Welcome!

In addition to various musings on the concept of "place based" education, this blog provides a handful of photographs taken over the last 90 years from the margin of America's most accessible glacier - the Mendenhall. This glacier landscape - in Juneau Alaska's own backyard - has changed dramatically.

I invite you to come on in and be a witness to change.

Look closely at the two photos below. Can you match up the distinct bump in each of the photos on the ridge on the right? Once you key in on that "bump," you become a witness to change! Not only has the glacier receded nearly 1.5 miles since 1924, but it has also thinned dramatically!

Mendenhall Glacier 1920s

Mendenhall Glacier 1920s
Alaska State Library Historical Collection - ASL-Glacier-MendenhallGlacier-59

Mendenhall Glacier June 2010

Mendenhall Glacier June 2010
US Forest Service Photo - Mendenhall Glacier Photo Gallery

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Reflections


From materials presented by Tom Thornton, Ph.D at the Placed Based Education Institute Juneau Alaska June 7-8, 2010: “Place Based Eucation: An Anthropological View”
Education is a cultural universal and imperative. Schools are not. Schools are modern inventions & tools of large agricultural and industrial societies.
Experiential & multimedia education are ancient and universal. Writing and literacy are modern inventions dating back about 10,000 years.
These are simple, but key concepts. They are important, yet few educators ever have the time to ponder their implications. The Placed Based Institute gave us that opportunity.

The photo at right is one I took during our day at Auke Recreation. These are students, enrolled in the Goldbelt camp, sharing a placed-based educational experience with teachers in the Institute.
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