1) Welcome! I have been waiting so long to meet you all…
- A little bit about me – only child, mixed up family, artists/hippies, lawyers/doctors, Thunder Bay and Okotoks, hated school, loved the outdoors, writing, reading, university, BSc, first real job, BA, always making meaning, always writing, always creating, always seeking, always asking questions, I like the mud in the middle of everything, why I fought to teach TOK…and, as this is first run through, you get to help me design how things work, feedback welcome, let’s begin!
- A little bit about you – in pairs decide on what it is I need to know, in order to catch up with your IB experience so far. The catch is that I ask you all to pick an emotional tone to attach to the idea. Oh, ya, and introduce yourselves (names) to me.
2) The Outline, but first a word from Walt…
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand,
nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self…
Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.
It is not far, it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know…
~~Walt Whitman: From Song of Myself (1855) See the whole poem here.
3) A Knowledge Exercise
Free-hand, and on your own, take 5 minutes to draw a map of the world.
Let’s put them all up on the board. Now, get up and take a look at them all.
- What do you see?
- What trends?
- Who do you think did the best? The worst?
- Why?
- Why are they all oriented the same way?
- Why are some people more accurate?
- What is my point?
- Why should we care?
(Did I mention that this course is all about questions?) What is the central question in this class?
Here is the “real” map?
What is The Paradox of Cartography?
4) How do you know? The model used by IB
Here are the pieces. Before I explain it to you… as a group, see if you can use the bulletin board to assemble the model. This is a whole group task.
- What do you see?
- What words come to mind?
- What do you feel?
- What do you think?
This is a very Western model. What might an Eastern model look like? An aboriginal model?
5) Homework: How do you know? What would your model look like? What would you add to the bulletin board? Tech survey?