Blogs

Title: On the Argument of the Origin by Ewashburn and Ckosarek

Purpose: To evaluate the relative merits of two styles of argumentation in Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and discuss their relevance to a modern audience.

Materials: On the Origin of Species, Laptops, Brains

Educating Evolutionarily

The man who has everything figured out is probably a fool. College examinations notwithstanding, it takes a very smart fella to say “I don’t know the answer!”
                    —Attorney Drummond, Inherit the Wind (1955)

This is late, and I'm sorry.  I'm also sorry if this isn't in the right place.

The internet encouraged development where real people didn't: I was an awkward kid and high school is not kind. So, when school was done for the day, I'd hop on the internet for fun. Online, I could explore without introducing myself. This avoided the inevitable moment a conversational partner would figure out I had no idea how “socializing” worked and ridiculed me for being a sorry, sorry excuse for an American teen.

"Brands are stories told by businesses or non-profits about who they are and what they do." There are truths about branding, but is branding truth or fiction?

I did a Prezi to build up the contributions of HeLa cells. Hit play and use the arrow keys to go backward or forward in the presentation. I hope you all enjoy! :)

http://prezi.com/pdvbxwqf3sm1/more-about-hela-less-about-henrietta-lacks/
 

 For my final hurrah for Non-Fictional Prose I decided to make a graphic novel. My decision came from a desire to revisit some things that I had resisted within the class. Graphic novels were something that I resisted in Literary Kinds, and something that we returned to again in this class. My graphic novel traces the learning that I went through in this class, and as we were all so hard on poor Arne, I dedicated a portion of my novel to his ecology of wisdom; just something to highlight what the ecological costs of many things are, things that we don't always think about. 

Is my graphic novel "the truth?" How much is fact versus how much is fiction? That is something that I will leave up to the readers to determine...

    The way the education system is set up in this society, we learn to be skeptical through our educational experiences with science, math, English, and history. It is not only science that teaches us to be skeptical through the use of the scientific method process. Carl Sagan argues that people should be more skeptical of things that cannot be proven, things for which there is no evidence, and that a way to do this is by learning the art of real science: a science that gives you empirical evidence for human existence and all the things that go with it.

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The threaded discussion below took place in October, 2010 (over email) at the initiative of one colleague seeking ideas from others. The focus began with the idea of challenging students' mental models and grew into a consideration of the question whether there is such a thing as unlearning (from the point of view of the brain, of human experience, and growth) and how the idea of unlearning signifies in various fields and endeavors.  In hopes of continuing and broadening participation in the conversation, we have moved it to Serendip and invite all interested to join.

From Alison, October 30:

“We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than we need to do that. Whether or not we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact that we haven’t so far” 

(Ron Edmonds, 1979)