Final Exam

As a concluding evaluative activity for this course, the final exam will combine several kinds of knowledge media (oral, handwritten, and typed). These are the required steps:

1. A preliminary blog post (less formal, a review and prep for the exam)
2. An in-class "salon" (an oral-written activity held Tues. 12/13/2011 from 8-10am)
3. A final blog post (more formal, based on steps 1 and 2, due by Wednesday, 12/14/2011 at noon)

Unit Four Project: Academic Paper

For this end of unit evaluation students will be writing a traditional academic paper.
We have grouped students according to topic into teams of two or three people. Members of your team will help you to brainstorm your specific topic, find sources, and review your draft. Option: You may create a collaborative paper together, provided that it is three pages and two sources per person.

Length: 3-4 pages (750-1000 words). For collaborative papers, 3-4 pages per person.

Sources: At least two sources (per person in a collaborative paper), properly documented in MLA format, including a Works Cited page. You are not restricted to sources from your bibliography assignment, and you are encouraged to consult the bibliographies of your peers that touch on your topic. Online sources will also be permitted, properly documented.

Due Dates:

• First draft, Tuesday, Dec 6th in class. Bring a printed copy for review by your peers.
• Final draft, Thursday, Dec 8th (by end of the day). Submit 1) The final paper; 2) peer critique form from Tuesday; 3) First draft from Tuesday.

Criteria:

• At least one of the first three learning outcomes must be explicitly addressed
• The paper must include a thesis statement and be persuasive. Please consult this site on Better Thesis Statements.

Blogging

During this last week of class (Dec 1-8), your blogging should focus on this final paper. Create one or more "in-process" posts in which you talk through your writing development process. Ideas:

• Brainstorm about how to connect your topic to the learning outcomes
• Respond to sources from others' bibliographies that relate to your topic
• Post a proposed thesis statement and request input
• Post a draft of your paper. 

Be sure that you do not simply post, but that you interact online with your topic team members or those from your home group.

See below for topic teams.

Unit Four: Print Knowledge

Eisenstein's famous study of
the effects of printing

The final unit for our course on Reinventing Knowledge pertains to print. What are the institutions, the cultural patterns, the conventions of communication and of thought that emerge when a society adopts printing as its primary intellectual medium? These are the larger questions we mean to explore.

Our calendar is as follows:

• Intro to Print (Tues, Nov 8)
• Intellectual Property, Copyright, Censorship (Thurs., Nov 10)
  Read: Walter Ong, "Print, Space, and Closure" (13 page PDF)
• The Protestant Reformation (Tues., Nov 15)
  Read: Martin Luther, "Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation"
• Learned Communication / Scholarship (Thurs. Nov 17)
  Read: Reinventing Knowledge, Chapt. 4: The Republic of Letters
• Guest Lecturer: Royal Skousen (Tues., Nov 29)
• Print and Science (Thurs. Dec 1)

What follows is a required field trip and a bibliography assignment, both of which we expect students to work into their blogging during this unit:

The Rosetta Project

To conclude our unit on written knowledge, we will be doing a two-part project, working within the civilization-based groups in which we met recently. (We will not be changing the blogging groups; this is just for this assignment.)

Our purpose is to help reach the learning outcomes of understanding communications media and sharing knowledge by doing two activities that require you to deal with the material nature of written communication, languages and scripts, and the kinds of content typical of specific civilizations.

Part One: Create an Artefact
Due: Thursday, Nov 10

Working within your new civilization-based groups

1. Decide upon a brief message that you will write, appropriate to a chosen culture within your civilization group (no longer than 10-12 words)
2. Select the appropriate language and script from that civilization.
3. Select an appropriate medium for that message, again, based on the chosen culture or civilization.
4. Create your artefact
5. Bring this artefact to class on Thurs., Nov 10
6. Prepare some blank media that will be three times the length of your first artefact (this is for part two).

As decided within the group, take responsibility for each of these components and blog about your choices and the process of creating your written message. 

Example: Let's say we are in the Americas group and we choose the Maya language. We might consider a message related to astrology since the Maya were calendar keepers. Of course, we would choose the Maya ideographic language and script, and would choose either stone or another appropriate medium that is authentic to that civilization (We are willing to accept reasonable approximations of original media, such as material you might get at a craft store, though you may wish to check with us). After making our message on a piece of stone that's 3x3 inches, we would prepare another stone that's about 3x9 inches that's blank.

