the coast when the ice that had covered most of the land almost up to the water’s edge was retreating, there were always people already here to greet them. I don’t think it can properly be said that Tlingit people (a redundancy that’s rapidly becoming quite acceptable) “discovered the region,” implying that the Tlingit experience with this land—this land from which the culture, the language, the people emerged—is somehow comparable to the European explorers that our children are forced endlessly to study.

 

"The American Flag on Wrangell Land, Near East Cape"

The Cruise of the Corwin, 1917

http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/books.html

Insightful, perhaps not so much. Working its way toward a realization that everything is connected, more so. Scientists are only now being compelled to realize what Native people knew before the Euro-American “discovery” of their lands: everything is indeed connected. Everything has life and all life is equally important. Man is not supreme, nor is he above the animals, the plants, our earth, other people, as the 2005 fourth-grade winning artist for the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies illustrates so well:

http://www.strategies.org/education/index.aspx?sub=education&sub2=student&sub3=2005

Native people some time ago noticed that lakes were going dry, plant cycles were changing, animals were waking early. Students benefit when Native elders teach them, but even more will teachers and scientists benefit from the same opportunity. To be taught by Native people, not to collect their “lore.” To be taught.

 3 Questions & 3 Colleagues

I enjoyed Tracy’s relation of weather in Fairbanks, his gardening, the Chinook wind to our lessons. It seems to me that it’s exactly how humans are meant to learn.

Doug’s blog was helpful as well, with an understandable explanation of the scientific principles I need to review several times a day to keep in my head.

I found Cheryl’s comments about ways of understanding  insightful and reassuring.