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January 5, 2012

What would you have said?

Filed under: TOK meets global citizenship — Tags: , — Eileen Dombrowski @ 1:46 am

I’d like to open my third year as a blogger with a question to you as a reader:  What would you have done in my place?   What would you have said to her and how would you have helped her, and others in her place?

It was evening in the residential IB college.  Although students often dropped by in the evening, I was interested to see a girl who had never come past our house all by herself before.  She was an Asian girl with a shy smile and a gentle manner, quite a lovely student altogether.  She wanted to talk with me about TOK class and, as we settled down together to talk, her eyes filled with tears.

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November 18, 2011

wall posters on perspectives

If you use posters on your TOK classroom wall, I recommend two (update Nov23; three) that are useful for generating discussion on perspectives.  I’m using teeny images here but you can see them at a much fuller size on the website of Syracuse Cultural Workers and can order them there.  The first is a Peters projection world map showing land mass in accurate relative proportion for size.  I’ve written quite a lot elsewhere on how to use world maps in TOK to help students discover their own perspectives on the world.  Contrasting maps of the world are also useful in considering multiple perspectives in discussion of symbolic representations and truth.

The second, on other cultures, involves perspectives not on the natural world but on societies. It features a quotation from anthropologist Wade Davis: “The world in which you were born is just one model of reality.  Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you: they are unique manifestations of the human spirit.”   The poster gives a wall reminder of ideas that come up throughout the TOK course, but probably most obviously in the sections on language, human sciences, and ethics.

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June 21, 2011

Participatory research, cultural contexts & asthma

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Many of us are very aware of the increasing prevalence of asthma among our students and in our societies. As a result, many of us in the teaching profession are trained in basic first aid for asthmatic attacks. Medical anthropologist David van Sickle gives us much more to think about beyond grabbing an inhaler and calming the victim. He has dedicated his career to better understanding this disease. He is heavily influenced by anthropological methods and is clear that asthma needs to be understood within cultural contexts.

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June 20, 2011

FB – it’s getting bigger and better…

Filed under: CAS — Tags: , , , , , — Steve Money @ 6:17 am



With more than 35 million users, Indonesia is currently the second largest Facebook market in the world. Despite its relatively slow Internet connection compared to other countries, its growth rate from year to year has been tremendously high.

In his blog, Nick Burcher reports that Indonesia has jumped from having 209,760 users connected in July 2008 to 25,912,960 users in July 2010.

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June 5, 2011

TRANSCRIPTION (AGAIN)

Filed under: Visual arts — Tags: , , , , , , — triplea_av @ 6:44 pm

There I was, quietly eating my cornflakes in this morning’s Sunday sunshine, reading the Sunday Times magazine, idly watching the labrador putting up with two overly affectionate kittens, when I came across still more examples of art imitating art – or transcribing art, anyway.

Back in March 2010 I posted a blog entry something a long the lines of “you can appropriate – but you’d better not plagiarize!” and have revisited the homage, appropriation, transcription, reinterpretation etc theme regularly since then.

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May 14, 2011

Psychological Disorders and their Prevalence

Filed under: Psychology — Tags: , , , , , — Peter Anthony @ 9:02 pm

Psychological disturbances and their prevalence can be understood by examining this WHO report on national, variations in the prevalence of Mental Disorders. While the entire report is challenging to read certain sections are particularly relevant and students could focus on Methods and the Results Section.

You could have students consider the following questions:

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May 11, 2011

How shall I talk of the sea to the frog?

Filed under: TOK meets global citizenship — Tags: , , , , , — Eileen Dombrowski @ 6:18 pm

How shall I talk of the sea to the frog                                          

If it has never left its pond?

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May 5, 2011

language, culture, knowledge – and the death of all three

Filed under: TOK meets global citizenship — Tags: , , , , — Eileen Dombrowski @ 10:32 pm

“Much of what humans know about nature is encoded only in oral languages. Indigenous groups that have interacted closely with the natural world for thousands of years often have profound insights into local lands, plants, animals, and ecosystems—many still undocumented by science. Studying indigenous languages therefore benefits environmental understanding and conservation efforts.”

“Studying various languages also increases our understanding of how humans communicate and store knowledge. Every time a language dies, we lose part of the picture of what our brains can do.”

National Geographic, Enduring Languages Project

…….

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April 28, 2011

indigenous knowledge and western science

“When engaging in … comparative analysis of different world views,” declares author Ray Barnhardt,  “any generalizations should be recognized as indicative and not definitive, since indigenous knowledge systems are diverse themselves and are constantly adapting and changing in response to new conditions.”

Accepting this need to be cautious in judgment and to recognize trends and general characteristics, a TOK teacher could gain a number of good ideas for class from this excellent article, “Indigenous Knowledge Systems/ Alaska Native Ways of Knowing”.

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March 22, 2011

Water and culture

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The way in which I experience water on a daily basis reinforces the centrality of it to my life. I happen to live in a country that contains a massive proportion of the earth’s freshwater resources. I can easily walk to a lake in which I swim every summer. I see the ocean from several angles each day as I move about the island on which I live. The beach is a regular destination, as is the rainforest. Clean drinking water flows freely from my taps. I grew up knowing the difference between a canoe and a kayak, and the importance of portage in places where land was merely something that divided up vast bodies of fresh water. Water influences and can even control us – as the disaster in Japan vividly reminded all of us, it is both a creator and destroyer of life. No matter where we live in the world, water is one of the core elements that sustains all life.

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