story mapping...

Today in the wood shop at the Clear Spring School, my high school students will be finishing various projects. They were out for over a week due to travel school, and some of their projects had been put on hold to make and complet their travel journals, so now it is time to wrap up and get done what we can before the end of the school year.

In addition to wood shop, I'll also spend about 45 minutes introducing my students to ESRI, a story mapping program that we hope to be better able to use in the coming years. ESRI enables you to create maps of your own that can help to share the information that's important to you. For example, a map of our local springs would be useful to both visitors and landowners. For the study of history or the environment and, video interviews and photograph scan be linked and coordinated with points on the map.

The point is that learning should take students out of doors, into the field of study where it becomes linked through all the senses. The smart phone carried out of doors enables the student to link directly to the map, and the story of the student's place in the world.

In the image above, Anaxagoras holds what appears to be a model of the world even before the earth was known to be a sphere. He was the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who said that "Man is the wisest of all animals because he has hands." Anaxagoras also believed that "in everything there is a share of everything," foreshadowing Froebel's concept of Gliedganzes or inter-connectedness.

In a similar vein, The following is from Dr. Matti Bergström's book, Hjarnans resurser — en bok om ideernas ursprung "The Brain's Resources — a Book about the Origin of Ideas."

...We evolve in order to unite the world we live in into a wholeness. ...This is why the unifying force, the collective principle ... assumes ever greater importance in our lives. It becomes apparent in our thirst for peace, accord, and harmony, goodness, a social and religious paradise, love of our fellow humans and nature and an ensouling of nature. ...Even in our science we wish more and more to be rid of one-sided analysis, divisiveness and disjointed knowledge to create instead a method of research that tends toward synthesis and holism, wholeness and cohesion, where values can coexist without battling each other. We increasingly want the selective forces to serve the collective. — pp. 147-8

My box guitar book is proceeding nicely through the editorial process, and a number of instrument makers have submitted great photos of their work for a gallery section.

Make, fix, create and increase the opportunities for others to learn likewise.