Part Two: Create a Rosetta Thing!

Due: Tuesday, Nov 15

Each group will be receiving one of the artefacts from another group, along with the blank medium they've prepared. 

Help! This makes no sense! 

That's right; you are going to translate this artefact as follows, approximating what occurred with the actual Rosetta Stone. Again, working in your civilization-based groups:

1. Translate the foreign artefact into English (use whatever resources are at your disposal, except make any translation resource reliable; Google Translate is not on that list.)
2. Translate this into the language and script which you used in part one.
3. Use the blank media that you prepared, and create a Rosetta Thing that includes
1. A re-creation of the same language from the original artefact you received
2. An English translation
3. The translation into your chosen language and script

Example (continued):

Let's say that we in the Americas group receive a strange object from the Greek group. So, we have to figure out how to translate Greek into English. Maybe we find a professor of Greek and bribe him with chocolate to help us. Then, because we have this extra bit of stone from Part One, we copy the Greek from the Greek's object onto our stone, then add to this our English translation and our translation into the Maya language and script. Along the way, we blog about the obstacles and insights, and the actual process of creating the physical written object.

Evaluation Criteria

• Authenticity (of content / message, of appropriate language and script; of medium)
• Collaboration (evidence of each group member contributing)
• Aesthetics (skill of execution. Is this lame, or is this cool?)
• Documenting of process (each individual on his or her blog)
• Intelligent reflection on how this exercise contributes to course learning outcomes.

"Jerusalem"

Wave the St. George and weep.


Then check out "I Vow to Thee My country," and for fun and political incorrectness, this.

Unit Three: Written Knowledge

Cuneiform tablet (creative commons licensed
by Unhindered by Talent)

Writing was an invention that didn't just change civilization; it became one of its foundational institutions. For the next few weeks we will be focusing on the effects of writing on the history of civilization.

Of course, from studying oral knowledge, we have already seen that language and the power of speech has been central to society -- to art, religion, politics, etc. The question now is, how do societies change with the advent of writing?

For one thing, new institutions emerge that depend upon the things that writing can provide that a merely oral-based society could not.

Class Performance: King Benjamin's Speech

Students in Honors 201: Reinventing Knowledge at Brigham Yong University learned about oral knowledge by together memorizing and reciting the entire speech given by King Benjamin in The Book of Mormon (see Mosiah 2:9 - 5:15). They memorized this within a week's time and worked both individually and within groups to prepare the 30-minute speech:

Reinventing the Syllabus (1): Personal Learning

The first modern syllabus
(Henry Adams, Harvard, 1876)

As we continue to scrutinize the various institutions and instruments of knowledge, and especially as we begin moving from our discussion of oral knowledge to written knowledge, I wish to draw attention to the vital importance of personal learning. I'd like to approach this important topic by first addressing the deficiencies of traditional syllabus-based learning in the college classroom.

I'm writing this post in part because a number of students have approached me and Dr. Petersen because they did not know what to write about in their upcoming blog posts (since we are transitioning to a new unit and no specific blogging assignments were given).

On the one hand, students who have approached us have shown an admirable sense of duty; they want to stay on top of their assignments. On the other hand, this has made me realize how much our students' learning is being driven by a syllabus-driven model of learning. I ask my students to consider the fact that such a familiar approach to learning in college may not suit them very well for very long.

Oral Knowledge Student Group Videos

Each of the student groups was assigned a different emphasis during our current unit on oral knowledge. These are those assignments. Click past the break to see the videos each group produced on the topic.


Group 1 Language  (preservation, acquisition)
Group 2 Language (functions and systems)
Group 3 Story & Song (folklore, epic poetry)
Group 4 Story & Song (drama, music)
Group 5 Religion (rituals, rites, theology)
Group 6 Education (methods and institutions)
Group 7 Education (mnemonics)
Group 8 Rhetoric (Politics, law, civic life)
Group 9 Rhetoric (Eloquence and philosophy)

Give Me that Old Time Religion

I'm going to depart from your expectations like Elder Uchtdorf talking about something other than flying, by NOT beginning this post with a discussion of the Latin word "religio." I know. Try to be strong. I am going to talk about how this is one area in which we already excel so well that we need to be made aware of it from another new angle. We've done this with other "knowledges" that we all take for granted: try to get you as students to see differently the things you know, and think about how it is that you know them. Religion, though, is a special case of this same idea. It informs much more of our world view than whether or not you know how to whistle or whether you have kept a blog before. And it is largely orally taught and learned. Try to think of these questions in regards to that form of the religious knowledge you have; even if you recall scripture, do so as if it is story, told and listened to, rather than as "Holy Writ" to be silently read.

