Calling all Tokrophers!

Right, so we are very lucky, although we have lost another fellow traveller on the way to enlightenment, we have gained two!!! Pippa and Phil will be joining us in September and we're so glad to have them along. What I need from all you lovelies is to:
1. I need a group to volunteer to take Phil into your midst for the Presentation
2. I need a study buddy group to take in Pippa to help her along with the task of doing her presentation solo. (She needs people to bounce ideas off of).

Brilliant, so as a little nudge - you are to work on 2 things over the summer, your presentations and your essays. Priority one is the essay as your first draft is due the first week back. Priority two is to get with your presentation group and get planning/researching/developing how you're going to tackle this badboy head on and defeat it! Hoo-ah (as Sergeant Mo would say)! Third priority is to do something on your holidays that lets you take in the beauty of the world - this is important as we will be discussing aesthetics when we return - so take the time to watch a sunset, or stare at the night sky and wonder if there is a little green man(woman) staring back through the cosmos towards earth and wondering if there is a little naked ape staring back at them - beautiful!

TTFN

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

To introduce the Arts as an area of knowledge, I'd like you to pontificate on the following:

1. What is art?

2. Can it be a painting, play, theatre, music, poetry, literature, photography?

3. Where do we draw the line? (What is art to one, may not be to another)

4. Can you define what is a ‘work of art’?

5. What do you expect to see in art?


6. What do you think is the purpose of art?

7. What is truth in art?

We're going to leave art as a little appetiser here. In class next Thursday I'd like you to bring in your choices for presentations and for essays. We're going to spend the next lesson researching for both.

TTFN

Memento video

Sorry guys, when I put my scheme of work together I had grabbed those videos (just the youtube url) and thought it still worked when I put these tasks together.  Apologies that technology has let us down again.  There's an argument for being a Luddite if I ever heard one :-)  I will try to grab those videos for us to look at in the next lesson, because I believe it does reveal some great points about Historical knowledge.  Otherwise, I am impressed with 5 of you for doing the work ahead of schedule...but some of you lovely tokrophers have yet to even get started!!!  Ugh!!!  Come on kiddos, don't let me down.

See you in a couple of weeks.

TTFN

It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together. (Am I talking about the 'force' or History?)

Hey kiddos,
Ms. McCrorie is on to putting together what will happen with you over the next three weeks.  So I'll leave your brains in her capable hands.  Now...as for your TOKy souls...they belong to me in perpetuity.  So I have uploaded little tasks for you to develop your inquiring minds further (read that as: complete for homework).  All of these are to be done on your blogs and I expect all of them completed by the 17th June.

Task 1:  Go to “You Tube”. Type in Memento. Watch Memento 1 (on page 2) and Memento 2 (on page 3) (9:45 each posted by 4ukan4e) in succession.  Answer the following in your blog:

1) If you found yourself in the same situtation as the clips, to what extent do you think you would be able to reconstruct your identify by examining the objects in your room?  What problems would you experience trying to do this, and how similar are they to those facing a historian?
2) How good is your memory, and how reliable do you think it is as a guide to the past?
3) Would you be more inclined to trust an autobiography, or a biography about the same person written by a historian?
4) To what extent do you think that people learn from their mistakes, and to what extent do you think they keep making the same mistakes?

Task 2: Create a table for the pros and cons of History as an area of knowledge.  When you have finished, answer the following questions:

1) What influence do the following have on history?:
Individuals      Chance      Experience      Generation
     What other factors could be important?

2) Niall Ferguson is a historian who has asked “What if…”.  This means one little thing may have helped change the course of history.  Remember our brief discussion of Cleopatra's Nose Theory.  What if....
A. Hitler’s England: What if Germany had invaded Britain in May 1940?
-would Britain have stood up to Hitler?
-would Britons have collaborated?
-would Britain have co-existed with a victorious Hitler?
B. Nazi Europe: What if Nazi Germany had defeated the Soviet Union?
-would Hitler have kept on going?
-how far would German culture have spread?
-who would have stood up to Hitler?
C. Stalin’s War or Peace: What if the Cold War had been avoided?
-would the US have developed nuclear weapons?
-would Stalin have co-operated with Western leaders?
-would Soviet spies have bothered infiltrating the upper echelons of US and UK governments?
D. Camelot continued: What if JFK had lived?
-what kind of President would he have been?
-would civil rights progress have been quicker?
-would Vietnam have turned out differently?
-would he be such an iconic figure?
Are these kinds of considerations useful?

Task 3: What is the reliability of primary and secondary sources: “I was there, so I know!”
Answer/DO the following: 

1) How can the four knowledge tools of perception, language, reason and emotion distort the production of a primary source such as a diary?  Take a look at a diary excerpt from this website http://www.dur.ac.uk/4schools/History/Diary1.htm  and write six statements that you believe are true about the author of the diary.

Traditionally primary sources (from someone who was there at the time) are often thought to be more reliable. This is not true. An objective secondary account is often more reliable than a subjective primary account.

2) Go to “You Tube”. Type in “Schindler’s List. Children Driven Away- Auschwitz. TURN OFF THE SOUND. The clip is 3:40 minutes long.  Write a brief script/narration for the video clip as 'propaganda' for Jews during WWII.  Next write a new script/narration for the video as 'propaganda' for the Nazis.  What is the effect? What language did you use? Were any words value-laden? What would be the purpose of propaganda like this?

3)Take a look at the following pictures of the October Revolution.  Research and tell me why the two men in the second photo have been erased from the first.

4) According to a well-known adage, 'history is written by the victors'.  How different do you think it would be if it were written by the losers instead?

5) Hindsight: “Travel back in Time”.  If you could travel back in time, who would you interview (the person must be dead)?  What questions would you ask them?  What would your questions be influenced by?  Why did you choose that person?

