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LIST OF RESOURCES

Science and a Sense of Place: Learning Where We are Located in the World (July 24-August 4, 2006)

Philadelphia Area Sites

• The Franklin Institute On-Line
  
  
• Mural Arts Program
  
  
• Philadelphia Green (an initiative of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society)
  
  
• Radnor Middle School Watershed Program
  
  
• The Wagner Free Institute of Science (1700 West Montgomery Avenue, Philadelphia 19121)

Texts and Web-Based Resources

• Archie, Michele L. Advancing Education through Environmental Literacy. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2003. Online @ ASCD, The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
  
  
• Brand, Stewart. How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built. New York: Viking, 1994.
  
  
• Briggs, Peter. English/Comparative Literature 319: A Sense of Place: Classical, European, American. Bryn Mawr College. Spring 2006.
  
  
• Bryson, Bruce. A Question of Scale: Quarks to Quasars (2005).
  
  
• Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.
  
  
• Christensen, Linda. "Where I'm From: Inviting Students' Lives Into the Classroom." Reading, Writing and Rising Up: Teaching About Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools, 2000.
  
  
• A Civil Action. (Videorecording) Dir. Steven Zaillian. Burbank, CA: Touchstone Pictures, 1999. (115 min.)
  
  
• Cohen, Jeff. Resources for "A History of Location."
  
  
• Committee on Support for Thinking Spatially. "The Double Helix: A Classic Example of Spatial Thinking." Learning to Think Spatially: GIS as a Support System in the K-12 Curriculum. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2006.
  
  
• Cornell, Josephy Bharat. Sharing Nature with Children. A Parents' and Teachers' Nature-Awareness Guidebook. Nevada City, CA: Dawn, 1979.
  
  
• Davidson, Michael and The Florida State University. Secret Worlds: The Universe Within --Interactive Java Tutorial (2006).
  
  
• Donahue, Timothy P., Lisa Bryce Lewis, Lawrence F. Price, and David C. Schmidt. "Bringing Science to Life Through Community-Based Watershed Education." Journal of Science Education and Technology. 7, 1 (1998).
  
  
• "Emergence" resources:
  
  • Emergence and Exploration: Institute on Bridging Cultures in K-12 Curricula (Summer 2003)
    
    
  • Emergent Pedagogy: Learning to Enjoy the Uncontrollable and Make it Productive: A Conversation in (and on) Process Among Anne Dalke (English), Kim Cassidy (Pyschology), Paul Grobstein (Biology), Doug Blank (Computer Science, Bryn Mawr College) and K-12 Teachers in the Philadelphia Public School System (forthcoming in the Journal of Educational Change)
    
    
  • Emergent Systems: A Discussion (Fall 2002-present)
    
    
  • Emergence: Biology 361=Computer Science 361 (Bryn Mawr College Course, Spring 2006)
    
    
  • Emergence, by Steven Johnson (Fall 2002 discussion)
  
  
• Environment: An Initiative of the Center for Science in Society at Bryn Mawr College
  
  
• geodata.gov: Geospatial One-Stop, a geographic information system (GIS) portal.
  
  
• Gilbert, Melissa and Masucci, Michele. "Moving Beyond 'Gender and GIS' to a Feminist Perspective on Information Technologies: The Impact of Welfare Reform on Women's IT Needs." A Companion to Feminist Geography. J. Seager and L. Nelson, eds. New York: Blackwell, 2004. 305-321.
  
  
• Global Rivers Environmental Education Network (GREEN)
  
  
• Google Earth--A 3D Interface to the Planet (2006).
  
  
• Goldring, Ellen, Lora Cohen-Vogel, Claire Smrekar and Cynthia Taylor. "Schooling Closer to Home: Desegregation Policy and Neighborhood Contexts." American Journal of Education. 112 (2006): 335Ü362.
  
  
• Gruenewald, David. "The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place." Educational Researcher. 32, 4 (May 2003). 3-12.
  
  
• Harr, Jonathan. A Civil Action. New York : Random House, 1995.
  
  
• Jennings, Nancy, Steve Swidler, and Christopher Koliba. "Place-Based Education in the Standards-Based Reform Era: Conflict or Complement?" American Journal of Education. 112 (2005): 44Ü65.
  
