Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Afton, Chenango County, New York.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Afton, Chenango County, New York. Sanborn Map Company, Sep, 1885. Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, .

For years and years I have been hauling out a piecemeal taped-composite photocopy of the Afton Historical Society's Sanborn Fire Insurance 1885 Map from Afton, Chenango County, New York.
I am delighted to report that it is online at the LOC along with similar maps from 1891 and 1897!

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Afton, Chenango County, New York.
September 1885
https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn05722_001/

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Afton, Chenango County, New York.
July 1891
https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn05722_002/

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Afton, Chenango County, New York.
March97
https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn05722_003/

Mural mock-ups

Came across a couple folders with many of the silhouettes and research notes from our 2009 Wildlife Hallway project. Put them up on the bulletin board for another moment in the sun. #proud

Poblem-solving

Working up a rough-draft of a larger scale map on which to plot school house from our pre-centralized school district.

First-time video

A student introduction to creating a video began with staging a variety of about 20 assorted shots without a story line. The student then created a "story" from the pool of available takes. As a final version, he labeled the type of camera shots; establishing his knowledge of these building blocks and their usefulness.

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Subsequently, he has created a voice-over video based on a very structured script about kitchen safety. In this project, the challenge was quality control and attention to detail; not fun, but a useful rehearsal for the expectation of any job.

Allowing each other to contribute

Doing some project-brainstorming with my Period E class; can we build on a suggestion? can we visualize tasks, possibilities, outcomes? who might be a resource, stakeholder? who are we teaching with our research? what will me make to demonstrate what we are learning: videos, flash cards, exhibits, games, mock-ups, events?

And, importantly, do I sense a willingness and enthusiasm to embrace this opportunity as their own?

DDD on Map Warper

Extending the message

We have so many good ideas and lessons on character education and such, but always the challenge of keeping them before the awareness of our students. So I usually try to extend the message, at least a day or two.

Yesterday our PBIS group did an exercise where we matched up word-cards (honesty, loyalty, compassion, ...) with people that we knew, and then talked about how they exemplified those attributes, and whether we had ever told them how much that meant to us.

So this morning I taped those same cards along with that question on my library/lobby door, as well as taping a word to each of the gym overlook-windows; just a little visual-jog to connect yesterday to today ... and maybe to tomorrow.

Geo-based bulleting board

A Bierstadt and Cole landscape (each garnished with a Google Earth image)  headline our conversation about U.S. geography.

Engaging history with Portraits

I followed up on a Syracuse Stage postcard I received; leading me to Robert Shetterly's portrait project, Americans Who tell the Truth. Although he is basically looking to sell us something, the concept of rendering a portrait, that close reading, as a first step in discovering and investigating an "historic" person holds real promise for a classroom project. I see there are some lesson plans posted. I look forward to brainstorming on this a bit more, maybe even doing some of our own "historic" students, alumni, etc.

A physics-based look at the Johnstown Flood

Some one had been reading about the Johnstown Flood and left David McCullough's fine book on one of our library tables. I remember being enthralled as I read it years ago. It prompted me to see if there were any 3D geographic renderings of it online.

I was delighted to find this "physics-based simulation of it: https://youtu.be/tMc9kP9q-d8

Inspiring stuff

Reacting to the Past

I was led to this site by an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. "Reacting" is a role-playing curriculum at the college level to promote engagement with big ideas, employ collaborative skills, and inhabit the historical moment in all its context. Although it might not fly at the HS level, the idea of immersing students in the dynamics of an historical moment by having them be historical characters in it sounds awfully good. Perhaps a good PD visit for one of our staff.

Leveraging rocks

The identity rocks that our K-12 painted together are looking great at the school entrance.

I made a composite David Hockney-esque long poster from their image and am using it to support some school initiatives; like attendance.

Installed outside the Elementary Office!

Cutting out a bunch of individual rock messages to post also.

Math challenge

Can I find a way to "display" math? Going to try some end-cap questions.

Spreading the word(s)

My PBIS group really got into during our 20-minute end-of-the-day session. They worked in spontaneous small teams to tape some meaningful words to the library floor for all students to reflect on. We think it should be as easy to act on these words as it was to slap them on the floor!

2002 Library Project: Afton Volunteers

Took a walk down memory lane today; watched our 2002 video documentation of our 10-week Art/Library project. In many ways, I think those 10-week project anticipated very closely the type of skills-based learning opportunities we look to create today.

(This was the opening ice-breaker team-building bridge-building session to get the  juices flowing)

Packing-up poems

Starting to pack away all the school-day things around the library for Summer storage. How nice to find fresh magnet poems on the window sill!

Filling in the gaps

The NYRB is always such a wealth of diverse and wonderfully esoteric scholarship. And often it supplements or unseats an understanding I need to modify or discard.

An example is Howard French’s review of several books about the African Middle Ages. His thesis sentence sets the tone:

‘It may remain a little-known fact, but Africa has never lacked civilizations, nor has it ever been as cut off from world events as it has been routinely portrayed. Some remarkable new books make this case in scholarly but accessible terms, and they admirably complicate our understanding of Africa’s past and present.”

In the course of his discussion, he introduces the fabulously wealthy Malian ruler Mansa Musa who in the early 14th century journeyed to Mecca by way of Cairo with “13 to 18 tons” of pure gold and thousands of slaves and attendants. Beyond the legends of this entourage, it is the fact that only a few years later (1375) he earned an illustrated spot on the Catalan Atlas, spurring fortune-seekers and ultimately the competition of the slave trade between Portugal and Spain which “ was crucial to the creation of the modern nation-state and of what became modern European nationalism;” certainly a supplement to my understanding of that phenomenon.

He also highlights the observation of Herman L. Bennett “that the Sahara has long been miscast as a barrier separating a notional black Africa from an equally notional white or Arab one. In reality, it argues, the desert has always been not just permeable but heavily trafficked, much like the ocean, with trade as well as religious and cultural influences traveling back and forth, and with world-shaping effects.” Discard and update.

Reading the NYRB is a little more intense than browsing a magazine. I find myself underlining text, looking up books and references to research, and adding snippets to this bog so that I will remember how and when my understanding of the world changed and grew.

Sound bite for Danny D.

So I got my sound bite in 3D Printing: An Introduction by Stephanie Torta (full disclosure: Stephanie is the daughter of one of our ACS teachers; hence, my invitation to participate!)

I am proud of what I said in the interview because I believe every word of it.

Thanks again to all the Tortas for the opportunity.

Nurturing poetry

I collaborated with a colleague on a poetry unit where the students were creating concrete poems, black-out poems, and paint-chip poems. I suggested that they teach us how. The results of their creativity (posters, board games,slide shows, and...well concrete) are on flanking displays in our library foyer as well as having been exhibited in yesterday's Student Fair.