My students know my weaknesses too well. I had a well crafted argument today that I should let them watch Judson Laipply‘s YouTube video, “Evolution of Dance“. The gist of the argument was that they never really understood evolution until they saw the video (we covered evolution last year); the way the dance moves evolved, with small changes from one to the other is an excellent analogy for the gradual evolution of organisms. The best example was how The Robot changed into Breakdancing. I let them watch it of course, it was a good argument and the video is pretty harmless. And if it actually helped them learn about evolution ….
Category: video
“Imagine” “War”
One of the small group assignments last week was to pick two anti-war songs and present their meaning and context. They had a choice of music ranging in time from Frederick Weatherly’s “Danny Boy” to Green Day’s “Holiday”, but they chose two Vietnam Era songs, “Imagine” and “War”.
These turned out to be inspired choices. Not the least because both had music videos that closely reflected the songs’ different approaches to conveying the same message. Lennon’s “Imagine” is peaceful, aspirational, but somewhat subversive, while Edwin Star’s “War” is militant with its rejection of conflict.
The lyrics also provided an excellent contrast in the poetic use of language to convey meaning. After showing the two music videos, the students took the songs apart, stanza by stanza, and you can read the stridency in the punctuation and use of capitals in the lyrics of “War”:
WAR! good God y’all huh
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing…say it say it SAY IT!
WAR!…uh huh yeah huh!
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing…listen to me
We had a great discussion. I found this to be an excellent assignment that merged the poetry we’ve been studying in Language Arts with the history and peace education of Social World.
John Lennon – Imagine
Uploaded by hushhush112. – See the latest featured music videos.
Amnesty International’s YouTube channel
While looking up Speak Truth to Power I ran across the Amnesty International (USA) YouTube Channel. There are quite a number of powerful videos posted and the main focus is the campaign for human rights. But human rights issues around the world today are not trivial, and it is a challenge to raise awareness that serious issues exist without demoralizing idealistic adolescents into thinking that they can do nothing about it.
I’m somewhat conflicted about the efficacy of the first two videos posted here. The one above is extremely powerful, but the one below has a simpler, more uplifting story.
I also don’t know how students would react to the music video below. I like the international voices, like that of Emmanuel Jal, that can speak from experience about the challenge facing billions around the world today. But I wonder how much the words and the meaning will register.
Saturn’s aurora borealis
I came across this beautiful animation of the auroras on Saturn. The auroras are caused by charged particles (ions) from the sun, the solar wind of protons and electrons, are focused down onto areas near the poles of a planet by the magnetic lines of a planet’s magnetic field. The ions hit the atmosphere colliding with atmospheric gas molecules like nitrogen and oxygen causing them to become excited and spit out electrons (becoming ions themselves). Molecules are not “happy” when they’re missing electrons so they’ll capture one to become “fulfilled” (fill their outer electron shells). It’s when they recapture electrons that they give off the light that we see as the auroras.
On Earth the auroras are green or brownish-red (from the Oxygen) and blue or red (from the Nitrogen). Saturn’s atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium so we’re not quite sure what color its auroras are. The auroras in the animation were colored in by NASA since the camera on the Cassini spacecraft is black and white.
The video clip below gives a nice explanation of auroras.
A reason to draw
MILTON GLASER DRAWS & LECTURES from C. Coy on Vimeo.
Why do we use our hands? Milton Glaser (above) uses his to think, and he cites Frank Wilson who argues that the hand and the brain are so connected as to be a single almost indistinguishable system. In fact, Wilson extrapolates this connection to education where, he makes the arguement, “less rigid more individualized approach to education will yield a student with a unified body and mind” (according to The New Yorker, 1998).
“The hand speaks to the brain as surely as the brain speaks to the hand” – Robertson Davies in The Cornish Trilogy
Drawing is thinking for some people at least. Perhaps that’s one of the things that defines kinesthetic learners? It certainly is something to bear in mind when designing and implementing the curriculum. Teachers tend to use teaching methods that fit their learning styles, so it is important to bear in mind we will have a variety of students. It’s certainly something about which I have to keep reminding.
It is also important to remember that all students benefit from experiences with different modes of learning. Students, especially adolescents whose brains are rapidly developing new neural pathways and pruning others, need to experience variety, because once we are set in our ways, it becomes a lot harder to learn new tricks.
This is where preparing the environment becomes so important. We want student to have choices, but we want them to try new things, and sometimes these two objectives conflict. The video above does make a persuasive argument to me about why we should draw and practice drawing. Perhaps it will do the same for our kids.
Element song (by Tom Leher)
Tom Leher has a number of really entertaining science related songs. Here he does the elements and someone (unknown unfortunately) has made a video to go with it, where the elements all pop up on the periodic table as he sings. Since there is no apparent pattern to order in which he sings the elements, this is more a “strike the imagination” type thing rather than anything else.
Waves and earthquakes
There are a lot of Earth Science applications that deal with waves. Seismic waves from earthquakes are a major one that is particularly pertinent after the recent Haitian earthquake. There are quite a number of lesson plans dealing with seismic waves at Larry Braile’s website. Most of the lessons are as practical demonstrations pdf’s and some use downloadable software (Windows only unfortunately), but there are some online applications as well.
In terms of online resources, the IRIS network, produces nice maps of recent earthquake locations. It also has a good page with “Teachable Moments” regarding recent earthquakes. These include the above video of why the Haitian earthquake did not produce a tsunami.
Although it’s not directly related to waves, I particularly like the thermal convection experiment on Braile’s website. It provides, with a baking dish, a sterno can, some water and some thyme, a great example of the convection in the Earth’s mantle that drive plate tectonics.
Silence in the Middle School: The Little Rock Nine
My students watched the video about the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock and they were shocked. Truly shocked. They had already started reading the letters to and from President Eisenhower which are powerful in that they trace the story with the actual presidential records. Then one of the students brought up the video on a laptop and they all gathered around to watch. For 5 minutes afterward there was silence in the classroom.
The ugly, vicious hatred of the mob was powerful, and the one girl, Elizabeth Eckford, just a little older than the middleschoolers, just sitting there with the crowd all round, unable to speak, proud upright, but with a shell shocked look in her eyes. The video is moving, and it brings home the strength and courage of those nine kids in a world that must have seemed to be tipping toward destruction.