  
• Louv, Richard. Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.
  
  
• McLafferty, Sara. "Geographic Information and Women's Empowerment: A Breast cancer Example." A Companion to Feminist Geography. J. Seager and L. Nelson, eds. New York: Blackwell, 2004. 486-495.
  
  
• Morrison, Phillip and Phyllis. Powers of Ten: A Book About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero. Rev. ed. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1994.
  
  
• Newcombe, Nora. "A Plea for Spatial Literacy." The Chronicle Review.(March 3, 2006.)
  
  
• North American Association for Environmental Education
  
  
• The Orion Society's Nature Literacy Series 1. Sobel, David. Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education. 1996.
  2. Stories in the Land: A Place-Based Environmental Education Anthology.
  3. Leslie, Claire Walker, John Tallmadge, and Tom Wessels. Into the Field: A Guide to Locally Focused Learning.
  4. Sobel, David. Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms & Communities.
  
• Pergams, Oliver R.W. and Patricia Zaradic. "Is love of nature in the US becoming love of electronic media? 16-year downtrend in national park visits explained by watching movies, playing video games, internet use, and oil prices." Journal of Environmental Management (August 2006).
  
  
• River of Words Project
  
  
• "Sense of Place: Habitat Enhancement Program." Partnership for the Delaware Estuary, 2002. Video: 11 minutes.
  
  
• Smith, Gregory. "Place-Based Education: Learning To Be Where We Are." Phi Delta Kappan. 93, 8 (April 2002): 584-594.
  
  
• Stone, Michael K. and Zenobia Barlow, Eds. Ecological Literacy: Educating our Children for a Sustainable World. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 2003.
  
  
• Vaupel, Robin. My Contract with Henry. New York: Holiday House, 2003.
  
  
• Watershed Education Resources, prepared by Kaitlin Friedman

Other authors who justify place-based education from deep ecology/environmental stewardship perspectives:
Wendell Berry, Frijof Capra, David Hutchison, Aldo Leopold, Gary Paul Nabhan, Daniel Quinn, and Gary Snyder.

Useful keywords: topophilia, ecological/environmental literacy, place-based education, bioregion(alism)

Notes from Biology 103 (Fall 2005) An Overview: Spatial Scale and Diversity A Question of Scale: Quarks to Quasars

Secret Worlds: The Universe Within

Spatial scale - at what scales do improbable assemblies exist and how do they relate to one another?

• protons, neutrons - 10^-15 meters (1 fermi)
• atoms - 10^-10 meters (angstroms)
• smaller molecules - 10^-9 meters (1 nanometer, 10 angstroms)
• macromolecular assemblies - 10^-8 meters
• cell membrane thickness (lipid bilayer), viruses - 10^-7 meters (100 nanometers)
• cell component (mitochondrion), bacterium - 10^-6 meters (1,000 nanometers, 1 micron)
• "typical" cell - 10^-5 meters (10 microns) - may be part of multicellular organism or itself a living organism ("cell theory" - a major advance based on new observations from new technology) - 10^-5 meters (10 microns)
• sand grain, blood vessel - 10^-3 meters (millimeters)
• human scale - yard stick, human (female - male) - ~ 1 meter
• blue whale, large playing field - 10² meters
• a little more than a half mile - 10³ meters (kilometer)
• distance from BMC to Philadelphia (days walk) - 10⁴ (tens of kilometers)
• Earth's diameter - 10⁷ meters
• Earth to Sun - 10¹¹ meters (1 astronomical unit, ~5 light minutes)
• solar system - 10¹³ meters (~8 light hours)
• light year - 10¹⁶ meters (v=186,000 miles/second, 3 x 10⁸ meters/second)
• Milky Way diameter - 10²¹ meters, 10⁵ light years
• current universe diameter - ~10²⁶ meters, 10¹⁰ light years

Lessons from working up in scale from human ...

• Technology important to make new observations
• Bigger things are assemblies of smaller things
• Living organisms are limited in size
• Life is bigger but also limited in size?
• Improbable assemblies still bigger and relevant for understanding life
• There's LOTS of room to explore

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