Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

bronstein's picture

Metaphors and smiles (sic)

At first the same feelings Anne said she had about science surfaced within me when she started to ask us to do "humanity-type" activities.  "Oh, man, why do they ask me to do this silly 'touchy-feely' stuff?"  But, when I let go of the I-function and just let my "CU" do its thing, I found that I actually came up with 2 images that made lots of sense to me:  a web and a cloud.  They were also very easy to draw (heh, heh).

The image I have as science as a web shows the interlocking of all knowledge, that everything relates to every other.  My goal is to enable my students to develop methods to make connections among all the nodes (facts, concepts) in the web – as well as learning the information contained at the nodes.

The students, I believe, at first see science as a cloud, which obscures not only the relationships, but also the facts (nodes) themselves.  Our job as teachers, then, is to evaporate the fog, to enable the students to see through the mist to the web that is hidden within, to see not only the nodes but also how they all relate.

 

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
12 + 0 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.