D Block Social Studies 10 - OK so yesterday we had fun presenting our mental maps of Canada and just started our look at map essentials. Remember that Mental maps are a great way to identify personal knowledge, preconceptions, and perspective. From the Canada Digitital Collections Initiative consider the following:
Mental maps are the maps of our surroundings that we have in our heads. We can divide our mental maps into neighbourhood or local maps, and global mental maps, that is, how we imagine what the Earth looks like and where different countries and regions are located. We use neighbourhood mental maps in everyday travel to school, work, and recreation. We use global mental maps to think about other places, other countries, such as when we watch the news, plan a trip, study another country, send an email on the computer, or a letter by regular mail. Everyone has a different mental map. What your mental maps looks like can vary depending on what is important to you. For instance, a person who plays outdoor soccer in the summer might know where all the outdoor fields are, but a person who is interested in collecting comic books might know instead where all the best comic book stores are and not have a clue as to where the soccer fields are. Because mental maps depend so much on personal values, they are sometimes not as complete or as correct as a real map.
So, maps are made by someone for a purpose and as such they will have a bias or a perspective...this is important to remember when we critically analyse maps throughout the course. Since we didn't get to it yesterday, we'll look at some map basics. We'll look at latitude, longitude, and time zones. We'll brainstorm some class notes together on the topic. We'll also spend some time on Google Earth (right now I'm sitting at 49 degrees 42 minutes 32.62 seconds North and 124 degrees 59 minutes 51.09 seconds west). After this we will work in the Geographic Understandings book (they're the green geography books in the class). You'll need to complete the following questions on latitude & longitude, map grids, direction, and distance:
- Page 3 and 4 questions 2, 3, 4, & 5a
- Page 7 questions 1, 2, 3 and 4
B Block Geography 12 - Today we'll continue our 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. Friday saw us look at the first two themes and hopefully today we'll cover the remaining themes and our Geography I.D. assignment. After, we'll move on to systems. This is an important class as everything we look at in geography will be through the lens of systems science. We'll look at systems, feedback, equilibrium, and thresholds.You'll have four questions to work on tonight (What is a System; Define and give examples of Open and Closed Systems; Explain with examples what Positive and Negative Feedback is; and Explain in terms of systems what Dynamic Equilibrium, Thresholds, and Metastable Equilibrium are).
University of Twente System Theory
Principa Cybernetica Web What is Systems Theory
Fundamentals of Physical Geography Introduction to Systems Theory
Human Ecology Chapter 2 Populations and Feedback Systems
A Block Social Studies 11 - Today we'll begin our look at the government structure we have here in Canada. We'll take a few notes on Democracy (direct and representative) and see what a Constitutional Monarchy is (these are the building blocks of understanding our government structure). Lastly we'll begin looking at the "Division of Powers" and then we'll finish our look at Federalism with challenges to it (think regionalism from yesterday). We'll take a diagram down about the structure of our government and then we'll look at the legislative branch of government. No homework tonight! For more information on the Federal system of governance (Federal, Provincial, and Municipal division of powers check out the following websites:
Governor General of Canada
The Federal Government
The Constitution Act 1982
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