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Website Reviews

Aboriginal Youth Identity Series: Culture and its Meaning

http://www.edukits.ca/aboriginal/culture/grade1/teacher/resources.htm

 

This is an excellent site of lesson plans and resource books from Grade 1 to Grade 12.  The stated purpose of the site is to explore culture and its meaning with regards to Aboriginal people.  The plans are said to be “Aboriginal” but they tend to focus on the Blood Indians.  I would have liked to have seen the scope of this large body of work to be broadened.  The site is from Alberta and although the stated goal is to be inclusive, I feel that it would be difficult to adapt the curriculum to be relevant to people living outside of Alberta.

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Website Reviews

Generation to Generation: When Aboriginal Elders Speak, Youth Listen

http://www.camh.net/Publications/Cross_Currents/Summer%202008/eldersspeak_crcusummer08.html

This is a short article on the Center for Addiction and Mental Health site.  It talks about elders spending time with children in foster care.   One particular example relates a story of an elder taking a group of foster children on a medicine walk through a forest in Duncan, B.C. 

A six-year-old girl hurt her ankle playing in the forest.  She wrapped her ankle in a healing fern she had learned about from the elder.  This is just one example of how powerful the connection between the elders and the children can be and shows how much it is missed when that connections has been severed. 

The medicine walk is hosted by the Surrounded by Cedars, an aboriginal child and family welfare agency in Victoria, BC.  “This day-long excursion and the lessons it taught are an example of the valuable role that aboriginal elders can play in ensuring that the future of youth includes a strong link to the cultural knowledge and traditions that will ground them in their identity as aboriginal peoples.”

The site also provides links to various mental health sites.

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Website Reviews

I’m a Lucky One

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIyCDr_ojV4[/youtube]

Here is a video from a Native rap group called Tru Rez Crew.  The song is called “I’m a Lucky One”.  The group is from the Six Nations.  This is a wonderful piece of self empowerment.  While the video is clearly well produced, the poetry and the power of the lyrics suggest a resurgence of the story telling genre.  Although they borrow heavily from the rap genre, this story is something unique.  They are using modern means to tell their story and honour their parents.  To paraphrase, Those who rose above it, chose to love us, and gave us a kick in the butt when we need it. 

During the reading, I encountered concepts that suggested that Aboriginal people are defined by the land where they lived.  The further suggestion was that since the Internet is landless, they would have difficulty connecting over it.  This is clearly not the case in this video.  Images of land, family, and life experiences on a reservation make it all the more powerful.

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Website Reviews

Sunchild ELearning Community Model

 http://www.e-library.ca/education/best-practices/pdf/Sunchild%20elearning.pdf

This is an article on Community-Based Learning Opportunities for Aboriginals, Winner, 2005 which provides details on a case study on the Sunchild E-Learning Community Model.  This is a well organized and easy to navigate article.  The bookmarks on the left hand side list each subheading in the article.  “In 1999, the Sunchild E-Learning Community was established to develop and deliver high-quality education aimed exclusively at the educational needs of grades 9 to 12 Aboriginal students in 12 First Nations communities across Canada.”

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BC Archives Amazing Time Machine

http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/exhibits/timemach/main.htm

 

This is a British Columbia Archives Presents the Amazing Time Machine site.  On the left hand side, the site includes a list of 11 links which include:  Families in BC History, Communities in BC History, First Nations’ Art in BC, The Cariboo Gold Rush, Mulitculturalism, Social Institutions, First Nations BC, Economy and Technology, BC Resource Development, and Art in BC History.  There is also a Teacher’s Corner link.  This is a very simple site but with some good resources if you have the time to spend looking at all the links since there is no search option.

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Website Reviews

BCTF First Nations Resource Page

 http://bctf.ca/bcssta/links/firstnations.htm

This is a very basic site prepared by the BCTF (British Columbia Teacher’s Federation).  There are no frills here, just a list of sites you can go to to find information you may be looking for.   It contains two basic categories of resources:  general resources and archival resources

Under General Resources you can find such links as Provincial Exams where you can find past provincial exams and keys and information on provincially examinable courses.  It still baffles me that the teachers work very hard to provide students with a well balanced curriculum where they are exposed to a wide variety of collaborative learning, storytelling and oral presentations, yet the provincial exams only test then on the written aspect of their knowledge.  The site also contains links to such sites as Canada’s Digital Collection with “400 web sites related to Canada’s history, geography, science, technology, and culture.” 

 

There is also and Aboriginal Cultures and Traditions: Storytelling (they actually misspelled cultures as cultures).  But if you go to the link, it will take you to the Digital Collections which they already provided a link for.  This should have been a link which directly took you to the storytelling and not another list of sites. 

Under the Archival Resources you have two choices:  the National Archives of Canada and the Hudson’s Bay Archives.

Overall, a good starting point but a cumbersome way of organizing information.

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Uncategorized

Discovering Yourself Storytelling Lesson

http://sd71.bc.ca/sd71/edulinks/firstnat/Lessons/storytel.htm 

 

This is a detailed unit plan for teaching storytelling entitled Discovering Yourself.  It was designed by Judy Wilson and Robyn Dickinson.  It combines the curriculum for Social Studies, English Language Arts and Personal Planning.  The unit can be adapted to any grade level.  It is well laid out and easy to follow with a list of useful resources.

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Website Reviews

HorizonZero

http://www.horizonzero.ca/index.php?pp=29&lang=0

 

HorizonZero is an online site for digital art, ideas and culture.  It was created in 2002 as a collaboration between the Banff New Media Institute and the Culture.ca Gateway.  It is an interactive web production with 18 thematic issues.  However, it only lasted for 3 years so it is not currently being updated.  The objective of the project was to:  “to commission fresh Canadian new media content; to promote and disseminate Canadian talent in digital arts and culture, both nationally and worldwide; and to facilitate dialogue and innovation in the converging fields of science, technology, media arts, and research.” 

Issue 17 drew my attention because it deals with Aboriginal Story in Digital Media.  It tells the story of Iktomni the Trickster.  The story is narrated with simple animation.  The most engaging part is that you can select the language you want to hear the story in – English or Nakoda.

The site is well organized and provides a wealth of information on Aboriginal culture and art.  Many of the illustrations in the story are interactive and link you to other sites for even more info.

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Website Reviews

First Nations Technology Council

http://www.fntc.info/

This is the First Nations Technology Council web site.  The site is full of links such as Technical Support, Skills Development, Information Management, Community Applications, Youth Café, Tools and Resources, and News and Events.  Each of these in turn will take you on to other sites with a lot of useful information about everything to do with First Nations and Technology in BC.   The most useful links I found to be under the Youth Café which included such links as First Nations Schoolnet and First Nations Education Steering Committee. 

The site is well organized and easy to use.

Categories
Website Reviews

Charles Darwin University – Abracadabra Multimedia Software

www.cdu.edu.au/sspr/abracadabra.html

This is a Charles Darwin University (School for Social and Policy Research).  The article describes the Abracadabra multimedia software which is geared towards early childhood teachers and focuses on “reinforcing foundation literacy skills among emerging learners. “  They claim that the program is an “innovative addition to  the field of Indigenous education.”

The site provides information and links on all aspects of the University including research projects.

There is also a link to the Telstra Foundation which is providing funding to the Abra project by committing $750,000.

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