Today we had a single lesson, not the most productive, but the issue of structured discussion continues to play on my mind, many great ideas though, we just need more focus.

We started by summarising our learning on our changing perceptions of extreme environments, we answered a number of statements, such as ‘ It would be easy to visit here’ and considered whether this had changed with the passage of time.

I then played a piece of music, the first part of Vaughan Williams’ ‘Sinfonia Antarctica’. From this we analysed the beat, tempo, pitch and instruments used, and tried to gather our thoughts on what the composer was trying to tell us about the environment. I didn’t let the students know the source of the inspiration, there has some great discussion about how the music might reflect the landscape, climate, biodiversity, danger, and challenge of the environment. The music was written by Williams for the 1947 film of ‘ Scott of the Antarctic’. A clip can be listened to below.

Using Google Earth we then flew from Kirk Hallam to Antarctica, the case study was revealed. I tried to illustrate the scale of the continent using the images and pointed out some of the physical features. I could have made much more of this, and it might have been more productive to use some of the overlays that I have found within the Google Earth community; especially to illustrate the massive task of Scott travelling by foot to the pole.

To begin to get a feel for the continent, we then watched a short video by Val Vannet, using images of Antarctica. A couple of misconceptions came up, including Damien’s Eskimos, the images generated some discussion, including the need for movable ice stations, rightly pointed out by Damien, and the fact that the continent had an airstrip!

Tomorrow we beginning mapping some of the physical and human features of the continent and a homework task will be set on the Antarctic Convergence, something new I have learnt about, but more tomorrow…

Looking forward to the changing perceptions photo montages and how extreme environments have been used to advertise consumer products. Make them extreme!

I also introduced the blog, and I hope that some of you student readers will join and comment. Well done Antony for starting! I will be providing prizes each term for the best post and the frequency of comments. (An idea nicked from Alan at the KES blog!)

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Posted in Extreme Environments, General, Lesson evaluations
Written on Mon, 18 September 2006 at 7:13 pm

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