Posts from — November 2011

1. Can an individual truly engage with another culture and learn about it without a deep self-examination of their own cultural values? Explain.
2. What is the difference between cross cultural education and multicultural education?
   Two of the questions for reflection from Module 4 have provided me with direction for my paper.
   I am living, sharing, and contributing to a district in which there is no recognized territory.
   Who are our FN students? How do we provide of their cultural needs when the cultural identities are so diverse? Cross cultural education? What might that look like and would it support well being and success? How can/should technology play a part?

   Canadian Council on Learning, Redefining how Success is Measured in First Nations, Inuit and Métis Learning (Ottawa: 2007).

   Statistics and Maps Aboriginal Portal

   The State of Aboriginal Learning in Canada: A Holistic Approach to Measuring Success 2006

    

 1) First Nations House, St. George Campus, University of Toronto where Aboriginal students can seek culturally appropriate services.  It is home of the Aboriginal U of T students, but also provides a link to Toronto’s aboriginal community, allowing others in the university to learn and network.

2) First Nations House Magazine, provides a “glimpse of the richness that the Aboriginal community has to offer at university and society at large”.   It appears 5 issues were created and magazine covers are provided, as well as, the test of a  few feature articles, “Identifying in Film: Exploring Indigenous filmmakers about exploring identity through their work”, “Take a Number Please: A First Year Student dishes on being identified by her Indian status”, “My Degree and Me: a personal narrative of a graduating student”.

3) Aboriginal Education at Universities and Colleges Portal   Our discussions led me to want to know more about programs of study geared to FN students in  Ontario universities and colleges.    I explored the various programs offered for teacher education, undergraduate, graduate work.   Further exploration in to the various  sites and programs provided greater insight regarding research.

4)  Educate Youth in Communities: Thunder Bay mayor, Keith Hobbs. Northern Ontario’s First Nations Voice.   An article examining the  practice of sending Aboriginal teens from across northwestern Ontario to Thunder Bay for high school as they are put in a vulnerable position.   Schooling in northern communities to grade 12. Online education was not mentioned.

5) Fighting Racism with Facts on Crime  An article from  Aboriginal leaders in Thunder Bay are criticizing the media’s role in creating a “climate of fear” underlined with racism in the city, following the high profile given to the latest death of a young Native man and recent media reports of Thunder Bay being the “murder capital” of Canada.  This comment at the end of the article was very interesting ….”  much of the growth of the Aboriginal population in Thunder Bay is due to Native people coming into the city for education opportunities, either in high school or post-secondary education.  What’s the best way to get people away from crime? Give them an education.”

** Nov. 28 – I returned to link #5 to find that the article is no longer available.  Here is a link to all education stories from Wawatay News Online.

This website is a veritable cornucopia of articles written by Steven Semken, an authority on place-based learning and Indigenous education.  Most of the articles, particularly the ones written and published within the past ten years have links to pdf files that readers can download. Among the paper titles includes “Place-Based Teaching and Learning” which was recently accepted for publication in the Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning of Learning.  Unfortunately, that article is not accessible in pdf form, and readers will have to wait until the encyclopedia is published.  Other titles include

“A sense of the American Southwest: Place-based Earth system science for diverse students”

“Factors that influence sense of place as a learning outcome of place-based geoscience teaching”

“Design elements and learning outcomes of two place-based teacher professional programs situated in the Southwest United
States: Concordance with Universal Design for Learning.”

“Putting Earth science back in its place”

“Sense of place in the practice and assessment of place-based science teaching”

Steven Semken is associate professor in the Earth and Space Exploration department at Arizona State University.

http://semken.asu.edu/bibliography/

The author of this webpage demonstrates a strong passion for the rights and privileges of the indigenous people while at the same time, highlighting the ills of globalization and the use of media creation to further strengthen their efforts at domination and infiltration.

