This year, for my birthday, Shauna and I visited Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. I was able to take a lot... LOT of very interesting photos. It's amazing the interesting and diverse, unexpected colors that appear in an abandoned prison. It rains, minerals leach out of the rock, stone, and plumbing, and settle out where they may. This photo, I think, is particularily interesting. Of course, you notice some of these unusual pastel colors on the walls, a combination of old paint and rain. The vine-like structure on the back wall is actually a tree root that is growing out of the skylight. What makes this photo very interesting to me is that this room exists in the total absence of light. I reached a very small digital camera around a gap in the door, turned on the flash, and pressed the button. It's the only way to actually see what's in this prison cell. Creepy!

What does yoga have in common with historical geology?

As the semester here at NVCC winds down I once again find myself in the midst of evaluation season. Students are given (in my class anyway) their only multiple choice exam of the year where they get to speak to things like 'Is homework handed back in a timely manner?' and 'Is the instructor well prepared for class?' Typically, students go through this survey in under five minutes marking either 'average' or 'good' without really taking the time to think about the question. There is one question, however, that brings students pause. There is one question that students really do take the time to answer thoughtfully - the dreaded question 5: "Relates course material to real life situations if possible." For many instructors this question can be their undoing. If you're lucky, students will give you a 'Fair'. More often than not, your grade will be a resounding 'Poor'.

This being the case, every semester I try to do a better job of relating the course material to my students' lives. In a non-majors geology class in a culturally diverse place like Northern Virginia this can sometimes be a challenge. Usually I look for examples from my life that relate to the course and hope for the best, but recently I was reminded that I'm still adding to my experiential base. I had an experience which may not relate directly to many students in my class, but it was definately relatable to me. In an effort to stave off old age for as long as possible I started taking a yoga class. It's not the sweaty Hindu-aerobics that you sometimes get in the neighborhood Golds Gym, but actual no-nonsense Iyengar yoga. Last week, my instructor said something that really didn't mean too much to me at the time, but then suddenly, in the middle of talking about the Archean in my Historical Geology class, made a lot of sense to me.

"Your body is a record of all the things that you have done and that have happened to you."

What stands out in this statement is that it tells you what your body is specifically... not what it records, not what it remembers, but what it is. We are often lured into thinking that we are moving through space independently of time, all the while accumulate a record of impressionable events. This is a compelling, and I might admit, tempting way to think about our place in the universe as it lets us believe that we are separate from the processes that govern time and space, and therefore may inspire to control and tame them. We are lured into this thinking mostly, I think, by the modern crime drama where the forensic scientists are asking the question, "what happened to this person?" However, the practised yoga instructor will examine a body in asana and see not the person or the events, but rather the relationship between the two, and in doing so we are guided to make the yoga ours to learn from as we please. Likewise, we also observe an earth that appears as such because our lives are so short, and we are duped into thinking that it exists outside of its context rather than because of its context. As we are, so too is the earth a record of all the things that it has done and that have happened to it. The earth doesn't record events, the earth is the event in context.

If you build it, they will come!

One of the first things that we instructors talk with our students about on the first day of class is the resources that are available to them. With the emergence of the BlackBoard course development system, this usually entails telling them what materials have been posted and where they are posted. Job well done - we're using technology in the classroom, and everyone is happy. I've adopted the BlackBoard into my courses fully and it works very well as a clearinghouse for all varieties of course materials - powerpoints, lecture notes, course discussions, even posting podcasts of the lectures.

Upon using this technology, however, I've come to realize that there is one major flaw with this system, and it's not with the usability of BlackBoard or the accessibility of it. The problem as I see it is the implied nature of the relationship between student and teacher when the BlackBoard alone is used - that is, I'll post some things there, and it's entirely your responsibility to come and get it. Rather than expecting my students to come to me exclusively, I challenge myself to meet them halfway. I want my students to both learn and take responsibility for their actions, but I feel as though I have more of a place in this relationship than just a person with knowledge on how to get what they need. To get more to my point, my students aren't on the BlackBoard. They only even think about BlackBoard when they need something, and weeks can go by without a student giving the BlackBoard a single thought. Many of them do, however, go on Facebook.

As an experiment (after all, I am a scientist), I've created facebook groups for each of my classes. I've found that with a little effort on my part, I can increase student participation and awareness of the resources available to them with a minimal amount of additional work on my part. First, I create a professional facebook account. I don't use my personal one that I use for friends because my friends write idiotic things on my wall. I only give group access to students that are currently enrolled in the class. I post documents, like the syllabus and homework assignments, to the website Scribd and cross link the documents to the group page. I can blast out messages to the whole group VERY easily, the messages go to an e-mail address that they actually use rather than their college addresses, and they have the ability to post questions, ask for help, and organize study groups. I can create events, like exams and review sessions, and notify the members quickly and easily.

Best of all in all of this, the students are already there on Facebook, waiting to be invited and included in groups. If you give them the slightest indication that you're actually taking the time to accommodate them in a partnership, their level of interest and participation rises dramatically. They actually do use it! I'll write about more of my experiences with facebook in the classroom as the semester progresses. As for now, I had about 30% of my class request access to the group with 12 hours of being made aware of it. I'm off to a promising start!

Google Earth 5.0

Last night we covered bathymetric maps in my Historical Geology lab. This lab usually involves the students examining bathymetric maps of various active and passive margins and sketching them in cross section. The point of this lab is to see what types of physiographic features are associated with different margin types, and to recognize the boundaries between continental shelf, slope, rise, and the abyssal plain. There is a new tool at their disposal.

Coincidentally, Google Earth 5 was made available yesterday morning. After some consultation with the IT department I was able to install it onto a classroom computer that is hooked up to an overhead projector. Google Earth was useful before, but the ability to examine seafloor features is going to be a BIG help to me. I centered in on the edge of the continental shelf off the coast of North Carolina and submerged myself beneath the google sea. After adjusting the angle as if I were standing on the shelf margin and looking northward, I, and my class, could clearly see the subtle angular breaks that typically define plate boundaries. We then stood at the bottom of the trench off the coast of Nicaragua.

This will be very useful to me.