Our specific religion is probably the main reason we are all here--specifically HERE, here, at BYU. Because we could all be at other universities, doing similar things, but not the same thing, that we do here, which is to deliberately teach and deliberately learn, all from the unique perspective of the restored gospel. We know what that means. How would an outsider view it? (Many outsiders? Outsiders with differing levels of tolerance or patience with religion at all; what about a confirmed skeptic/atheist?) Why might it be valuable to try to see that question through to its multiple possible responses? ...And so on to some further questions that might go into your blog posts about Religion (with a capital R). Let's get spooky right off: Where did it come from--chickens and eggs notwithstanding, are you open to either an evolutionary or a dispensationary model in studying the origins of religious behavior? Maybe a dispensationary model for the "Us" people and an evolutionary one for the "Thems"? (If that made you nod without squirming, think harder.)

Language seed post

Language is such an enormous topic (as are all the things we touch on in this class), that just about anything you can think about can be examined through its lense, or vice-versa. One of the qualities that makes us human is our ability to use language to reflect ON language, to be "meta-" about our tools as well as the things we make with those tools, even as we go merrily about making even more. (Some scholars, such as Mark Turner, have even suggested that this meta-examination concludes with a "backwards" conclusion: that language came about through story, rather than story coming about through language. Check out his book, The Literary Mind .)  Many kinds of knowledge almost can't be brought into consciousness without language, even though, as we learned in the last unit, "knowledge" and "language" are scarcely interchangeable words. This unit is where we become more focused on the ways language, and especially spoken language, shapes, stores, transmits, and creates knowledge of various types.

Below, I have given you some questions to begin asking, and then a list of some major secondary, scholarly sources to look into in thinking about language. Most of these will be merely, or barely, touched on in internet places like Wikis, but we want you to go farther. So for the sources themselves, you may have to use books (flat, rectangular, dusty, papery things; no passwords necessary). We have already given some direction by dividing the "language" group assignments up into four very broad approaches: preservation, acquisition, functions, and systems. Some additional directions within those could include (but are by no means limited to) the following:

Story and Song

creative commons licensed kyllaris 

Story and song have been the vehicles of knowledge and culture long before writing systems, and they have continued to be a main method of continuity with the past, even when writing and printing  displaced their preeminence.

"History" is something that came along with writing; it refers to how we understand the past through written language systems. But "story" doesn't require writing -- just spoken language. Stories that have been spoken and sung have been the foundation of most world civilizations long before "history" (stories preserved in writing) began.

Oral culture differs a lot from cultures that depend on writing or print. Walter Ong, the most famous scholar on this topic, contrasts fundamental differences between orality and literacy. That's a good starting point for research (Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word [second edition; orig. 1982]. Routledge, London and New York, 2002. See also this convenient table summarizing those contrasts).

What follows are five categories that can be used as starting places for considering story and song within our study of oral knowledge. Along the way, I make a few suggestions for how to find some of these topics outside of using Google or Wikipedia.

Unit Two: Oral Knowledge

creative commons licensed by xiquinhosilva 

It's time to look closely at how speaking and listening have been central to civilization. It's time to study oral knowledge.

Obviously much of the folk knowledge that was the focus of our first unit combines with speaking and listening. We will find that the various knowledge media and institutions we are studying this semester overlap extensively, even if they sometimes end up competing with or excluding each other. I'm glad we focused on the kinds of learning that take place in person, through observation, and through interaction with the physical and material world.

We now move out one layer of abstraction into the world of speaking and listening. During the next five class periods (through October 6, 2011) we will study oral knowledge according to the following broad categories:

1. Language (Sept 22)
2. Story & Song (Sept 27)
3. Religion (Sept 29)
4. Education (Oct 4)
5. Rhetoric (Oct 6)

Each of these broad areas provides us an opportunity to revisit history (learning outcome #1); see the development of knowledge institutions based around oral tradition (learning outcome #2); and recognize how oral knowledge has qualities that set it apart from folk knowledge, written, or printed knowledge (learning outcome #3). 

