Reflections on This Place
Geike Inlet, Glacier BayI want to thank all of you who participated in the Southeast Place-Based Learning Institute and have linked their blogs to this site. Your blogs are thoughtful, insightful, creative, professional and are designed beautifully. Many of you really went the extra mile and created truly amazing blogs.
It's definitely worth some time reviewing what others in the course are up to and their ideas for incorporating place-based concepts in their teaching. Just click around the links in the Course Participants menu on the right.
This summer I was privileged to work with youth in exploring Southeast though the dual lenses of culture and science.
On the scientific side, I spent a week in Glacier Bay aboard the Glacier Seal with eight teens as part of the Discover Design Research (DDR) program partnered by the University of Alaska Southeast (UAS) and the Juneau Economic Development Counsel (JEDC).
We experienced glacial dynamics and ecological succession in a manner as dramatic as can only occur in this world-class natural laboratory.
Here, a DDR student from North Carolina practices his passion for photography and nature (Brown bear print in silt at the face of the Grand Pacific Glacier).
Culturally speaking, I had the most amazing experience working for a week with extraordinary colleagues in the Path to Excellence culture camp sponsored by Goldbelt Heritage Foundation.
Students there explored their heritage and cultures through visiting culturally important places and hearing stories from elders and culture bearers, while learning science and tech tools for studying and sharing their learning. Their blogs can be found at the PlaceBook blog.
Students who visited this remote and sacred ancestral place will no doubt remember this ancient text, dimly visible in the light filtered through the trees.
Some hundreds of years ago in place now called Berner's Bay, a Tlinget marked this place with a story carved in stone. Though now inscrutable, it is far more enduring than this ephemeral digital text you are reading.
It seems connecting place and story aren't such a new idea, after all.
Blog Assignment and Grading Criteria
Students will complete a final project that suits their professional purposes using media, field experience and other resources presented in the institute. In their own blog, students will respond to the essential question of the institute “ Tell a story of a place over time” demonstrating their knowledge of place-based instruction and incorporating new technology tools.
Course grading will be A-F based upon the following
A. Participation and Collegial Support 50%
Participants will be expected to actively and collegially participate in discussions, activities, and other process experiences during the seminars and group sessions.
b. Application and Assessment - Blog Post 50%
Participants will construct a blog post telling a story of a place over time. Participants will include ideas on how place-based education will be applied in their classroom next year. Participants must demonstrate 21st century technology skills in their post, including hyperlinking text to a related resource and importing an image from the internet or Google Earth into their post.
Consider this rubric.
Course grading will be A-F based upon the following
A. Participation and Collegial Support 50%
Participants will be expected to actively and collegially participate in discussions, activities, and other process experiences during the seminars and group sessions.
b. Application and Assessment - Blog Post 50%
Participants will construct a blog post telling a story of a place over time. Participants will include ideas on how place-based education will be applied in their classroom next year. Participants must demonstrate 21st century technology skills in their post, including hyperlinking text to a related resource and importing an image from the internet or Google Earth into their post.
Good-Better-Best
Style, precision and substance matters!
The following are appreciated when evaluating your work:
- Clarity and accuracy in communications.
- Attention to detail in your final-product assignment.
- Creativity and personalization in application of course materials.
- Timeliness and professionalism when interacting with others.
Consider this rubric.
- GOOD - Product demonstrates emerging skills and basic understanding. Room for growth and development. (20-30 points)
- BETTER - Product demonstrates near-mastery of content and skills. Shows close attention to details and processes. (30-40 points)
- BEST - Product demonstrates consistent use of high-level skills. Excellence in effort and execution throughout. (40-50 points)
Blogger Introduction
Let's Get Started!
If you're reading this, you're reading a blog. If you're taking this course for credit, your assignment is to create your own blog in which you explore meaningful connections between place and people.
Besides demonstrating basic blog design skills and functions like posting text, images and linking to other sites, feel free to use your blog for your own professional purposes. From telling the story of a place through words and images, to creating place-based lessons for your classroom, the options for your blog are wide open.
You may want to explore the Explore Alaska! link under the Course Participants menu on the right to get some ideas from other teachers across Alaska who created their own blogs in Spring 2010.
You may already be a blogger and use another blog program or service. Feel free to use any other blog program or service you like. Otherwise, try blogger. It's quick! It's easy! And it's free!
Start by clicking on this blogger link. Follow the prompts to set up your own blog for this course. There you'll also find a helpful Quick Tour and Video Tutorial along with other useful features - just a click away.
Naming Your Blog
It can be a surprisingly difficult task to reduce the scope of ideas in this course to a few helpful words. Feel free to be creative and personalize, but please choose a title that somehow directly relates to this course and the purpose of your blog.
