Also see social justice and eco-justice
A Growth Mindset Map ~ Earl Beatty PS ~ Allycia Uccello
We create MAPS to help us break down the complexities of moving from one destination to another. We know maps to help us navigate our neighbourhoods and even the world. They began as large drawings (cartography) designed to scale to help us understand size, scope, timeline and means of our travels across great distance. Today these maps are found online and easier to navigate through our androids (google maps).
But over time we have developed different kinds of maps including computerized flow charts and infographics. Flow charts are diagrams that use algorithm, workflow or process showing incremental steps to actions that help us in our decision making or solution to a problem. We can take one path or another until we get to the right destination.
Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly. They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system’s ability to see patterns and trends.
Maps just make cognition easier. Maps can often tell a whole story that would otherwise take a chapter, book or complex dialogue to understand.
Global Garden Story Quilt (En/Fr)
Create a narrative quilt of varied world designs in textile, embroidery, sequins, beads, yarn, pencils and markers with Mosa Neshama McNeilly. This is a very special one day per class art project on cultural understandings, diversity and inclusion. Students map connections among each other by researching their personal histories and finding parallels. Each child shares a treasured object from home and features a portrait of the object as an encoded symbol in the quilt. Through stitching and knotting students describe routes between their quilt squares. Reflection focuses on individual and group discovery of the ecology of cultural diversity, mirroring the web of biodiversity in our ecosystem, while highlighting equity as critical to wellness. Ideal as a graduating legacy gift. Adaptable to all grades ~
A Growth Mindset
Happy students learn better, deeper and quicker – it is the most powerful way to create sustainable resilience and responsibility. Based on the theory that we all have these remarkable elastic brains, students are encouraged to research a notion, understanding or theory beyond their current skill set or self-expectation and map it in a most exciting way. The mapping process, in itself, supports enlightenment. Equipped with the belief that mistakes are essential to learning, student tackle a complex notion through an info-graphic, narrative installation, sculpture or new media art piece. This is a have fun collaborative project of self-awareness and cognitive stretching! Adaptable to all grades ~ Pria Muzumdar + Allycia Uccello ~
Mapping My Carbon Footprint
A Global Climate Accord involving the entire planet was finalized in Paris in 2015 laying out a road map to speedily reduce carbon emissions. The accord comprises a longer-term plan for reaching a peak in greenhouse emissions and achieving a balance between output of man-made greenhouse gases and absorption – by forests or the oceans – by the second half of this century. This means bringing down greenhouse-gas emissions to net zero within a few decades. Let’s create our own personal map on how that can happen locally and globally. Examine our natural resources, manufacturing, and how we consume, discard and conserve. Where does it all end up and how do we, and can we, reduce our own consumption. Students build an inventory of their own carbon footprint (and yes, measure it!) and map, through new or mixed media works, our own journey to reduce, re-use, up-cycle and recycle. Adaptable to all grades ~ Charmaine Lurch, Samina Mansuri + Pria Muzumdar ~
Mapping My Heart (in development with Mariposa In The Schools 2017)
Mapping Our Indigenous Lands (in development 2017)
The Peak of the Perseids
Every August we earthlings can look up into the night sky and witness the annual Perseid meteor shower dazzling the Northern Hemisphere with shooting stars across the sky. Why does this happen? The Earth passes through the streams of dust and debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle that whips past Earth on its orbit around the sun every 133 years. That’s a lot of dust! NASA calls the Perseids the fireball champion meteor shower because it tends to have bright meteors that can be seen even in the least favourable conditions. Explore this phenomenon, see the latest photos, and reflect the beautiful shower of meteors on canvas, mixed media, textile (glorious batik) or in shadow puppetry. Then mark your calendar for the next shower on August 12 2017! In the meantime you can see the Orionids meteor shower on October 21, the Leonids meteor shower on November 17 and the Gemini’s meteor shower on December 14!! Ideal for grades 2 and up ~ Pria Muzumdar, Moojan Nazmi ~
Starry Nights (in development 2017)