Module IV

What new learning have I taken from this module?

I did not know about the two different waves of earthquakes:  P waves & S waves (Predicting Earthquakes video)—but having just experienced a local earthquake at the end of school today, it got me thinking more critically about earthquakes.  Each one I've experienced has felt different & unique.  The video talked about how the P waves are experienced first, but they have less energy while the S waves follow.  The S waves are slower, but are more powerful & that has often been my experience in feeling earthquakes—except for today's quake.  It was really instantaneous & somewhat powerful followed by the subtle waves afterwards.  Was that because the quake originated only 30 miles away?  Curious & interesting.

I was really interested in what a "smoot" is—quite a fun story!  I like stories such as this—history built right into a science lesson so that it all has meaning!  Thanks for the little tid-bit.  I was left wondering, how in the world did Google folks know to incorporate smoots into Google Earth's measurement???  Crazy!

I'm embarrassed to admit I didn't know that Augustine is on its own island and I live just across the inlet!  And I wasn't aware that Alaska is home to 80% of the US' volcanoes.

How can/will I use this week’s resources and/or others in my community in my lessons?

I can definitely see using Real-Time Earthquakes in my classroom:  the first thing I wanted to do was check and see if today’s earthquake showed up or how long it takes—sure enough, there it was:  4.4 magnitude.  It was a decent quake and very nearby!  We’ll have a fun time checking local earthquakes out using this resource.

In general I have found these Teacher Domain video links very helpful in adding to my virtual library of classroom resources—many of them I don’t have specified to a particular lesson, per se, but I consider them valuable for future units that I have yet to dream up.  I get bored teaching the same lessons over, so I’m constantly developing new units/lessons and these Teacher Domain videos are an invaluable resource for me to rely on.  I really appreciate this exposure to what it has to offer.

How useful, insightful or relevant are this module’s information and resources for me?

As I mentioned above about P & S waves, living in Alaska we experience earthquakes all the time—so often I frequently don’t notice them or wake for them in the middle of the night.  But learning about the different waves and the ability to notify the public about an event 10 seconds out is really valuable, especially living ½ mile from Cook Inlet where the consequence of a large earthquake—tsunami or tidal wave—is very plausible.  I often envision such an event in my mind and imagine if time would slow enough for me to load my daughter, dogs, and cat into the car and allow us to drive away, would we really make it before the water came?  And would no one else in our neighborhood know, or would the streets be suddenly jammed with traffic?  Or would we load into our boat (the cat would simply cooperate here, I’m certain!) unhook the boat from the trailer, hoping/praying the wave would simply lift us up gently and push us inland and back without any harm, much like in the You Tube video of Lituya Bay, “BBC Nature: Mega Tsunami-Alaskan Super Wave-Amazing Survival.” 
 

3 Colleagues

I really enjoyed reading Matt Hunter’s “New World” vs. “Old World” blog, thanks to Clay’s suggestion.  What an anthropology review!  I wholeheartedly agree with his quote from Frederic Chaffee, Director VM Keck Observatory: “It’s very easy in science to become completely absorbed in what we’re doing.”  I get completely absorbed in what I’m doing whether it’s teaching science or taking care of my one year old—I have forgotten a lot of human history over the years and appreciate the mini lesson.  I was left wanting to hear more from him on Alaska—maybe we’ll get that next week. . . 

Janet Reed’s blog has a couple of great photos—I’m very jealous of the snowfall in Valdez last year.  Five feet in one dump is amazing!  I bet that kept you busy!  And the plane’s dashboard picture with the “never” sunset and “never” sunrise is great!  Alaska is known for its extremes, for sure. 

Doug Armstrong has posted some incredible photographs of Volcanos from the "ring of fire"--they are absolutely breathtaking!  I drive by Mt. Redoubt every day, but rarely does it look as gorgous as his photo depicts.  Definitely worth seeing his pics. 

Module III

Module III:  The Landscapes of Life

This week, I really enjoyed the Cultural Connections section the most—all the videos were useful in sharing village stories.  I love “watching” as opposed to just reading text—I am a very visual learner, so the images combined with the audio is very helpful.  (One correction, though:  Fairbanks is on the Tanana River which connects downriver to the Yukon. . . ).  I was really impressed at the fish species ID by the biologist when they were just minnows —wow!  Those fish were less than 2 inches long!  That’s learned skill. 

The “Spirit of Subsistence Living” made me want to get up from my computer and go outside!  While I appreciate the resources provided in this class, this video absolutely made me want to do what the Natives were/are doing:  go outside and experience this the “natural” way myself instead of reading, watching, and typing all afternoon and evening.  That being said, I think I will keep my post brief this week and do just that with my 1 year old before our evenings  are shrunk to nothing but darkness.  Same with my kids at school—we need to get outside before ice & snow hit and appreciate Alaska’s fall season.

