MET Course Weblog

“Listening to Our Past” is a collaborative effort about Inuit Culture in Nunavut involving the Qikiqtani Inuit Association,  Nunavut Arctic College, Association des Francophone du Nunavut, and Heritage Canada. There is a lot of information presented in a format that I think would be appealing to students – plenty of interesting pictures.  Why is this important? Because teachers can create a group name for students to log in individually and complete questionnaires. An excellent learning resource.

Be sure to flip the pictures (bottom, right hand side) – I had been to the site a couple of times before realizing this!

http://www.tradition-orale.ca/default.html

So, it is over this year (October 20-24, 2010) and it was in Toronto, however, the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival is annual. In fact it just celebrated its 11th year.  AND there is still lots to look at and discover on their website. Check out the short clip on the Best Dramatic Feature festival winner “Boy” – guaranteed to make you want to see the film!

http://www.imaginenative.org/schedule.php?y=2010

http://www.etcgroup.org/en/issues/biopiracy

Database of best practices on indigenous knowledge

http://www.unesco.org/most/bpikreg.htm

The site is part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It is a database of articles that highlight indigenous knowledge.

The majority of the articles is from Africa. There are only two from North America, both from Canada. One of these discusses environmental issues surrounding Hudson’s Bay. From the article:

Indigenous knowledge is at the core of the practice and its value is immense. It was both the premise for and basis of the study: an historic, empowering and rewarding experience for many of the IK contributors. It was historic in that the IK contributors were cognisant of putting their orally communicated traditional ecological knowledge into writing for the first time in history. It was empowering in that they shared this mission with peers from many communities sharing the same environmental outlook, and they believed it would make a difference in the way decisions affecting the environment and communities of the Hudson Bay bioregion would be made.

It would be nice to see more articles from North America. Perhaps the lack of American participation is a reflection of the attitudes of government.

http://www.unep.org/IK/default.asp?id=Home
United Nations Environment Programme

The site is similar to the World Bank site discussed in Module three in that it explores using indigenous knowledge as a source to deal with problems being faced in the world today. The UN, partnered with the University of Swaziland, and Climate Prediction and Applications Centre have teamed up to create the site.

The purpose of the site is stated as:

“The website aims to ensure that
* This IK and its various applications are documented before it is lost forever.
* This information is made accessible to as many people as possible.
* Awareness of the importance of this knowledge is created amongst governments and policy makers so that they may begin to incorporate it in policy creation and various development programs.
* Custodians of this knowledge may have a forum through which they can share it with others. “

This site has links to a number of different knowledge areas, including nature conservation, natural disaster management, traditional medical practices, and poverty alleviation. While it focuses on Africa, this could be a model for applying indigenous knowledge around the world. The site also offers 118 page pdf file that contains a wealth of information. (http://www.unep.org/IK/PDF/IndigenousBooklet.pdf)

Perhaps the most useful aspect of the site is a searchable database of knowledge.

I think the First Nations Program at UBC is one of the best, if not the most cutting edge in terms of its use of educational pedagogies and especially technology. Each year, the First Nations Studies Program is involved in a number of special projects and initiatives in addition to the student projects that occur within our course work.

For example, Political Science 406, Aboriginal Politics in Canada, was one of the first programs to use this an interactive video technology called IVT. The UBC First Nations Studies IVT Viewer gives you a whole new way to view and work with the videos and transcripts of the 2005 Internet Speakers Series.

This innovative prototype program has been developed by FNSP to allow you to see both the videos and transcripts of the sessions simultaneously and move in them easily. It also allows you to search the transcripts for words or phrases and go directly to the video segment of the passages you have found, allowing you to search through hours of video in minutes to find relevant information, as well as providing you with text for reference and citation. The IVT Viewer is a useful multimedia tool for assisting educators, academics, students, and the public alike in research and accessing information.

Website about IVT uses in the Landclaims project series:  http://fnsp.arts.ubc.ca/landclaims/

* A compilation of a variety of links to adult education materials/ other resources…divided by general categories and research categories

* Not much to say about the look of the site, except that it is clear and organized.

* EXCELLENT START to research on adult education topics

http://etc.usf.edu/adult_ed/index.htm

* a blog with a specific focus on Adult Education and Technology 

* Marion Thatcher is “Keeping an eye on technology for the adult education classroom and beyond”.

* contains links to many useful educational tools to use in a classroom.

      – such as Storybird, asite that uses donated art to for students to use to tell a visual/media story

      – could be used to help students gain deeper knowledge of a concept taught in class if they have an assignment that has them regurgitate the info from class into a visual format to share with other students.

* This blog site will help any teacher looking for tech ideas for teaching tools to help engage the techno savy students these days.

http://marianthacher.blogspot.com/

*  United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

* Aim is to promote and improve the integration of Education for Sustainable Development into the educational strategies and action plans at all levels and sectors of education in all countries.

* Multimedia teacher education programme = 100 hours

*  Can be accessed and used in a great many ways by teachers, student teachers, teacher educators, curriculum developers, education policy makers and authors of educational materials: FOR FREE

* This website is valuable for people wanting to research ways to improve their skills in a specific area – perhaps it can be twisted to focus on aboriginal adult education somehow…am looking into it further.

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/index.htm

* Is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to providing reliable and authoritative information about science and technology for the developing world.

* Free-access website, written mainly by Southern-based contributors

* Regularly add dossiers, spotlights, ‘quick guides’ and ‘news focuses’ on specific subjects, in addition to a growing amount of regular news coverage.

* Raising awareness of indigenous knowledge in science and technology education by Zane Ma Rhea

* Helpful if researching for cross curricular materials to teach at a highschool level

External Link listed = UNESCO Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/index.htm

http://www.scidev.net/en/policy-briefs/raising-awareness-of-indigenous-knowledge-in-scien.html