Ok, so there are three tasks for each lesson as homework.  Reminder - I will be checking the blogs in my absence and will not be a very happy Mrs. Mitchell if I find they have not been done.  PS - of course you are to work on your presentations as an ongoing project and it wouldn't hurt to start looking over the essay choices and pick one!

TTFN

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

Ok my lovely tokrophers, I have returned after a bit of a long absence to the blogosphere.  We have wrapped up the natural sciences (for now) and are off in the opposite direction (or are we?) to look at History.

Your task for this week is to:

1) Find an account of any significant event in a history textbook. Look at:
o The language that is used

o What information has been included or omitted

o What details are stressed

o What analytic concepts have been used

o The extent to which selection, interpretation and packaging have been used to create historical “truth”

2) Find another history text which gives an account of the same event. Compare and contrast the two and determine which is more accurate. On what basis do you make your decision?

3) What will our own age be called far in the future? The Age of Democracy? The Age of Hypocrisy? The Age of Disaster? Or another alternative? Why? How do you sum up an age in one phrase?

4) For what reasons might future historians have a name for our age which we are totally unable to predict?

5) Identify an historic event which you believe has a single cause. What was the cause of that cause? Trace the sequence back as far as you feel is meaningful, and explain your choice of where to stop.

6) Do you think that all events have causes which are identifiable by historians?

7) It has been said that the historian is like a painter rather than a photographer. By examining the nature of painting and photography, explain to what extent you agree with this analogy.

Happy blogging!
Mrs. Mitchell

Pseudosciencey fun!

For this week's blog homework I want you to do a little scientific investigation of your own.  Below are a list of pseudoscience topics that you can choose from, research and then apply your own scientific minds to.  I want you to summarise their ideas, reflect and come to a conclusion about the 'science' behind these fields.

• astrology
• quackery
• the occult
• superstition
• ESP
• telepathy
• clairvoyance
• reincarnation
• ghosts
• witches
• channeling (astral projection)
• haunted houses
• fairies

Happy hunting!  TTFN

Scientifically Speaking

Hiya Kiddos,

Just thought I'd highlight this email I received from the head of Science at Sandringham.  Since we're going to start the AOK's in a week, this is really ideal that this lecture evening has come up.  How's that for a deterministic universe?  I would really like for as many of you to attend this as possible as I think the main feature lecture should be of real interest to what we'll be examining over the next several weeks.  I've copied the email after this little intro I've written to give you all the significant information about what, when and where its going to be held.  Hope to see you there.

Mrs. Mitchell


Dear all,
Monday March 15th is the beginning of National Science and Engineering Week and I want to highlight an event that may be of interest to you. Scientific Soapbox is an evening of short Science based lectures given by some of the staff at Sandringham on topics such as black holes, allergies in children and the impact of lucozade of sports performance.
The highlight and main feature of the evening is a lecture given by Dr. Tim Hunt who the main man (across the world) in cell division and cancer research. He won a Nobel Prize for his work in 2001 and these are not ten a penny as I'm sure you know. I'm told he is an excellent speaker and well worth watching.


The evening is being promoted to all 6th form Science classes at Sandringham and some Yr 11s but this is a public event so staff, students from your schools, friends and families are welcome. Tickets are free and can be collected from the Sandpit Theatre at Sandringham or by emailing the theatre (sandpit@sandringham.herts.sch.uk or rachel.lloyd@sandringham.herts.sch.uk) or by phoning the Box Office on 01727 370067.
It'd be great to see some of you there.
Lawrence Foster


Head of Science, Sandringham School

A Valentine for my Tokrophers

I hate (emotion) being ill (a state in which my particles are revolting against me)

Hey kiddos... well... here's the good news.  I finished marking your essays.  The bad news.  I am ill yet again and will not be in school to share your marked work with you.  More good news... I have work for you to do in my absence.

Here's what I want from your bloggy-wogs:

I'd like you to answer the following and reflect - it would be uber-amazing if we started a discussion thread on this blog about your different view points here - but failing that just blog it.

1. If you can recognise emotions in people’s faces how does it help your interactions with people?
2. Alternatively, if you cannot recognise emotions in people’s faces how does it hinder your interactions with people?
3. Can you think of examples where people cannot recognise ANY of the emotions they see in a person’s face while they interact with them (Hint - look this up).  Why is this difficult to imagine?
4. Imagine a person with no emotions. The world is neutral to him/her. That person does not engage with the world, as engagement implies one part is more important than another. That person would then have no interest in living or dying. Is that person really a person?
5. If you were emotionally limited how would it affect your access to the 8 areas of knowledge?
6. Are emotional limitations a lens or filter to our ability to “know” our world?
7. Why has emotion sometimes been seen as a less valuable way of knowing than, say, reason? Or does the value of emotion as a way of knowing depend on the kind of knowledge that is being pursued?

I expect that you will do this work during the time you would normally be in my lesson (1.5 hours) and in a homework (1 hour), so this should be easy peasy to get done.

TTFN

Lazy Tokrophers

Here's the link to your homework lazy bones!

http://www.queendom.com/tests/access_page/index.htm?idRegTest=1121


Do the quiz from the above link to see how emotionally intelligent you are and reflect on the results in your blog for this week.

Fallacies blog homework

For this week's blog work, I want you to find 5 examples of logical fallacies on the internet. They can be from any forum you like – the news, the blogosphere, twitter etc…all you have to do is copy them into your blog, identify the fallacy and reflect.  As I mentioned at the end of the lesson, there are several other types of fallacies out there, so if you'd like to do a little extra research you can use any type of fallacy you can find.

Sorry for the wackiness today...my brain hurts.

TTFN