What is reality?

Over the past few weeks, we've been looking at the following film:

• Eagleman, D. et al. (2015) The Brain: 1. What is reality? PBS Distribution (Film). 

CREIERUL cu David Eagleman - 1 din 6 - Ce este... by FYMaaa

Here are some questions to discuss and/or write about:

1) We see less than one ten trillionth of the magnetic spectrum. Other creatures perceive parts of the spectrum and other things that we totally miss – name some examples.

2) If you could somehow expand your perception, what would you like to be able to perceive?

3) Schizophrenia and synesthesthia are 2 examples of different internal realities. From your own experience, can you think of more examples of when people have different internal realities?

4) The film described how In a scary situation, all the brain’s resources get engaged in handling the problem and as a result, time feels like it’s slowing down. Describe a situation where it felt like time slowed down for you.

5) Final thoughts about the film – what did you learn or become more aware of by watching this film.

Interim presentations, games and more

Learning is a process that is never over, so that's why I'm encouraging all students to sign up to present their project work here:

Engelska - schema för redovisning

Our current reading work centres on the growing popularity of board games:

The rise and rise of tabletop gaming

Project: Learning about a new country

This is a project that aims to open up new horizons and put our English to good use.


1)  Look at a world map and choose a country that you know nothing about.

2) See if you can find news about that country in English. If possible, find sources native to that country rather than western news sources.

3) Let the news stories guide your search for more information about your chosen country. For example, an article about an election might lead you to look up information in Wikipedia about the country’s government. An article about health might lead you to the CIA World Factbook where you can find information about population.

4) Now think about how you want to document your investigation and show it to the rest of the class. A Google Doc that you share with your teacher is a good start. If you have a blog in Blogger, you could create page that you update with new information.

5) Having chosen your form of documentation, think about how to structure the information you’re collecting by using a hierarchy of headings. For example, you might have a section called “Overview” with subheadings like “Why I chose this country”, “Population”, “How to get there” etc. and then have headings for each news item you include.

6) Keep a list of sources – if possible, note authors, date of publication as well as the links you use.

7) Let this project run and run – be ready to show your work to the class from time to time.

Games

Kick the Can

Ringoleavio

Reading: "Life on Proxima b?" and "Talk to Strangers!"

The discovery of a possible planet orbiting earth's nearest star has awakened a lot of interest amongst scientists the world over.

Here is an article about it with some questions:
What if scientists found life on closest alien planet Proxima b?

And for something completely different, watch Kia Stark's talk about conversations with strangers...

https://www.ted.com/talks/kio_stark_why_you_should_talk_to_strangers?language=en

Here is the transcript with some questions for you to answer and discuss:
Kio Stark - Strangers

Questions posed by pop songs

Welcome to a new academic year!

Here is one of the things we'll d in our first lesson:

1) Pick a song that contains a question.

2) If possible, pin a link to the song here: https://padlet.com/gormcc/questions

Made using Padlet

3) Fold a piece of A4 paper in the middle so it's like a little book. Write the question on the "cover"in big letters.

4) Ask as many people as possible the question and write down their answer on the inside of the paper (or get them to write it for you).

5) When you've got lots of answers, glue it to the display we're creating outside Sal 11.