Let me start off by saying I hope you're all doing well with your exams and not stressing out too much! I know for me as a new freshman at BYU this is definitely a learning experience! In preparation for our "salon" tomorrow, here's a look at some of the great work our class has done over the course of the semester.
UNIT 1: FOLK KNOWLEDGE
Self Directed Learning:
I saw people rock climbing when I was at Squaw Peak which made me want to research ancient rock climbing. I looked into the history behind the practice as it developed from the necessity of free climbing, to technical climbs, and into the sport we know today.
Others' Blogging:
Jenna Whitworth had a really good post on yoga. It talked about its ancient origins as a more spiritually oriented practice to its role as an exercise tool today, which brought up an interesting example of mantic vs. sophic learning.
Collaborative Learning:
Thinking back to our discussions on mantic vs. sophic styles of thought, I noticed that most of what we ending up talking about built on the entire class's combined interpretation of the article we read, which was a great example of collaborative learning.
Activities/Projects:
For the folk knowledge activities I taught a couple of my friends how to play a song on guitar, and my roommate taught me how to moonwalk. It was a lot of fun, and the more practical nature of folk knowledge as opposed to other mediums.
UNIT 2: ORAL KNOWLEDGE
Self Directed Learning:
I talked about the spoken rhetoric of the Kush civililization. Their language has not yet been translated, they practiced "divine kingship," and they even sacrificed their rulers when they became old and were seen as a liability.
Others' Blogging:
Marc Wein made an interesting post about rhetorical speaking in the Roman Empire. He talked about how it originated from the Greek tradition and evolved into its own form of oral knowledge that had a great influence on the Empire.
Collaborative Learning:
Our blog group met and filmed our video discussion, which helped us see the commonalities and differences between the oral cultures of our different civilizations. This really helped give us perspective on the role of oral politics in the ancient world, especially in lands ruled by absolute authority.
Activities/Projects:
For the oral knowledge project we recited King Benjamin's speech as a class. I think this really helped us understand the power of the spoken word, as well as better appreciate the significance of having to memorize all of your knowledge.
UNIT 3: WRITTEN KNOWLEDGE
Self Directed Learning:
I posted about the hugely important role of writing in ancient Egyptian culture because the Kush civilization that I was assigned does not have a language we can understand yet. I found that written and scribal traditions in Egypt were of the utmost importance, creating an entire social class and even factoring into their mythology and creation story.
Others' Blogging:
Brett Riley's post about "Linear A" in the Minoan culture showed a lot of similarities between cultures who's languages have not yet been deciphered. He also talked about how symbols are often shared between languages while their meanings often change.
Collaborative Learning:
In one of our class discussions I remember someone bringing up how writing systems changed how military intelligence was gathered so I went home and did some research and did a whole blog post based on that person's comment.
Activities/Projects:
For our written unit project our African cultures group made an artifact on clay (making it look like a slab of a wall from an ancient ruin) that translated ancient Greek writing into Egyptian and into English. It really illustrated the difficulties of translation between texts as well as the restraints of the mediums used.
UNIT 4: PRINT KNOWLEDGE
Self Directed Learning:
I did a post on the adoption of print in the Islamic world. The topic really caught my eye and once I began researching it I found out just how interesting the history of print in Middle East was. It gave me an interesting perspective on print knowledge outside of the Western world.
Others' Blogging:
Dane Olsen made a post about the history of the printed Bible spreading across Europe. He talked a lot about how it was not initially accepted as many believed and was strongly persecuted by the Catholic church and the Church of England.
Collaborative Learning:
For the Academic Paper project I was put into a group with Marc Wein, and although we didn't exactly have related topics, we were able to bounce ideas for our theses off of each other. I think this really helped our creative as well as analytical processes.
Activities/Projects:
The annotated bibliography project really changed my perspective on print sources of knowledge. I realized that a distinct chain connects print sources of knowledge with where they got their information from, and how easy it can be to find credible, related sources this way. Despite its laborious nature, using only print sources really paid off.
Looking back on the year as a whole has brought up some new trains of thought that hadn't occurred to me within each unit. I'm sure tomorrow's salon will provoke some really interesting discussions!
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