Thursday, September 10. 2015

Today's schedule is AG-D-C-B-A

Advisory Class - Did you remember your student fees? Student fees are $25 and the cost for a lock is $8; so $33 in total if you don't have a lock for your locker. Four full lockers are gone grade 12's and it's first in so don't forget.

D Block Geography 12 - Today we'll work on the foundations of Geography starting with the Five Themes. In order to understand the increasingly complex and interconnected world we live in we need to find a way to make sense of information in a way that doesn't overwhelm us. The Five Themes (Location, Place, Human-Environment Interactions, Movement, and Regions) are a framework for making sense of geographic data. After this I'll give you time to continue your observing as a geographer activity from yesterday's class.

C Block Criminology 12 - Today I want you to continue collecting all of your ideas about reasons for criminal behaviour on the overhead-computer-board and then try to categorize them into crime theory clusters (similar categories). We'll see where your clusters fit in terms of Choice, Trait, Social Structure, Social Learning, and Conflict theories. After this, we'll begin our look at the nature vs. nurture debate by focusing on the history of psychological and sociological criminology which will help you with your first activity in the course). I'll give you a handout to help you with crime theories and tomorrow we'll talk about what your first activity will be.

A Block Social Studies 10 - Today we'll continue drawing our large scale mental maps of Canada in groups. When we finish, we'll share our maps and discuss why it is difficult to conceptualize and graphically represent our country. In the time remaining we'll begin a lab exercise on latitude, longitude, and time zones. We'll finish that activity tomorrow and start looking at the five themes of geography.

So why did I ask you to do a large scale mental map? Our activity yesterday was to collectively create mental maps of Canada. This was a difficult experience considering there were no outline maps of Canada in the class for you to base your individual and collective maps on. You had to use your own image/concept of Canada. Maps are subjective because they are made by people to represent data in a specific way. What you did yesterday was a highly complex activity working through verbal communication skills in order to collectively represent data in a graphic format (encoding rather than decoding). You had to negotiate a diverse set of frames, or points of view, with different sets of data in order to build something that represented your collective knowledge of Canada.

What do maps show? Professor Michael Peterson from the University of Nebraska (Omaha) said:
The purpose of a map is to show the world at a smaller scale so that we are able to get a sense of where things are located in relation to one another, and that we can have a better understanding of different patterns in geographical space. Maps are also valuable in that they are useful for gaining knowledge of patterns in geographic space and expanding our understanding of navigation. They are important to show trends in things as weather, population and growth. They are a visual source where spatial messages are transmitted from a cartographer to everyday people like you and me.

So maps are a language...the language of geography and today we'll look at some map basics