I didn’t experience the same “ah, ha” as last week, but this module was noticeably shorter, too.  I think overall I just felt a strong sense of pride that I have many of the same or similar experiences as our Alaska Natives.  Growing up here and living a subsistence lifestyle in a remote, one-room cabin for 4 months every winter with my parents and brother 20 miles from Minto (Athabaskan village North of Fairbanks), I really can appreciate what the land has to offer.  Accessible only by plane, dog team or snowmachine, this upbringing was unique and my fondest memories growing up without a doubt came from this time and place with my family. 

The Cabin at Lynx Lake

And now, as an adult I fish and we consume a lot of salmon, shrimp, crab and halibut as well as berries (Alaskan blueberries are my daughter’s absolute favorite!).  But doing this seems somehow different.  Hauling water from a lake & boiling it on the wood stove prior to drinking and cooking; dog mushing as a child zipped up completely inside the sled while my parents trained dogs for the Iditarod; eating beaver tail and beans—these experiences are something I cherish from my childhood, yet I worry my daughter will not get that, even when we go camping, fishing/shrimping/crabbing or stay at our nearby cabin on the Kenai Peninsula.  Somehow driving/boating to it & having all the urban conveniences of home takes away from the spirit of true subsistence, it seems.  I think Native Alaskans really have had something special.  Do they sense the same loss as I when they see their children and grandchildren utilizing more Western means of accessing and using the land, I wonder? Nonetheless, I still deeply enjoy exposing my daughter to nature by experiencing it as best we can, so here we are:

Prince William Sound 2010

Big Shrimp!  Yum!

Skiing last spring

I like to ski in the nearby swamp after school—the snowmachiners pack me a trail :-)

Landscape Forces provided some useful tools for in the classroom—I may consider using them when I teach environmental science next spring.   Rock Cycle Animation and Mountain Maker, Earth Shaker were decent, but perhaps a bit elementary for high school students (their attention span for this would be too short, I suspect).  But Pangaea “Plate Tectonics: An Introduction” is perfect.  Short, sweet, to the point and visually memorable.  I will definitely use this in the future.  Upon reading the intro to “Tectonic Plate Movement in Alaska” I was thrilled to learn about “the surprising finding that there are still aftershocks being measured decades after the 1964 earthquake.” But upon watching the video, nope, that was the extent of the learning.  What, how, why?  None of these were discussed.  I was bummed.  But it is cool to know that aftershocks are still being measured, I suppose.  I’m just a “who, what, where, why, when?” kind of person. 

I loved hearing about Dave’s “WTH” moment in college—that was great!  Thanks for sharing.

Cheryl’s picture of her father-in-law standing up to his elbows in a crack left by the 1964 Earthquake is incredible! 

Thank you for the video link Living on the Coast, Alicia.  I enjoyed seeing Nanwalek, a community in my own school district and just across the inlet from Kenai, but a place I’ve never visited.  It got me thinking, how exactly do the Natives get a sea otter?  They’re pretty big!  And the portion on New Bedford, Massachusetts was fun—what great accents they have!  I loved the pronunciation of scallops.  I have never heard it spoken that way before.  Fun!  But not that work schedule, whew.  Those are hard, long hours at sea.

Module II

Essential Question: How is everything connected from the perspectives of indigenous peoples and Western scientists? What are the advantages to knowing both ways?


Let me begin answering the question: “What are some differences between traditional Native knowledge and Western science?” with a work story.  This is a particular heated issue in my life right now, so bear with me.  I submitted a request to my district to pre-approve this “Explore Alaska” class for continuing ed. credits.  In the last few years my district is narrowing the focus of the credits they’ll acknowledge for continuing education credits when it comes to moving over on the pay scale to being within the teaching position.  I understand the purpose:  who should be financially rewarded for taking “underwater basket weaving” when one teaches science?  I get that.  However, we also know that fabulous teachers are knowledgeable across content areas and have a wide breadth of learning experiences.  I, for one, love learning & just because I am highly qualified (I won’t go there today, I promise!) only in Math, Biological science, Earth science, and Life science this is all I can learn about and be compensated for????  I find this absurd and very contradictory to the Native way of learning: cohesive and inter-connected.  So, back to my story:  my district turned down my request as it was not within my teaching description.  What?  Are you kidding me????  I spoke with my principal and we agreed to have me teach an “environmental science” class this spring in order to have this class accepted by central office.  Ugh!  What a “Western Science” approach to further educating our teachers.  This scenario matched a multitude of descriptors from the right hand side of the Venn Diagram: skepticism, part to whole, limited to evidence and explanation within the physical world, to name a few.  This course was rejected because the course description stated “geosciences” and I am not currently teaching earth or environmental science.  Is that reductionistic, or what?  So far, I can see myself applying several things I’ve learned just in our first week together, like blogging.  I love it and can envision utilizing this in my computer science class.  And learning about Alaska Native perspectives on Earth’s systems relates to ALL science subjects, particularly Biology!  Okay, I’ll put my soapbox away and get back to responding to our standard questions. . .

Explain:  What new learning have you taken from this module?

Extend:  How can/will you use this week’s resources and/or others in your community in your lessons?

