Monday, October 17, 2011

DAY 28 (Oct 17) The Gods Must Be Crazy ! !

We began the day by reviewing our short discussion on Culture from last week.  Then we started watching the film, The Gods Must Be Crazy.  It's one of my favourite films and it's the perfect way to depict complex culture in an entertaining way.  Check out the synopsis and other information about The Gods Must Be Crazy!  or check this one The Gods Must Be Crazy!

We stopped the film several times to discuss the meaning of the film work.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is your first test on our Psych Unit - see DAY 11 for the review.

DAY 27 (Oct 14) University Fair Field Trip

About three quarters of you were on the all day field trip to the university fair in Toronto, thus those of you who were here had an opportunity to study and work on outstanding work in the Library with me.

DAY 26 (Oct 13) Anthropology Introduction

We spent the day discussion the meaning of "culture".  I gave you some ideas to ponder including the fact that throughout our history as homo erectus, homo habilis, etc. etc. up to our current form of homo sapiens, we have been a relatively week member of the natural world, meaning that there are many extremely powerful, fast, cunning and otherwise deadly creatures in our environment that could kill us easily.  Also, we have always had to search for food sources and compete with other species.

Our big advantage out there in the dangerous world has been our brain, but our brain does not work in isolation. Collectively, the knowledge and strategies that we have used for countless millennia have, in fact, given us a distinct advantage over all of the other dangers that we have faced.  This collective knowledge and those collective strategies  have enabled us to out compete all other species and to flourish.  This is what we now call "culture".

In a simple sense culture can be thought of as a mechanism to adapt in order to find food and remain safe in hostile environments.

Of course today when we think of culture we think of the complete set of learned human behaviour patterns which we know are different from place to place and country to country.  This is what our second unit will study, Anthropology - the study of human cultures.

DAY 25 (Oct 12) No class, field trip

In my absence today you had a sign-in (I was at Crawford Lake on a field trip).  Hopefully you all used this time to study and/or get caught up on your work.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

DAY 22, 23 (Oct 5, 6) Darts Lab Writing

These are three days we spent in the lab working through your written labs.  Most of your asked great questions and some of you even finished and submitted the lab on Friday!!  It's great to see you all working so diligently on what is quite challenging work.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

DAY 21 (Oct 4) Darts Lab in the Lab - Last Day in the Lab

Last day in the lab, you all worked beautifully on this today.

I've emailed everyone a picture of the Darts Target and a picture of the resulting Graph from all of the data.  They're here - please copy paste them into your report, it's important to have images like these.



 

DAY 20 (Oct 3) Lab Day for Darts Lab Writeup

We spent the day in the lab and everyone worked very very well on their reports.  Same tomorrow . . . .