al-mofhariz

This Friday, Nov. 4 at 12pm, those attending the FHSA distinguished scientist lecture will have the privilege of hearing from and talking with Case Western's Dr. Cynthia Beall. Gina Rumore, an FHSA stalwart, got in touch with Beall and offers the following introduction to her work. Enjoy: Cynthia Beall and nomad friends: Phala, Tibet, altitude 4500m, 2005,  copyright Cynthia Beall and Melvyn Goldstein Dr. Cynthia Beall of Case Western University will deliver this year’s FHSA Distinguished Scientist Lecture at the History of Science Society’s annual meeting in Cleveland, Ohio. Beall, a physical anthropologist, studies how humans adapt, physiologically, to living at high altitudes. She conducts her research on populations in the South American Andes, the Tibetan Plateau in the Himalayas, and the Simien Plateau of Ethiopia. She is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Over the past forty years, Beall’s research...

Here's a great technique I learned from FOSS last week that work's really well at the end of a unit or simply to review a tough concept. We did this in a workshop after we had had several hands-on activities exploring these concepts.  I would NEVER do this from just a reading of a non-fiction piece.  After all, FOSS believes in " building conceptual meaning through experience." First you write out several vocabulary words on sticky notes.  I would make four sets so that each table could work on it together.  You would also give each table a piece of chart paper. Here is a suggested list:  air, gas, volume, molecules, pressure, copress, expand, push. Directions: 1. Determine how the words/concepts are related. 2. Organize in groupings on chart paper. 3. Draw lines between related terms. 4. On the lines, write some words showing how terms are related. Here are some examples of what we did at the workshop. I really liked being able to move the sticky notes around b...