Evaluate:  How useful, insightful, or relevant are this module’s information and resources for you?

Reading & viewing this week’s Module II has helped me reflect on my current teaching practice quite a bit.  Teaching science at an alternative high school has helped me become more holistic in my approach for several reasons.  I have virtually no science supplies in the traditional or “western” sense: no lab setting whatsoever (my classroom is carpeted!), no ventilation hood, no beakers or hot plates, etc.  So, we often go outside!  Exploring what the outdoors has to offer is quite significant and relevant for my students.  You see most of the students who attend our school struggle with reading comprehension, their writing is poor, and they give up quickly when the lessons are too advanced.  Not attending school regularly in the past has taken its toll.  Many are not likely to attend college, but earning a high school diploma is their goal.  So to accommodate my students’ needs as well as my lack of laboratory resources, I have taken a much more naturalistic approach.  I teach relevant, thematic units such as Bear Safety or Alaska Winter & Water Survival, where we build snow shelters and learn about avalanches, including building mock avalanches in the classroom (out of flour and sugar) and analyze the angles, for example.  And we rely heavily on the Internet to provide us with visuals and interactives, much like this class.  I have used GoogleEarth in the past as part of a navigation unit, so I’m thrilled to use it here again, as it’s been a couple of years.  This week’s module has been quite insightful and validating—perhaps I ought not to feel so guilty for not always providing the “Western” resources for my students!  

The western scientific ways portion of the Module was a wonderful revisit to science I haven’t experienced for far too long—not since high school and college, which has been awhile now. . . I appreciate the refresher.  I absolutely LOVE “Earth as a System” video!  I am so visual and this just had my brain firing at all synapses.  Some things just hit a nerve and this, along with the YouTube Symphony of Science “We Are All Connected” video were two that I really look forward to using in my classroom.  The barely-visible light of Anchorage showing up in pitch dark Alaska when Earth spun around on its axis was a stark contrast to brightly-lit Eastern Asia, eh?  It gave me the same goose bump feeling I get when I’m out in remote Alaska at nighttime looking up at the midnight blue sky with bright, twinkling stars.

I was born in Spokane, Washington.  My parents flew there from Alaska to deliver me under the supervision of surgical doctors, nurses and equipment not available in Juneau, where they still live and I grew up. My parents promptly traveled back to Juneau after my birth.  While I occasionally visit Spokane, I’m not really that familiar with the landscape, so thank goodness for Google Earth!  I had fun playing around, but was pretty bored with the topography.  Spokane sits in a river valley & I couldn’t find much of interest, unlike Alaska’s landscape.  Obviously, it’s been shaped by the Spokane River.  It’s an an interior continental climate and therefore quite dry and warm in the summer, despite surrounding the river, and nearby to the West are a lot of farms, but otherwise, there’s not much to tell.  Perhaps I’m offending the geological society of Eastern Washington, and I apologize, if so.  I thoroughly enjoyed finding my grandma’s house and the park we visited this summer that my daughter loved, however!  I’m afraid I’m probably disappointing everyone in my lack of descriptive detail here. 

The elevation of Spokane is about 2000 feet.  In the included picture you can see the farms off to the West of Spokane and the valley the city sits in.  There are no volcanos or earthquake points of interest, nor is there anything I could find linked with NASA.

I really appreciated hearing Martha’s perspective on the significance of Native spirituality being interconnected with science.   She very eloquently described what my heart has always felt!

Thanks Cheryl for your comparison of electrons between Western science and traditional Native knowledge. 

Hi Marilyn!  I'm writing to you here because when I try to post a comment on your blog, I get an error message that comments are restricted to team members--do I have to join a team, now, too??!!  Ha!  I don't know if you remember me, but I was in ARCTIC with you in Juneau--gosh, it's been a long while since then.  I was there with Terri--we were from Kenai.  Don't you wish we could attend that conference again?  What an amazing experience.  I wish we could all have a reunion and see what everyone is up to.  I had to chuckle over your "Plan B's, C's, and D's"  isn't that the truth!  Technology never fails us in that regard.  I really enjoyed your Arcattack Farraday Fun video. That just looks like one of my students!  Ha!  Hope all is well and I'm sorry you're not still in Gustavus.  

Lila shared some fabulous photos of her students experiencing Native ways of learning including hands-on field trips, exposure to Alaska Native art work and she also explained how traditional techniques like using the body and its parts can offer great measurement and symmetry tools.  Thank you for sharing--it brought back a sense of nastalgia remembering my own elementary experiences which were similar. 

Image of my Favorite Place

This photograph was taken in Isabel Pass where the event "Arctic Man" takes place each spring, and where my husband and I go each year to enjoy some of Alaska's first (accessible) snow for riding--usually in September. This photo was taken a few years back and it's where my husband and I met 10 years ago. I was an avid snowboarder at the time and now I am passionate about snowmachining, thanks to him! You can just barely make out the mountains in the background--it is a breathtaking view from that elevation (about 5000 feet: in Alaska that's something!) and the endless snow is fabulous. Love it!