Author: Lensyl Urbano

In-credible sources

All About Explorers (be careful).

All About Explorers is a wonderful site if you’re interested in talking about the credibility of sources. It looks real, is well organized, well written and could easily pass for credible to the uninitiated. The article on John Cabot starts with:

One might wonder what John Cabot and Christopher Columbus have in common. Both were born in Liverpool, England. Cabot was born in 1405, but his birth certificate was lost at sea and no one knows for sure.

Now, there are more telltale clues that everything is not on the up-and-up, particularly where they mention Cabot’s cartographic exploits on his ”alleged” return to England from growing up in Italy:

In 1484, John Cabot moved back to England with his wife and eleven sons. This was a great career move for John. He developed his own website and became quite famous for his charts and maps depicting a new route to the Far East.

I find sites like these delightful. To think that someone spent the time, energy and intelligence to create this particular little snare, says something wonderful about way the human mind works.

Nicely, the “About This Site” section notes:

All About Explorers was developed by a group of teachers as a means of teaching students about the Internet. … Because we wanted to make a point about finding useless information even in a site which looked at first to be fairly well put together, all of the Explorer biographies here are fictional. While many of the facts are true or based on truth, many inaccuracies, lies, and even downright absurdity are mixed in indiscriminately. As such, it is important that you do not use this site as a source of reference for your own research!

The site also has a set of lessons, handouts and other stuff on its “For Teachers” page.

Exploration of the North American Coastline

This wonderful animation shows the exploration of the North American Coastline from 1500 to 1876, updating the map as the different explorers push further along the coastline. Most of the action occurs to the north, as expedition after expedition sough the Northwest Passage.

What’s nice, is that the names of the explorers, like Cabot and Franklin, should be familiar to students after this cycle’s research.

Choose your own adventure: in action

One of my language groups is working on mentor authors, but the other is trying the choose your own adventure story.

I started with a short, four paragraph, seed story, written in the first person with a bit of generic foreshadowing and the requisite melodrama. The setting was modern. I did consider writing the seed story with the students as a group, but I’ve not had good luck doing writing assignments by committee. Indeed, the students did have the chance to discuss the character of the protagonist but found it really hard to get past physical descriptions (which they still could not agree on) and get the personality.

We read through the seed story and then, at the end of the page, created links for the different choices the protagonist could make. Each student came up with their own choice of what to do next.

Excerpt from CYOA.

They were assigned, for the next day, to write three paragraphs advancing the story and ending with another decision point. I had to reiterate that the choice had to be something the protagonist does, not just what’s going to happen next in the plot: “You rush out of the house without even changing clothes,” would be acceptable.

The students really got into it. They really piled into the writing. According to one student, “I think this is the best thing I’ve even written.”

We read the story drafts the next day. There was a little confusion about how to end with a decision point.

Everyone had become so invested in their own stories they did not want to, as I had planned, have someone else take over at the new decision tree. In response, I’ve offered to let them continue their stories as one of the decision options, but they each also have to add to one of their peers’ story.

I’m quite excited about how this is turning out. The students are enthused and motivated and actually writing. I can also see a million ways to vary the assignment so I’ll write this one up as a success thus far.

Good editing: Whittling to the bare essentials

I’d like to try this idea for writing assignments:

Every assignment would be delivered in five versions: A three page version, a one page version, a three paragraph version, a one paragraph version, and a one sentence version.

I don’t care about the topic. I care about the editing. I care about the constant refinement and compression. I care about taking three pages and turning it one page. Then from one page into three paragraphs. Then from three paragraphs into one paragraph. And finally, from one paragraph into one perfectly distilled sentence.

Along the way you’d trade detail for brevity. Hopefully adding clarity at each point. This is important because I believe editing is an essential skill that is often overlooked and under appreciated. The future belongs to the best editors.

Each step requires asking “What’s really important?” That’s the most important question you can ask yourself about anything. The class would really be about answering that very question at each step of the way. Whittling it all down until all that’s left is the point.

— Jason F. (2010) in Signal vs. Noise: The class I’d like to teach.

A few changes

FYI: I’ve changed the Muddle’s website address from http://earthsciweb.org/MontessoriMuddle/ to the much simpler, http://MontessoriMuddle.org/. Links to the old url should automatically redirect, but let me know if I missed something (the comments section of this post would be great, or even by email).

A history of the world in 100 objects

The Rosetta Stone (image from Wikipedia).

The BBC has an excellent podcast series called, A history of the world in 100 objects, which does a nice job of getting into history and culture by talking about the significance of important archeological artifacts: a Korean roof tile; a North American Otter pipe; and Harlem wall painting fragments for example. The objects span the time from 2 million years ago to the present day.

Olduvai handaxe (image from Wikipedia).

The website, where you can see the objects as well as quite a number of user-contributed objects, is also excellent (the contributions by the British Museum are the ones in the programme, and the Wikipedia page also has images of all the artifacts). The objects are organized by time period, location, culture, theme (war, religion, food for example), colour, and even material. It’s nice to see all the layers of meaning that can be gained from a single object by viewing it from different perspectives.

There are also short videos with Kay Topping from Haslemere Education Museum (that are not accessible in the U.S.) on the power of actual artifacts in the classroom.

When I explain that this object was made for a real ancient Egyptian by another real ancient Egyptian I can see the kids faces reflecting this ‘Wow’. Only objects and the actual places where events happened are able to do this.
— Kay Topping (2010) in Paul Sargeant’s History of the World project blog: Object lessons for schools

Ship's chronometer from HMS Beagle (image from Wikipedia).

Mariner AO: Discovering the Americas

The route of the good ship Bobert II.

We just used my sailing game, Mariner AO, to help wrap up the group presentations on the European exploration of the Americas, and it worked wonderfully!

The small groups did their presentations timewise, starting with the Vikings (don’t ask me about Leprechauns), then the Spanish, the French (don’t ask me about giant sharks and flying pigs), and finally the English. At the end, we had half an hour left, but instead of just tying it together with a graphic organizer, I wanted to show them Mariner AO because the North Atlantic wind circulation ties in so wonderfully well with the pattern of colonization.

I started trying to show it off as a group, having them tell me which direction to sail the ship to get to the Americas. As you could probably predict that didn’t work particularly well. Everyone was yelling out directions at cross-purposes; however, it did give me the chance to show them all how the game worked.

Even with all the confusion the group seemed to like the game. Someone even suggested, “Why didn’t we do this for group work.” And I though, “Why not?” So the class broke apart for 25 minutes to see who could discover America first.

There was a lot of excitement in the room. I offered them extra points for the team that reached America first. They all know how empty that reward is by now so I think most of the excitement really came from being able to play a game with a little bit of competition.

Building a ship to try to discover America.

The website still has a few bugs, especially on our older computers, but it worked. Three of the four groups reached the Americas, though two of them landed on the Canadian coast. The third group may well have ended up there as well, but I dropped a hint about Columbus’ route that sent them sailing into the Caribbean.

At least two kids planned on trying it at home. I had to pry one of the groups away from the computer so they could get their end-of-the-day jobs done on time.

We took screen captures of routes they took, and tomorrow we’ll put it all together, talk about the trade winds, what Columbus knew, and why the Iberians colonized South America while the French and English ended up mostly in the North.