What's Up With North?

Let's end our work this summer by rethinking our place on the planet. More exactly, we will examine the ways we subjectively orient ourselves, their bases, and their consequences. First, please read this short article. Next, contextualize it for yourself by considering a specific way that your perception of the orientation of the earth affects your understanding of countries, relationships, culture, etc. In your writing, examine the ways of knowing at work. Does your language reflect your conceptualization? Do you have emotional responses based on geographic orientation? Finally, pose and answer a knowledge question based on your musings. This is due Sunday 24 July and is your last TOK work for the summer. See you on campus.

Reading Lenses

This week, I want you to think about your reading. As we read, we add what we learn to all that has come before: what we've already read of the text, our knowledge of its contexts, and the wealth of knowledge that shapes us as knowers. Parts of this process are automatic, and we also have the ability to consciously shape the lens through which we read and understand. As you may have discussed in your English courses, critical theory offers different approaches to how we choose to understand and analyze a text. If you'd like, you can learn more about this from Professor Kristi Siegel's succinct and clear overview of approaches to literary criticism. For this week's post, I'd like you to consider your English summer reading book (or, if you didn't start reading that book as soon as June arrived, another book you're reading. You are reading a book, right?). First, examine the ways you naturally process what the text offers. What ways of knowing do you employ, and why? Next, consider another perspective--or lens--through which you might view the same text. How does this new perspective alter the ways of knowing at work? Finally, extract a knowledge question from your observations and analyses. Please post your response by the end of Sunday 17 July.

The Knowledge Just Keeps Adding Up

If mathematics is language that we use to describe our world, then we should not be surprised when it pops up in arenas other than the explicit study of math. Consider a time that ways of knowing you employ in your math studies came to bear in another realm. First, extract a knowledge question from the math moment, then explain how that math knowledge intersected with another area of your studies, and wrap it all together by applying the knowledge question to the other area of knowledge and answering the KQ. Consider why the answers may be different in the two different situations, and how different perspectives change the knowledge. Please post your response by the end of Sunday 10 July.

Here's a great old number to help you get in a mathy mood: The Magic Number

Looking Back On Looking Back

This week, consider your history with history. Identify a moment in which, to perform an analysis (perhaps academically, perhaps in order to make a decision on how to act, perhaps...), you have drawn on both your own personal experience and on your knowledge of history. Which ways of knowing do you employ in applying the lessons of these histories to a present quandary? To go a step further, how was your understanding of the historical event influenced by your perspective as a knower, and how did this contribute to your problem solving? I look forward to reading your perspectives on history by the end of the day on Sunday 3 July.

What Are You Watching?

Let's veer into the Arts this week. I'm curious about the intersections of your identity as a knower (particularly with regard to gender), language, and anything you've recently watched. Choose a movie, an episode of something, a video, etc. that you've seen and examine the ways language function in the video. How are your perceptions shaped, both by your gender and by the assumptions the creator of the video makes regarding expected audience. In other words, do you think you were the target audience for what you watched? Explain and explore your and their assumptions. Keep your analysis focused on the nature of the knowledge at work. Your writing is due by the end of Sunday 26 June.

With Great Science Comes Great Responsibility (and sometimes great goggles)

Ah, summer, when birds sing, breezes ripple the pool, and the gentle aroma of EEs wafts through the trees. As I plan your schedules for next year, my thoughts turn to the responsibilities that come with the knowledge and skills you develop. For your first post, please write about one moment in your science studies when you felt the burden (actual or potential) of the responsibility inherent to what you were doing and learning. Consider the bases for the ethical implications of that moment. What ways of knowing were at play? How did they interact? If there was an ethical decision to be made, on what grounds did you make it? This writing is due on Sunday 19 June by 11:59 EDT (no matter what time zone you are currently in). Enjoy, and wear your goggles.