Along the way, we are going to be giving you fresh opportunities to sharpen your own knowledge skills (learning outcome #4) -- in part by continuing to use blogging for group learning, by bringing in an orally-oriented communications medium from the digital age (Skype), and also by developing social learning skills that depend upon oral interaction, not just writing (learning outcome #5).

What follows is a brief orientation to the topic of oral knowledge, with details about how we are going to structure our learning for this unit.

Response to Unit 1 Midterm

Dr. Petersen and I enjoyed meeting with each of the learning groups and hearing about how you have collectively and individually worked toward meeting the learning outcomes. It was very satisfying for us to hear things like the following:

• "We are our own institutions of knowledge, our own vessels of learning" (from Group 4)
• "Wow, bikes have a history!" (from Group 1, commenting on how they have become sensitive to everyday things having their own folk knowledge and histories)
• "Folk knowledge is a gift one generation gives to another"
• "We are learning how to learn in this course; it's a very liberal arts course" (from Group 6)
• "Folk knowledge is independent from knowledge institutions"

These types of remarks show that you are really thinking about the core concepts and learning goals for this course. 

What else are we happy about?

Schedule for Midterm Interviews

On Monday, September 19, please meet us in room 4101, JFSB at the following times:
Group 3--2:15
Group 7--4:15
Group 2--4:30
Group 4--4:45
(Talking like a Pirate is optional)


On Tuesday, September 20, please meet with us in the regular classroom, at the following times:
Group 1--9:00
Group 5--9:15
Group 6--9:30
Group 8--9:45
Group 9--10:00

Assignment: Learn and Teach Folk Knowledge

Click "read more" below if you want to skip the story and go straight to the assignment!

First, learning to crochet was nerve wracking

Last year I found myself in the odd position of being a chaperone at girls' camp up in Heber valley. I think there was one man up there for every forty girls, and the first thing I realized was that all of these girls and women certainly knew how to camp and had little to do but offer to carry heavy things. So I soon learned I just needed to chill out and enjoy the woods.

That's when Monica gave me the yarn. Maybe she was just feeling sorry for me, but before I knew it I had a crochet needle in hand and was told that those orphans in Haiti were going to get a hat that I had personally created. Teenage girls and their leaders would check in on me, gently showing me how to hold the yarn, how to count, and how to pull the thing out and start all over. I felt a bit intimidated, and I felt pressure from all these females who seemed to know instinctively how to do this kind of handiwork. But I started to get the hang of it, and when suddenly a camp event left me isolated at the picnic table with half of a Haitian knit cap, I was delighted that I could keep crocheting and terrified that I wouldn't know how to move to the next step. 

..and then it was fun

I learned some respect for that craft, and also for the way that these girls and women taught me. I didn't get an instruction manual or a training video. I got a crochet hook and a command to start. And I got a lot of intermittent advice from the girls who had done their caps the day before. I ended up feeling like this whole crochet thing was something fun, creative, and interesting -- in part because of how learning this skill created opportunities for interacting with interesting people.

This encounter made me realize that folk knowledge is often something that is transmitted piecemeal and casually while people are busy doing other things. I also realized that "experts" can simply be people who have learned to do something just hours before they then teach it to you.  School formalizes things and raises expectations about credentials and expertise. You wouldn't sign up for a class in how to crochet if you found out the teacher only learned how to crochet the day before you showed up for class. And yet that's how I learned, and it was enough -- at least for the Haitian that got my cute little knit cap.

This is my example of learning folk knowledge. As we spend one more week in our unit on folk knowledge, we want all of our students to do two activities that involve learning and teaching in that manner.

Blogging Best Practices (1): Opening and Post Body

Periodically I will lay out some important principles for academic blogging as we all learn to use this medium better. Not all practices in more general blogs apply to academic blogging, by the way.

The Post Opening

• Make it engaging
  Use a teaser of sorts -- a question, a quotation, an image, a video, a brief sentence that cuts to the heart of your point. People click away quickly online. Give them a reason to read on.
• Front load and page break
  Write like a journalist by front loading all the key information of your post, putting this "above the fold" (to use the newspaper metaphor) or before the jump break (which inserts the "read more" link). Not sure how to insert this? Check out Erin Hamson's instructions for breaking the page). 

