C & D Blocks Environmental and Social Sciences - First block (C) we'll head to room 120 for your presentations on forest/land use conflicts. You will work in partners and we'll split the class up...half will present their topic first and then we'll switch. You will have a project review sheet to fill in after you look over a presentation. Remember, each presentation has a different format so take time to really delve into each topic.
Second block (d) we'll introduce your major term long Environmental Geo-Inquiry project to you. This term we want you to work on an in depth inquiry based action research project about a local environmental issue. The goal of this Geo-Inquiry project is for you and your team to find a solution to the local environmental issue you have defined by either proposing a solution to the issue or through community action. Through this process, you will create an Environmental Geo-Inquiry Story, which you will share with an audience that will be receptive to your story...
Phase 1: Ask (Developing a Geo-Inquiry Question) - Draft a Geo-Inquiry Question, which is the “big” driving question that guides a Geo-Inquiry Project. This question is geographic in nature, open-ended, action oriented and generally community-focused issues to be solved.
Phase 2: Collect (Acquiring Geographic Information) - Conduct research to collect data and information that is essential components of the Geo-Inquiry Process. You will select different types of data and information using different methods of collection. This information will allow you to answer the Geo-Inquiry Question. Data collected can include images, sound, video, and maps.
Phase 3: Visualize (Organizing and Analyzing Geographic Information) - During this phase, you will organize and analyze the data you have collected. You are preparing the information that will help you tell a Geo-Inquiry Story. This can use images, sound, video, or maps, to tell the story of the Geo-Inquiry Process.
Phase 4: Create (Developing Geo-Inquiry Stories) - Next, you will create your Geo-Inquiry story. Keep in mind the audience you have identified in previous phases, as you will present it to them. Develop your story as a multi-media presentation, designed to inform, inspire and change minds of your audience regarding the Geo-Inquiry Question. It should include the Geo-Inquiry Question, scientific data and research, visuals (maps, charts, photographs, video), in an inspiring multi-media package.
Phase 5: Act (Sharing Geo-Inquiry Stories) - In this final phase, you will explore the best way to present your Geo-Inquiry Story to the audience you have identified. Finally, you will present your Geo-Inquiry Story and use it to take action.
So today we brainstorm some broad areas of Inquiry and begin developing questions that we can focus our inquiry and action research on.
A Block Physical Geography - Today we're looking at streams and drainage basins. You'll need to work on a few definitions, a diagram, and questions 1, 3, 10, 11, and 12 from page 481 in your Geosystems textbook. The Canadian Atlas online has a great section on drainage basins .
In order to understand streams we'll watch a Bill Nye the Science Guy episode on the topic - Rivers & Streams (#209). Splash down a rapid river with Bill Nye the Science Guy and explore how ecosystems work and why they are important to our environment. From waterfalls and dams, to the depths of the Grand Canyon, this is one wet and wild ride. This week's music video showcases the Talking Headwaters singing "Take Me to the River
B Block Human Geography - Today, we are in the learning commons/library working on a language project. Your job will be to create an information graphic poster on an endangered language. For your endangered language you’ll need to:
- Show where the endangered language originated and diffused to (yes on a map).
- Show the connection to the family, branch, and group of the endangered language. (Use your best judgment on this).
- Show where the language is spoken today, indicate how many people speak it.
- Show Unique features of this endangered language (What makes it different to and similar than others?)
- Show examples of how the language is written and or spoken
- Show why your endangered language is important to save
- Show how your endangered language is both being threatened (contributing factors) and being saved
- Show how people can find more info (links...sources cited)
A hallmark feature of human intelligence is its adaptability, the ability to invent and rearrange conceptions of the world to suit changing goals and environments. One consequence of this flexibility is the great diversity of languages that have emerged around the globe. Each provides its own cognitive toolkit and encapsulates the knowledge and worldview developed over thousands of years within a culture. Each contains a way of perceiving, categorizing and making meaning in the world, an invaluable guidebook developed and honed by our ancestors. Research into how the languages we speak shape the way we think is helping scientists to unravel how we create knowledge and construct reality and how we got to be as smart and sophisticated as we are. And this insight, in turn, helps us understand the very essence of what makes us human.From A silenced tongue: the last Nuchatlaht speaker dies
Without a geographic and population base to cling to, minority languages seldom tread water for more than a generation or two before going under. Chances are, if your grandparents came to B.C. speaking something other than English, you can’t speak their mother tongue...The question has to be asked: Why fight the tide? The answer: Language is key to retaining culture...That’s not just important to those within the culture, but to all of us. “What the survival of threatened languages means, perhaps, is the endurance of dozens, hundreds, thousands of subtly different notions of truth,” argued Canadian author Mark Abley in his book Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages. Lose a language and you lose the nuanced perspectives it contains, the ones that offer a different view of the world.And from Wade Davis
“Language is not merely a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. It is a flash of the human spirit, the means by which the soul of each particular culture reaches into the material world. Every language is an old-growth forest of the …mind, a watershed of thought, an entire ecosystem of spiritual possibilities.”UNESCO has six factors that identify the vitality and endangeredness of a language. They are:
1) Intergenerational Language Transmission;
2) Absolute Number of Speakers;
3) Proportion of Speakers within the Total Population;
4) Trends in Existing Language Domains;
5) Response to New Domains and Media; and
6) Materials for Language Education and Literacy.
*Hint* Start on page 9 (of 27) on the pdf document above for help
So, today you’ll need to choose an endangered language and research the points above. Start here:
http://languagesindanger.eu/
https://www.ethnologue.com/
http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/
http://www.fpcc.ca/language/ELP/
https://www.firstvoices.com/explore/FV/sections/Data
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/apr/15/language-extinct-endangered
http://www.unesco.org/languages-atlas/index.php
http://www.eldp.net/
https://festival.si.edu/2013/One-World-Many-Voices/smithsonian
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/enduring-voices/#
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