Theory+of+Knowledge+~+Ideas+&+Resources

= = =Theory of Knowledge ~ Ideas & Resources= =1) From Gemma ~= =Ideas from United World College training July 20-24 2009=

Of the 30 or so coordinators I trained with, it was interesting to note that most of them had a lot of hands-on with TOK. The course was rarely scheduled like other classes. Indeed, the model seemed a lot more fluid and rather fun. The United World College (for example) scheduled a TOK Fair each Fall. For three days students get to go out into the community - local universities, art galleries, museums, cinemas, coffee shops, book stores - where they may meet someone from the community who has a "knowledge claim" over a particular area. Say a museum curator, art historian, book aficionado, movie critic -- you name it. The students would have been given enough information before this 3 days fair to understand the 4 ways of knowing (see diagram below) and then they would plunge in -- inviting dialogues with these folks.

The aim of the course is not so much "information in" as it is "examination of how students are already thinking."

KEY COMPONENTS
It seems a __**TOK/CAS Journal**__ is pervasive these days. Students are asked to journal in their TOK/CAS journals all the time. It is treated a bit like the art students use their black research notebooks. There is pretty much expected to be an entry weekly, if not daily. The idea is to have students chomping on thier ability to watch themselves "knowing" in each subject. If a science teacher introduces something the students can wrestle with how do scientists know this? In History - how does the language we choose to label people (freedom fighter vs terrorist) shape our knowing about these people?

**The traditional TOK diagram**


More questions from the TOK Guide -- What counts as knowledge? How does it grow? What are its limits? Who owns knowledge? What is the value of knowledge? What are the implications of having, or not having, knowledge?

This is a key concept too - also from the guide " What makes TOK unique, and distinctively different from standard academic disciplines, is its process. At the centre of the course is the student as **knower **. Students entering the Diploma Programme typically have 16 years of life experience and more than 10 years of formal education behind them. They have accumulated a vast amount of knowledge, beliefs and opinions from academic disciplines and their lives outside the classroom. In TOK they have the opportunity to step back from this relentless acquisition of new knowledge, in order to consider knowledge issues. These include the questions already mentioned, viewed from the perspective of the student, but often begin from more basic ones, like: What do I claim to know [about X]? Am I justified in doing so [how?]? Such questions may initially seem abstract or theoretical, but TOK teachers bring them into closer focus by taking into account their students’ interests, circumstances and outlooks in planning the course."

More for the Journal - again from the guide

=
"Students experience both TOK and their Diploma Programme subjects, so it is advisable that the teachers of each have some idea of what the others are doing. Indeed, there can be reciprocal gains from shared understandings. As well as making connections with TOK questions (knowledge issues) as they work through their own courses, subject teachers may suggest some theoretical concerns that could be taken further in the TOK classroom. Reflection on CAS experiences includes a focus on what new knowledge students have learned. Conversely, TOK teachers will often seek to ground discussion of knowledge issues in actual examples taken from students’ experience elsewhere in the Diploma Programme. " ====== 

TOK Forum Series Upper Arlington High School - where Cynthia Balheim is IB Coordinator and TOK teacher, has a great idea. They have a TOK forum series. Started off at one a year and now it is one per semester. Here is part of the publicity from an Art Education professor who has come several times with a great deal of interest Popular works of fiction like The Da Vinci Code have brought attention to veiled works of art. A s a distinguished way of knowing and area of knowledge art requires unique skills to be understood. Francis Bacon (1909-1992) considered that the “job of the artist is to deepen mystery” -- a few of us have encountered works whose meaning seems obscure. By learning and using inquiry-based strategies we can decipher the meaning of works of art. this presentation will walk you through better understanding and learning from art. experience how art can speak to you! Professor of Art education at the U of Cincinnati Flavia Bastos… Brazilian

**The students They have also held a now very popular Teacher Discussion Panel**
with a title such as ~ Have you ever wondered what your teacher really thinks about //other// subjects? Would you like to see a few of your favorite teachers argue about whose subject presents the real truth? Do you enjoy asking the kids of questions that make teachers squirm?

“There’s the whiff of a classic about //Ella Minnow Pea//.” —The Christian Science Monitor
 * Ella Minnow Pea - this was much enjoyed and used by the other TOK folks **
 * Review**

“A love letter to alphabetarians and logomaniacs everywhere.” //--//Myla Goldberg

“A curiously compelling. . . satire of human foibles, and a light-stepping commentary on censorship and totalitarianism.” --//The Philadelphia Inquirer//

“This exceptional, zany book will quickly make you laugh.” --//Dallas Morning Herald//

Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.
 * Product Description**


 * pangram: a sentence or phrase that includes all the letters of the alphabet

Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman Amazon.com Review
If you liked the eerie whimsy of Italo Calvino's __[|//Invisible Cities//]__, Steven Millhauser's __[|//Little Kingdoms//]__, or Jorge Luis Borges's __[|//Labyrinths//]__, you will love Alan Lightman's ethereal yet down-to-earth book //Einstein's Dreams//. Lightman teaches physics and writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, helping bridge the light-year-size gap between science and the humanities, the enemy camps C.P. Snow famously called __[|//The Two Cultures//]__. //Einstein's Dreams// became a bestseller by delighting both scientists and humanists. It is technically a novel. Lightman uses simple, lyrical, and literal details to locate Einstein precisely in a place and time--Berne, Switzerland, spring 1905, when he was a patent clerk privately working on his bizarre, unheard-of theory of relativity. The town he perceives is vividly described, but the waking Einstein is a bit player in this drama. The book takes flight when Einstein takes to his bed and we share his dreams, 30 little fables about places where time behaves quite differently. In one world, time is circular; in another a man is occasionally plucked from the present and deposited in the past: "He is agonized. For if he makes the slightest alteration in anything, he may destroy the future ... he is forced to witness events without being part of them ... an inert gas, a ghost ... an exile of time." The dreams in which time flows backward are far more sophisticated than the time-tripping scenes in Kurt Vonnegut's __[|//Slaughterhouse-Five//]__, though science-fiction fans may yearn for a sustained yarn, which Lightman declines to provide. His purpose is simply to study the different kinds of time in Einstein's mind, each with its own lucid consequences. In their tone and quiet logic, Lightman's fables come off like Bach variations played on an exquisite harpsichord. People live for one day or eternity, and they respond intelligibly to each unique set of circumstances. Raindrops hang in the air in a place of frozen time; in another place everyone knows one year in advance exactly when the world will end, and acts accordingly. "Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic," writes Lightman. "Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting.... In this world, artists are joyous." In another dream, time slows with altitude, causing rich folks to build stilt homes on mountaintops, seeking eternal youth and scorning the swiftly aging poor folk below. Forgetting eventually how they got there and why they subsist on "all but the most gossamer food," the higher-ups at length "become thin like the air, bony, old before their time." There is no plot in this small volume--it's more like a poetry collection than a novel. Like Stephen Hawking's __[|//A Brief History of Time//]__, it's a mind-stretching meditation by a scientist who's been to the far edge of physics and is back with wilder tales than Marco Polo's. And unlike many admirers of Hawking, readers of //Einstein's Dreams// have a high probability of actually finishing it. //--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.//

Gorilla Basketball
http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php Tell the students to count how many baskets the white shirted players make -- A play on perception