A key bit form Ch.11

(...but if this is ALL you read of the assignment, you are cheating yourself). In the chapter preceding the reading for today, Nibley says this as partial introduction to the series of talks on mantic and sophic:

The theme of these talks is that the Greeks (like the Christian church that later followed in their footsteps), passed from a primoridal "Mantic" order of things to the "Sophic," and lost their original mood of expectation, putting something else in its place. It passed from the Mantic to the Sophic, and thence in its attempts to combine the two, arrived at the Sophistic. The Greeks passed through the same three stages before the Christians did, and it was their particular brand of Sophic and Sophistic that the Church accepted. It is time to define these terms, Sophic and Mantic.

Josephus, citing Manetho, describes an Egyptian king who was obsessed with a yearning to possess the prophetic gifts and enjoy the heavenly visions of his ancestors as a sophos kai mantikos aner—" a Sophic and a Mantic man";¹² and Theophrastus observes this significant dualism when he points out that the Egyptians are the most rational people alive (logiotaton genos), inheriting and inhabiting the most religious of environments (hierotaten . . . choran).¹³ These are the two basic human attitudes, the rational and the religious. It was the age-old struggle between hardheaded realism and holy tradition that produced the bedizzening subtleties and endless elaborations of Egyptian theology from Heliopolis and Thebes to Alexandria. And it was at that last and latest center of holy thought—a city built, literally, with funds contributed in hot competition by rival priestly schools and factions¹⁴—that the basic theological concepts of the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem doctors with all their sublime, incomprehensible, and insoluble contradictions took their life.

Dio Chrysostom, in his Discourse on the Knowledge of God, describes his own skill and training—the degenerate education of his own day—as being "neither mantic, nor sophistic, nor even rhetorical"¹⁵—(those being the three natural levels of education). The Greek word Mantic simply means prophetic or inspired, oracular, coming from the other world and not from the resources of the human mind. Instead of Dio's Sophistic to describe the operations of the unaided human mind, we use the much rarer Sophic here, because, as is well known, in time Sophistic came to be identical with Rhetorical, that is, a pseudothought form which merely imitated the other two in an attempt to impress the public. The Mantic is the equivalent of what Professor Goodenough designates as "vertical" Judaism, i.e., the belief in the real and present operation of divine gifts by which one receives constant guidance from the other world, a faith expressed in varying degrees among such ancient sectaries as the Hasidim, Karaites, Kabbalists, and the people of Qumran.¹⁶ The Mantic accepts the other world, or better, other worlds, as part of our whole experience without which any true understanding of this life is out of the question. "It is the Mantic," says Synesius, "which supplies the element of hope in our lives by assuring us of the reality of things beyond."¹⁷ Mantic, hope, and reality are the key words. What is expected is not as important as the act of expectation, and so those who share the Mantic conviction are a community of believers, regardless of what it is they expect.

The Sophic, on the other hand, is the tradition which boasted its cool, critical, objective, naturalistic, and scientific attitude; its Jewish equivalent is what Goodenough calls the "horizontal" Judaism—scholarly, bookish, halachic, intellectual, rabbinical. All religions, as Goodenough observes, seem to make some such distinction.¹⁸It is when one seeks to combine or reconcile the Sophic and the Mantic that trouble begins.

"True reason," according to Empedocles, "is either divine or human; the former is not for discussion, the latteris discussion";¹⁹ and recently Charles Kahn has argued that Empedocles himself is two distinct thinkers, a Sophic and a Mantic, "a split personality whose two sections are not united by any essential link."²⁰ Since Empedocles' career is a unique and impressive attempt to combine Sophic and Mantic, his case illustrates the important fact that the two are totally incompatible. Whoever accepts the Sophic attitude must abandon the Mantic, and vice versa. It is the famous doctrine of Two Ways found among the Orientals, Greeks, and early Christians—if you try to compromise between them you get nowhere, because as one of the Apostolic Fathers points out, they lead in opposite directions. Those who share the Mantic hope of things beyond, whatever those things may be, are in a very real sense a community of believers, just as Christians, Jews, and Moslems form a fellowship of "the People of the Book," because of their belief in inspired books—even though they may not agree as to which books are the inspired ones.²¹ On the other hand, the Sophic society unitedly rejects the Mantic proposition, and it too forms a single community, as is strikingly and amusingly demonstrated in a 1954 study of Professor Enslin, who, while branding the teachings of Clement of Alexandria as "rubbish, . . . pathetic nonsense, . . . triple-A nonsense,"²² at the same time hails Clement as a true gentlemen and a scholar after his own heart, because, even though his method produces nothing but balderdash, it is at least not contaminated by any supernaturalism—here was "a man who prized brain and insight, who preferred the voice of reasoned conviction to the braying of Balaam's ass."²³ Better false teaching from a true intellectual than the truth from a prophet. So fiercely loyal and uncompromising are the Sophic and Mantic to their own.

