Book Club Read: The Geography of Thought

We're excited to invite you all to join us for our next Faculty Book Club read which explores the idea that, perhaps, what we as teachers see as "critical thinking" isn't necessarily universal--that critical thinking might well be far more culture-bound than we realize.

Who: Faculty, Staff, Anybody...

What: Faculty Book Club Read --  The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why by Richard E. Nisbett 

When: April 10th, 3:15-4:15

Where: Library Lab - Library will provide the snacks!

From Amazon:

When psychologist Richard E. Nisbett showed an animated underwater scene to his American students, they zeroed in on a big fish swimming among smaller fish. Japanese observers instead commented on the background environment -- and the different "seeings" are a clue to profound cognitive differences between Westerners and East Asians. As Nisbett shows in The Geography of Thought, people think about -- and even see -- the world differently because of differing ecologies, social structures, philosophies, and educational systems that date back to ancient Greece and China. The Geography of Thought documents Professor Nisbett's groundbreaking research in cultural psychology, addressing questions such as:

• Why did the ancient Chinese excel at algebra and arithmetic, but not geometry, the brilliant achievement of such Greeks as Euclid?
• Why do East Asians find it so difficult to disentangle an object from its surroundings?
• Why do Western infants learn nouns more rapidly than verbs, when it is the other way around in East Asia?

At a moment in history when the need for cross-cultural understanding and collaboration have never been more important, The Geography of Thought offers both a map to that gulf and a blueprint for a bridge that might be able to span it.

The book is available in both print or Kindle versions via Amazon.

Some News on FREE NEWS!!!

Interested in helping your students become more news literate before they become voters in a few short years? The Newspapers in Education program provides educators FREE access to eReplica versions from participating newspapers that you can use in your classes.

This is what the eReplica version of the Washington Post is like... 

If you're interested, there is more info here: 

Newspapers in Education - https://nieonline.com/ 

LA Times: https://nieonline.com/latimes/index.cfm 

Washington Post - https://nie.washingtonpost.com/

The New York Times runs its own New York Times in School program - http://nytimesinschool.com/

Unfortunately, I do not know of either a free or well-priced option from the Wall Street Journal at this time. 

By the way, since you're here ... Remember that you and your students can access all of our subscription databases (including peer reviewed journals) here: http://libguides.midpac.edu/HS_Databases_4

Faculty Book Club Read: My Brilliant Friend

UPDATED! Trying again!

Who: Faculty, Staff, Anybody...
What: Faculty Book Club Read -- My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
When: Early January 2018 (You will have time to read over winter break!)
Where: Library Lab - Library will provide the snacks!

Our first Faculty Book Club read of the year is My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. 

Soon to be an HBO series, book one in the New York Times bestselling Neapolitan quartet about two friends growing up in post-war Italy is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted family epic by Italy’s most beloved and acclaimed writer, Elena Ferrante, “one of the great novelists of our time.”  

~~Roxana Robinson, The New York Times

We do not currently have copies of the book, but there are numerous copies (including audiobook versions) available via the Hawaii State Public Library.

The book is also available in both eBook and audio versions via Amazon.

If you are interested in joining us for the read, please click here and indicate which days and times are best for you to meet.


Want to join us? Click below and tell us what days are best for meeting times.

An Invitation to Read...

Who: Anybody
What: Faculty Book Club Read -- Honor Killing by David Stannard
When: May 10th, 3:30-4:40
Where: Library Lab (Library will provide the snacks!)

Our initial foray into faculty book club territory with Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance had a good many readers join the read.  Though a discussion meeting time that could work for everyone proved elusive, we ended up having a wonderfully engaging conversation with 6 diehards.

Many readers found the read worthwhile and intriguing, though some "hated it" and couldn't finish. Alas... We can't win 'em all, but if you hate a book, put it down! There are too many other good ones to read and life is short... #JustSaying


For our next read, we've chosen Honor Killing: Race, Rape, and Clarence Darrow's Spectacular Last Case by David Stannard.

In the fall of 1931, Thalia Massie, the bored, aristocratic wife of a young naval officer stationed in Honolulu, accused six nonwhite islanders of gang rape. The ensuing trial let loose a storm of racial and sexual hysteria, but the case against the suspects was scant and the trial ended in a hung jury. Outraged, Thalia’s socialite mother arranged the kidnapping and murder of one of the suspects. In the spectacularly publicized trial that followed, Clarence Darrow came to Hawai’i to defend Thalia’s mother, a sorry epitaph to a noble career.