Choosing a Design Template
You will be prompted to select your basic template for your blog. You can change colors, add gadgets, and move elements around to suit your style. Take a little time to play with your blog design. Strive to make it unique, appealing and easy for others to use and read.
Linking your blog to this blog
After you save your blog, send an email to the course instructor at explorealaskablog@gmail.com .
Be sure to include the blog title and its URL. The URL is your blog's web address. It should look like this, but with your blog's name in it: http://your blog name here.blogspot.com.
The instructor will add your blog as a link in the Course Participants menu on the main page of this blog.
A Note on Privacy
You are not required to use your real name or provide personal information on your blog. Here are some recommendations:
- Only provide information you wish to make public.
- You may choose to not display your personal profile when you set-up your blog.
- You may choose to not include your email on your blog.
- You may limit or exclude Readers' Comments under the Settings menu for your blog.
Bottom Line: Treat your blog as a practical portfolio which you can use professionally.
Better Blogging
A few words about better blogging. Among other things, blogging is writing. However, it's writing in a very public way. Unlike a personal journal or diary, blogs are open to the world and should reflect an awareness of a potentially much larger audience.
Please consider these concepts:
Please consider these concepts:
Clear - Blog writing should be final draft quality. Consider doing your initial writing and editing offline, then copy and paste it into blogger when you're satisfied with its quality.
Concise - Good writing in general is spare, simple and direct. This is arguably even more true for online writing. Try to aim for 3-5 paragraphs per post.
Confidentiality - Carefully consider what kind personal information is appropriate to include in your blog. Blog profile settings offer a wide variety of features to help you best decide who and what others should know about a blog's author.
Comments - Consider how you want others to interact with your blog. From zero comments to an open forum, comments sections add richness as well as liabilities for bloggers. I recommend using moderated comments that are only displayed with your approval.
Credible - Personal opinions can have considerable merit, especially when based on personal knowledge and experience.
Otherwise, reason, research and resources should be employed to support personal views.
Creative - Blogs are an excellent medium for personal creativity. The themes you choose to feature, the kinds of other media you include, the writing style you employ and the layout and visual appeal you design are just some of the creative arenas for you to explore and master.
Contrast - Visual appeal and readability are enhanced by using contrasting fonts, colors and elements. Selecting the wrong font color may be all it takes to keep someone from reading otherwise brilliant writing.
Clean - Blogs can become cluttered with visually distracting images and features. Keep your blogs visually tidy. Besides looking better, they are more useful for others whom you'd like to visit your blog.
Credit - Good ideas and images deserve and/or require proper credit - even your own.
Captions - Unless it is absolutely obvious, images should have some kind of caption to help make conceptual connections more clear.
Context - Images should relate obviously to the topic at hand.
Connected - Including excellent links and having others link to your blog makes it more powerful and more connected.
CRAP - While we're on the subject, let me share with you some words about CRAP! Hit this link to DailyBlogTips to learn simple tools for designing more powerful blogs using the principles of Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity.
Concise - Good writing in general is spare, simple and direct. This is arguably even more true for online writing. Try to aim for 3-5 paragraphs per post.
Confidentiality - Carefully consider what kind personal information is appropriate to include in your blog. Blog profile settings offer a wide variety of features to help you best decide who and what others should know about a blog's author.
Comments - Consider how you want others to interact with your blog. From zero comments to an open forum, comments sections add richness as well as liabilities for bloggers. I recommend using moderated comments that are only displayed with your approval.
Credible - Personal opinions can have considerable merit, especially when based on personal knowledge and experience.
Otherwise, reason, research and resources should be employed to support personal views.
Creative - Blogs are an excellent medium for personal creativity. The themes you choose to feature, the kinds of other media you include, the writing style you employ and the layout and visual appeal you design are just some of the creative arenas for you to explore and master.
Contrast - Visual appeal and readability are enhanced by using contrasting fonts, colors and elements. Selecting the wrong font color may be all it takes to keep someone from reading otherwise brilliant writing.
Clean - Blogs can become cluttered with visually distracting images and features. Keep your blogs visually tidy. Besides looking better, they are more useful for others whom you'd like to visit your blog.
Credit - Good ideas and images deserve and/or require proper credit - even your own.
Captions - Unless it is absolutely obvious, images should have some kind of caption to help make conceptual connections more clear.
Context - Images should relate obviously to the topic at hand.
Connected - Including excellent links and having others link to your blog makes it more powerful and more connected.
CRAP - While we're on the subject, let me share with you some words about CRAP! Hit this link to DailyBlogTips to learn simple tools for designing more powerful blogs using the principles of Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity.
Sediment Size, Shape and Sorting
Though lacking information about the roles of glaciers and related phenomena, UNESCO's website has good general information and activities about beaches for students.
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