Friday, January 10. 2020

Today's schedule is ABCD-L

A Block Physical Geography - To start the class, we will discuss Jared Diamond's book Collapse, trying to make sense of how civilizations in the past collapsed (Maya & Rapa Nui) and extrapolating his findings to our modern society today. We'll look at the twelve major modern environmental problems that Diamond identifies and examine his conclusions about our potential future. Remember to ask me about bunnies and Australia, specifically the 24 bunnies that the British brought with them in 1859 and how much the Australian government spends annually to control them. After we'll start watching Home, an incredible documentary by Yann Arthus-Bertrand who also helped to initiate a foundation called Good Planet. Please take some time to share this movie with as many family and friends as you can. You can watch it on line at the YouTube home project's channel or connect with it on the film's Facebook page or watch it below...

Think about the title. What is our collective home? Now think about the statement from the beginning of the film today...

Listen to me, please. You're like me, a homo sapiens. A wise human. Life; a miracle in the universe appeared around 4 billion years ago and we humans only 200,000 years ago, yet we have succeeded in disrupting the balance so essential to life. Listen carefully to this extraordinary story, which is yours, and decide what you want to do with it. 

I cannot stress this enough...this movie is amazing! It perfectly encapsulates Geography 12...it is both a cautionary tale of human impacts and a love letter to the planet.

See Diamond talk at TED here.

From Nat Geo...
Imagine if hundreds of years from now, scientists excavated the abandoned ruins of some of our largest cities, what conclusions would they come to? It happened to the Romans, the Anasazi, and the Mayans and, inevitably, one day our own modern civilisation will also fall. In this two hour special discover how a future civilisation might be baffled as to why the population of these once-great cities would suddenly abandon their technology and architecture, and turn their homes into ghost towns. Some experts believe that there is a very real risk this could happen, and the collapse of the world as we know it is closer than we think. Examining the parallels between cultures separated by hundreds of years, explore whether the key to preventing such a global collapse today could lie in finding renewable alternatives to our dwindling energy supplies and sustainable resources. Can we learn from the mistakes of the past before it's too late?

Remember it's too late to be a pessimist! 

Business Insider asks: Is the Anthropocene real? That is, the vigorously debated concept of a new geological epoch driven by humans. Our environmental impact is indeed profound — there is little debate about that — but is it significant on a geological timescale, measured over millions of years? And will humans leave a distinctive mark upon the layers of rocks that geologists of 100,000,000 AD might use to investigate the present day? Check out:

The Anthropocene Project 
Welcome to The Anthropocene

B Block Human Geography - After today there are 9 classes remaining in the semester, with three days next week in the learning commons for your Inquiry project. The Geo-Inquiry fair is on the morning of Friday, January 24th in the superlab. So, that being said, today we will be going to the Library/Learning Commons for another day to work on your Inquiry Project. You should explore the different formats you could use to tell your Geo-Inquiry Story. Answer the questions below to organize your thoughts and prepare to tell your Geo-Inquiry Story:

1. What is your Geo-Inquiry Question?
2. What kinds of data did you collect?
3. What did you learn from this data?
4. How will you represent data in your Geo-Inquiry Story?
5. What is the answer to your Geo-Inquiry Question or your proposed solution?
6. What action would you like to take based on your findings?
7. Who is the best audience for your Geo-Inquiry Story?
8. What kinds of elements will be most important to tell your Geo-Inquiry Story?
9. What is the best tool to use to tell your Geo-Inquiry Story?

Decide on a format for your end product by thinking about your interests and strengths, and what might be the most effective means of communicating the information that you have gathered and analysed. Analyse each format to determine which is the best fit for your Geo-Inquiry Story. Now...what do you need to do? How do you plan to go about doing it? When do you plan on getting it done.  Don't forget this is an active research project and I expect you'll need to go out into the community to interview people so who do you need to talk to and when will you talk with them? So yeah...it's the day where you really need to get going because including today there's only 10 classes remaining in the semester.

C/D Blocks Environmental and Social Sciences - Today we have the mobicart booked for you to continue work on your Inquiry however please remember that if you are going out of the building (for action research or interviews) you'll need to let us know where, when, and with whom. Don't forget that there are only 9 double blocks left (actually only 7 because on the 15th Courtenay-Alberni MP Gord Johns is coming to respond to the letters you wrote to him and on the 22nd we're off for a snow study on the road up to Mount Washington). Workworkwork...