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

About the Backtalk Exhibit

backtalk's picture

Any display of any object is the result of a vast number of choices made by a wide range of people.  When information about the economics and ethics of the acquisition of those objects is added to this picture, however, these choices take on additional meanings: the money for purchasing some of the objects exhibited here was earned from work done for petroleum companies notorious for decades of exploitative and manipulative labor and environmental policies and practices in Africa. Does our thinking about a piece of jewelry on a wrist change when this kind of information is included in an exhibition such as this one?

Alice's Reading Notes 2/4

alesnick's picture

"Every experience is a moving force."

Dewey, Experience and Education

Chapter 1

"How shall the young become acquainted with the past in such a way that the acquaintance is a potent agent in appreciation of the living present?"

This connects with the import of time to schooling, which we noticed in class last time.  How does the issue of the extent to which education refers to and transmits knowledge of the past connect with the metaphors Cook-Sather describes?

Chapter 2

What is experience?

What makes an experience educative or miseducative?

Serendip Ideas

sara.gladwin's picture

I have all of my Serendip pages bookmarked and I almost never visit the homepage of Serendip. In exploring that homepage, I found an entire world on Serendip that pretty much never seems to intersect with my own personal use of the site. Out of curiosity, I polled some previous Serendip users, and asked about how they got to their class’s page. Did they go straight to the class page, or did they go to the homepage first and then find their class page? No one I asked could remember ever using the homepage to get to their particular class, and most had their class page bookmarked as I do.

History and Art

nkechi's picture

Neverending Artwork

When painting a picture, there is a lot of prep work that goes into it. You must find your brushes, paint, and look at the canvas before you. Afterwards, you have to sketch out the picture that you'd like to show, laying the groundwork for the finished product. If you only have blue paint, you can't make a red painting, and you also have to make do with the canvas you have. If it has deep grooves, they will reflect in your artwork unless you go pave over it. Ecological renovation is kinda like that.