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Hope you all enjoyed the first episode Sunday Morning for this semester. I thought some really interesting history was presented and look forward to our conversation in class.
An historical review of conventions....
For on-line videos of some of the other stories we saw, continue reading...
Not an ordinary diner...
Who's more environmentally friendly? A hybrid car owner or a used car dealer?
Over time, humans have developed a myriad of ways to share stories with one another...under a dark sky at night, on the walls of caves, scratched into aging scrolls, typed into a processer, and captured onto film. Although the tools of storytelling may change, the fundamental requirements remain the same. Regardless of format, sharing stories requires curiosity, passion, creativity, good listening, respect, and attention to detail.
Throughout the semester, we will try our hand at sharing stories. And, although our formats will change (written, spoken, recorded, blogged, filmed) our goals will remain the same--to look at the world through curious eyes, with a sense of appreciation for the habits, rituals, and stories of the people, places, and events around us.
Today we saw a masterful storyteller, Charles Kuralt, display the curiosity and sincerity that made him so popular on Sunday Morning. However, this passion lives on in other storytellers who are finding new ways to capture the imagination of their audience. Jonathan Harris is one of these modern storytellers. He shares his innovative storytelling techniques in his TED talk...The art of collecting stories. Below, you can view his talk and you can also visit his project at We Feel Fine.
The art galleries at Allegheny College host a great event this weekend called 8 Hour Projects. As Allegheny student Tamara Belden explains, "It's a really cool chance to see artists actively working through their projects AND you can walk up and talk to them whenever you like." The event takes place this Saturday, Aug. 30 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m in the Bowman and Penelec Galleries. The finished products will be on exhibit from Tuesday, Sept. 2 through Tuesday, Sept. 30.
For more information about the event, visit, Art Galleries to Exhibit Artists at Work in “8-Hour Projects”.
...now that you have made it to campus and are settling into your life at Allegheny, it's a great time to STOP and think about why you are here. Over the course of the semester, we will focus on writing and speaking, study skills and time management, and on all the great opportunities that await you at our institution.
However, only you can answer the question of why you are here and what you want to get from this experience. You may think it is way too early to have the answer to these questions, and you would be right....but, it is not to early to start to ask those questions. If you keep waiting for the time when you are ready to answer them, you will quickly find yourself at the end of your four years at Allegheny wondering what is next.
Asking the questions and keeping them in mind will be easier at some points than others, but every once in a while, I'll remind you to stop and reflect. And soon, you will start to have some clues that will lead you in the right direction.
So...here is my first reminder. As part of that reminder, I'd like you to think about what your education is for, what it is worth, and how you want to participate in the process. In his TED Talk, Sir Ken Robinson reflects on the importance of creativity in learning. He reminds us that, "Kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go...they're not frightened of being wrong...If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original. If you're not prepared to be wrong."
Watch Robinson's talk and think about how you can be creative during your time at Allegheny and whether or not you are prepared to be wrong...
Robinson shares many innovative, pehaps uncomfortable, thoughts with his audience. Some food for thought from the talk...
Megan Petroccia and John Mahalchak are hard at work in the lab making great progress with the eyetracker--thanks to a wonderful group of volunteers who are letting us practice tracking, running stimuli, and recording data.
We were quite excited today after collecting a great sample from a volunteer who was viewing a picture from an old children's book, The Woodland Folk in Fairyland. You can see the interesting trace of the participant's eye up the ladder, with the blue dots indicating where the eye fixated (stopped) to take in information from the picture.
We hope to have several students trained on the eyetracker by the beginning of the fall semester and to collect data for a simple visual cognition study. If you'd like to hear more about our progress, please join us for the first Cognitive Group meeting of the fall on Friday, September 5th from noon to 1:00 in Carnegie 101. Megan & John will share their summer research with us and will discuss some of our ideas for the first eyetracking study.
The Allegheny College summeR reSearch Series (ACRoSS) wrapped up on Tuesday, August 5th. Faculty and their summer research assistants were invited to present their research over a series of lunches throughout the summer. The brain-child of Professor Lee Coates and sponsored by the Dean of the College, the series was a big success and was a wonderful place for students to "test the waters" in terms of presenting their work to the scientific community at Allegheny. The series was also successful because of it's inter-disciplinary nature--research presentations derived from the fields of biology, chemistry, computer-science, environmental-science, psychology, and physics.
Our lab had the opportunity to present to the group this week. We shared work on two projects being conducted in the lab in our presentation entitled, "You Don't Say? Examining language use from psycho- and socio-linguistic perspectives."
Thanks to my students, Vincent Donofrio, Megan Petroccia, John Mahalchak, and Andrea Testa for making the lab a fun, productive environment this summer.
Find out more about the series by going to the ACRoSS website. And to learn about the kind of research we do in our lab, visit the Knupsky Cognitive Lab website.