Until now, I have been dancing around with a few thesis ideas, not really ready to pick a partner. Today I think I’m almost ready to completely commit, and I’m excited about the prospect of dancing around with this particular project for the next few months (AKA 8 months). It seems to combine everything I […]
Relevance and Legitimacy: The Joy of Journals!
For the data section of this week’s post, please see Boundaries and Data, a post about the Nextdoor app as a probable data source. This week we chose two journals to browse through and select three related articles to read and harvest ideas from. I found this to be a lengthy but helpful exercise. Many times […]
Connections and Perceptions: Theories Behind Maps and Place
I visited my friend in Seattle this past weekend and binge-watched a bunch of reality TV, so now I have a much more exciting way to look at thesis. I now imagine each week narrated by an un-identified voice (or maybe Jim Proctor) with a quick montage of clips of each of us doing our […]
New Directions (and some Questions)
After meeting with Liz, my thesis finally took on an intriguing direction. As I was explaining my fascination with the idea of collecting mental maps to record the difference between people’s perceptions of their communities versus the physical realities, Liz brought in a term I had never heard of before, but had experienced throughout my […]
Exploring New Avenues
It almost feels like deja vu beginning the process of settling on a thesis topic, since just two years ago we were going through a similarly hectic process of creating our concentration. Each time I’m asked to come up with a somewhat long-term project in my ENVS classes, I find myself scrambling to find something […]
The Effectiveness of Place-Based Pedagogies
Background Framing: How effective are place-based education techniques in schools? John Dewey (1902), widely known as the father of progressive education, argues that many times in education, “facts are torn away from their original place in experience and rearranged with reference to some general principle.” This is the accepted form of schooling currently, as seen in […]