The author’s consistent use of comparative analysis, present readers with the many variables that are present in media creation and globalization, from which they can draw their own conclusion. The use of thought provoking questions further prompt readers to examine the situation closer and in turn begin to ask questions of their own. There is a gradual introduction of terms such as ‘exploitation’ ‘domination’ “extensive power” “corporatism” all used in relation to the underpinnings of globalization and media creation. Spurts of enthusiasm and hope for indigenous media creation highlight the positives of media and the resilience of the indigenous people.

http://www.globalautonomy.ca/global1/summaryPrint.jsp?index=summaries/RS_Tabobondung_MediaCreation.xml

This weekend, I spent some time perusing the BC Ministry of Education Website – ABORIGINAL EDUCATION. All looks well on the website. Numbers of  pictures suitably containing FN students, attractive art work and a spattering of indigenous language. What ETEC 521 has done for (to) me is developed the need for me to question. Who constructed this web page? Who chose the information gathered?  There certainly is a plethora of data, Enhancement Agreements, Resources, Research,  . . .Is the data gathering system/tool culturally neutral? Who chose the research? I should not be so cynical. Maybe there are lots of FN people constructing the website and choosing carefully and responsibly the information contained on the website.

I am not sure if I got too much in the way of fodder for my paper – but I am now going to receive updates should the website change and I am now on the Abnet list serve.

http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/G02843.pdf

It is the view of some Aboriginals that the younger generation have grown up in a wider society that fails to recognise the significance of their knowledge and maintaining their indigenous identity which has led to the apparent abandonment of Aboriginal culture in preference for a more dominant Western one.  Against this background, the Walkatjurra Cultural Centre, an Aboriginal organisation has taken on the mantle to explore how cost-effective web 2.0 initiatives can be used to revitalise indigenous culture and enhance community development.  In addition, this article highlights the outcomes of a community-based youth empowerment project involving university researchers and Aboriginal community members that was designed to help bridge the intergenerational knowledge divide.

http://capyi.vcn.bc.ca/post/1087736713/first-nations-and-the-digital-divide

The main purpose of this article is to outline initiatives that are employed to narrow the divide between remote First Nations communities and their access to new communication technologies. It also highlights several Community Access Program (CAP) sites such as the Tsawwassen First Nations Elders site, Tsawwassen First Nations Youth site, and the Kiwassa Neighborhood House that are integral in providing access to Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), to those who face barriers to access.

The article offers examples of ways that aboriginal youth have adapted ICTs into their life which includes using digital media to  craft stories told by elders into films; children as young as ten years old have been learning how to use graphic design programs and build websites; younger members of communities are helping elders to record community history and access valuable information over the Internet, among others ways.

http://www.cdu.edu.au/centres/ik/pdf/DigTech_IndigPlaceAust.pdf

This article highlights discoveries made from a research project that was conducted to obtain information on ways that many Indigenous people in northern Australia use digital technologies in promoting the interests of their traditional groupings, their clan lands, histories, connections and places. In addition, the article examined the ways that Indigenous peoples use possibilities the technologies offered in producing seeming definitive representations to achieve political ends when dealing with representatives of mainstream Australia.

http://www.kta.on.ca/pdf/AboriginalCultureinaDigitalAge.pdf

This paper gives readers a general view on the implications that information and communication technologies has on aboriginals’ ways of living, thinking and knowing.  To inform the research, three major topics that directly affect Aboriginal peoples were examined.  These include the importance of culture and identity, the widespread reality of ICT and the transformative impact it is having on our everyday economic, social and cultural life and the preservation and protection of Aboriginal languages, ecology and heritage.

http://www.irma-international.org/viewtitle/23550/

This article provides a discussion on the uses of ICT in key areas fundamental to the continuing presence of the Badimaya culture.  ICT initiatives explored includes:

Geographical Information Systems- the Portal Framework

A vector-based map in a geographic information system (GIS) that was used to show where different generations of the Badimaya lived and what languages are spoken today by their descendants.

Multimedia Clips- Content Management

This was used to preserve the Badimaya language that many feared would be eventually lost with time.

Digital Document Archives- Knowledge Management

This technology was used to preserve many aspects of the the Badimaya culture. For example, surviving documents could be digitally scanned and made available for access.