It is one of the most sensational criminal cases in American history, Stannard has rendered more than a lurid tale. One hundred and fifty years of oppression came to a head in those sweltering courtrooms. In the face of overwhelming intimidation from a cabal of corrupt military leaders and businessmen, various people involved with the case—the judge, the defense team, the jurors, a newspaper editor, and the accused themselves—refused to be cowed. Their moral courage united the disparate elements of the non-white community and galvanized Hawai’i’s rapid transformation from an oppressive white-run oligarchy to the harmonic, multicultural American state it became.

Honor Killing is a great true crime story worthy of Dominick Dunne—both a sensational read and an important work of social history

The library currently has just one copy, but the Hawaii State Public Library System has many copies available.

We have tentatively scheduled a meet and chat session for: May 10th, 3:30-4:30 in the Library Lab.

The library will provide the snacks!

Hope to see you there!

The Faculty that Reads Together...

Isn't stupid? Is better than most? Is very rare, indeed? Must be awesome!

Hah!

We're not sure what will happen when we read together, but let's give a faculty read a shot and find out! With spring break on the horizon, we'll all have some time to slow down, catch a breath, and read.  We'd like to invite all of you to join us in a read of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.

Though the book was receiving quite a bit of attention before the 2016 election, interest exploded after the election as many Americans came to realize how little they know about the experiences, thoughts, struggles, and lives of their fellow citizens.

Author, J.D. Vance, was speaking about the struggles of disaffected white working class Americans before the Presidential election as in his Ted Talk on America's Forgotten Working Class from September 2016.

Hillbilly Elegy has received both praise and criticism from a variety of sources across a broad swath of the American political spectrum, but whether loved or loathed, that the book has sparked some very interesting analysis and conversation is undeniable. Here is just a very small sampling:

• New York Times Review: In "Hillbilly Elegy," A Tough Love Analysis of the Poor Who Back Trump

• The American Conservative: Why Liberals Love "Hillbilly Elegy"

• The National Review: What "Hillbilly Elegy Reveals about Trump and America

Want to read?

Get your hands on a copy and read away over spring break.

• We have a copy in the library
• Available in multiple formats via Amazon 
• Available in multiple formats via Barnes and Noble
• There appear to be multiple copies in the Hawaii State Public Library System, but there may be a waiting list. 

Be on the lookout for an email shortly after spring break. We'll set a time, a place, and the library will supply the snacks!

If you know you want to read with us or want to pass this time out, but might consider another title in the future, please click here and let us know! - Faculty Read RSVP

A Thanksgiving Gift

I know, I know. It's not even Thanksgiving and someone's giving away Christmas gifts already. Believe me, I feel for Thanksgiving - with Christmas decor available in stores before Halloween, Turkey Day has no room to be valued as its own special holiday.

Oh well.

I'm too excited to share this gift, and I can't wait for December, so here is a little something for which we can be thankful - see? It's a Thanksgiving Gift.

The New York Public Library has a very, very, very nice digital archive, complete with an amazing collection of vintage posters. The latest collection (shared via Twitter earlier this month) can be found here: http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/turn-of-the-century-posters#/?tab=navigation

Do take a look, and feel free to download! And let's be thankful there are people out there who keep trash until it's treasure.

15 Copyright Rules Every Student (and Teacher) Should Know...

Melissa Venable over at the Online Colleges blog, posted a nicely accessible list of copyright rules everybody (students AND teachers) should know.

Click on the image above to go to the full post.

Take a careful look at #5 - You can sample from DVDs, even circumventing copyright protection as this is one of the less well known fair use exemptions granted by the Librarian of Congress in 2010. Note that currently many take the wording in the Librarian of Congress' exception to mean that circumventing copyright applies only to university faculty and film and media students, but there has been discussion about extending this fair use safe harbor to K-12.

• This is a list intended for an audience of adult online learners. Please don't tell students that they can "rip DVDs with abandon..." 

You may also want to take a close look at #8 - If your project becomes commercial, you no longer have protection as a student and at #9 - If your project reaches a wider audience, you’re not protected either as these aspects of copyright and fair use that may come into play in some forms of presentations of learning or when students' online blogs or videos are published to the web.

We maintain an Image and Sound Resources page to help you and your students access copyright-friendly images, copyright-friendly sound files, and tools to make using them a bit easier. The page is linked both the Middle School and High School portals under the tab labeled Helpful Things.