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Guiding Questions! Add a new post sharing your own stories! :)

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Guiding Questions! Add a new post sharing your own stories! :)

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Out of your group's site visits, which was the most impactful?

How have your ideas of learning changed during this quarter?

What were your prior thoughts around teaching and learning, and how did your site visits reflect and/or transform these ideas?

Guiding Question for Comments:
What connections do you see between people’s stories? This could be regarding themes, visits, or something else you may have noticed.

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For one of our site visits, we looked into a website called Genially, which is a site that provides an online tool (with online purchasable features) that allows people to create stylistic and flashy presentations, sometimes with a more web design approach to presentations. While we observed the site, we were noticed some templates used aesthetics from other cultures; one was called the China template, and contained Chinese text in the slides as a stylistic choice (they were images at the bottom of the slides). We were wondering why this was. It seemed strange the site would include stylistic aesthetics that contained this kind of content. The text would likely be completely unrelated to the presentation, and it made us wonder why its there in that way. If it was meant to be editable text, then there would be some more function to the slides.

Our conversations then shifted towards cultural appropriation, asking question like are these representations of culture harmful to those cultures? Is it something that should be a concern? It should certainly be a concern if the intense of the aesthetic is harmful to the culture, though in the same way that Polynesians love seeing their culture spread within American culture (with films like Moana), perhaps its wise to not jump into our own conclusions and assumptions about whether or not something is harmful to those cultures, unless it is a representation of our own culture, or if the representation of the culture feels hostile in nature. The other thing we could do is ask others from that culture if it is something we should be concerned about or not, before we make any assumptions of whether or not this feels like a micro aggression or not, and then proceed to bring up concerns to representatives of the company/organization.

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Learning the World with GeoGuesser, by Kris

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Learning the World with GeoGuesser, by Kris

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For one of our more unique site visits, we played an online game called Geoguesser. The game places you in a random spot somewhere in the world, and you can walk around like you’re using Google maps. The object of the game is to guess where exactly you were placed. The closer you get, the more points you receive. This game does a lot for teaching players about the world we live in, and how many places around the world look unique, though sometimes rather similarly to what we’re used to. If you make wrong guesses about where you are, you’ll soon realize your mistakes when the game directly tells you, and certainly can help reorientate incorrect assumptions.

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The most impactful site visit was the Burke Museum visit.

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The most impactful site visit was the Burke Museum visit.

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During my childhood, I despised most museum visits. If it was for a class, I'll check-in to fill out the worksheet. Otherwise, I'm out. Sorry, but museum visits weren't my thing! I didn't really understand the purpose to museum visits if all I was going to do was stare at artifacts that I could have just looked up online and done myself. And while that line of thinking may hold some truth, going to the Burke Museum helped me see more value to museum visits than I had thought of previously. What really struck me, unlike any other previous traditional museum experience, was the focus on history told from the perspective of the people involved themselves. It felt as if the artifacts were rich in greater meaning and value as I found how they were made by Indigenous people under the participation of Indigenous people themselves. Many of the pieces were in fact contemporary and unable to be found elsewhere as easily. There were also many pieces of interactive technologies that encouraged me to learn about these histories in different ways, including watching videos, interacting with artifacts, and reading through Indigenous-centered testimonies. This experience was not like any other museum experience for me, and I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to check it out!

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Our very first site visit was the burke museum, which to me was one of the best site visits all quarter. There was so much learning that i didn't expect to be taken aback the way i was. It felt like entering a completely new space to just venture and wander off, exploring and picking out certain things that caught my attention. The museum was like a choose your own adventure, the layout of artifacts and the space to just emerse oneself in history was what made the difference. Entering the museum it just felt different immediately the atmosphere changes, and i was excited to learn. Being able to see the real life size canoes and baskets, seeing the intricate work that was done to construct these objects with natural material, made me realize the difficulty and the struggle that they had to go through to achieve things. Again being able to interact with the objects, with real life history, creates for more sentimental or eve n deeper learning because the connections to history may be a little stronger. This type of learning differed from the native american history that they teach us in school, the burke museum allows for a safe space to really learn about the Native American history as cruel as it may be. The burke museum provides a real look at history without sugar coating what happened.

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Hey everyone! The most impactful site visit for the was the Indigenous Walking Tour. I'd never been to the Intellectual House, so seeing that kind of an alternative educational environment contextualized within an academic institution with both a deep history of white supremacy (Disorientation @ UW) and an institution accommodating/being made to accommodate alternative structures. The picture here is the "Living in Place" explanation from p. 7 of the accompanying print media for the tour. I haven't seen a "physical, emotional, and spiritual" joined understanding, so it was extremely impactful to see that contextualization within the context of cedar, cedar being a generational anchor and a tool and so many other things -- it's a respect to the symbolic aspect of life contextualized within the physical, and just a really solid understanding that I want to carry with me (in a respectful, non-appropriating way).

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Where there is space, there is a story. The Indigenous Walking Tour was an experience that provided a holistic perspective into seeing the land that UW occupies to be something that is alive, living, and culturally rich. The walking tour is accompanied by a reading guide that elucidates upon the historical and cultural settings of the environment or buildings in the tour. Here we are given insightful context in the importance of storytelling that seeps into our sense of place, and furthermore transforms our sense of self in the way that we interact with the environment. This understanding is further shaped and modified by the dominating existence of white supremacy and neoliberalism that taints much of the history here on campus. Histories which the tour boldly analyzes, critiques, and affirms.

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I really loved the course readings because they shed light on learning as it is attached to socially and culturally constructed norms and values! When visiting the different sites, I learned to apply the concepts discussed in our readings to be more observant of how different spaces will prioritize different outcomes according to the goals of each setting. I really enjoyed creating personal connections to the concepts we discussed regarding learning at a systematic/world level!

p.s. I love this idea, great presentation :)

-Charlise

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While I don't want to speak for my group, I feel like one of the most influential sites we visited was the Burke Museum! The museum itself allowed us to reframe our thinking about the norms of museum spaces and the differences in learning that takes place when institutionalized practices and notions of "real learning" and "formal learning" are challenged. -- Reina