The Bunny Whisperer

I've really been noticing how much folk knowledge is an everyday part of living in a family. For example, just this morning I noticed my wife showing my son how to make a meal he'd never made before. And in the afternoon, I took my 15 year-old son out for his first driving lesson from his dad (he did well). But lately, our home has been filled with lots of lore about rabbits. You see, my wife decided it would be fun to breed rabbits, and this week our Nabooru had her first litter of baby bunnies. Here's a video showing the little critters squirming around in their nesting box:

We have not been figuring out how to breed bunnies by looking online. No, we are lucky enough to have a woman in our neighborhood who knows everything about bunnies and breeds them herself. My wife is constantly on the phone to our "bunny whisperer" getting coached on cages, nesting boxes, gestation cycles, diet, and generally what to expect from the bucks and does.

Post Assignment for Week #2: Domestic Folk Knowledge

Playing and learning a stone game in Nepal

This coming week in Reinventing Knowledge, we plan to explore our unit on Folk Knowledge by focusing on the domestic sphere. In short, we want our students to think through the types of things one acquires know-how about informally in families, and how such knowledge is transmitted, taught, and learned.

We do hope students refer to their own homes and experience, but we are urging them to begin right away pursuing our first learning outcome about history.

Assignment:

Blogging Instructions for Fall 2011

Students will be blogging during this semester's history of civilization course, "Reinventing Knowledge." Here are our expectations:


Blogging in Groups
Nine blogging groups have been set up that include 4-6 students each. The idea here is for students to regularly share and respond, teaching and learning, among a small group of peers.

Scheduled Weekly Posting
Group leaders will set up a publication schedule so that each student is responsible for a specific day of the week on which he or she will take the lead of conversation by publishing a "substantial post" (see below). This should be posted by 9:00am so that others will have the chance to respond to it during the day. Consider getting your post written the night before it is due and then use the scheduling feature to have it appear at 9:00am on your day (see "Post Options" next to "Publish Post" within Blogger to do this).

Daily Expectation
Each student is expected to interact on their group's blog daily (i.e., Monday-Friday) in two ways:

1. Producing content
   If it is not your day to be making a substantial post, you should be commenting on others' posts, advancing conversations, or otherwise supplying relevant content.
2. Reading and responding to content
   Bookmark your group's blog so that you can get to this readily, or use a feed reader (like Google Reader) to have posts and comments delivered to you. 

What's a "Substantial Post"?

Research Opportunities!

Most of you know that the other part of what professors do is to present their personal research in venues of either publication for distribution or the genre of publication-by-performance that is the conference paper. BYU is having a GREAT conference this November, and they have just extended the deadline to the 5 September!  "Women and Creativity" is going to discuss just exactly some of the things we are intending to wrestle with in this first "folk knowledge" unit. What is women's creativity? Is that even a legitimate question? Is it an insulting question; assuming, as some might read (into) it, a difference in qualitative or quantitative production from women than from men?  Why would it be insulting (or not) to have a conference on "Men and Creativity"?

I all in, folks (FOLKS! Ha! Get it?)! And you should be too! (if you want--just because I'm one of the teachers does not make every imperative sentence I utter or write into an assignment.) I am going to submit a proposal to this conference. I have a friend who does bread-giving as performance art. It is every BIT as weird as, even more lovely than, it sounds; as I develop and rewrite my proposal I'll post it here; as I write the paper and do the steps necessary for the sort of research it requires, I'll keep you up to date through this blog.

Cheers!!

This semester is going to rock my socks right OFF.

Unit One: Folk Knowledge

image: Charles Collier

If my friend Gary hadn't stuck his arm out and stopped me from walking into the street that afternoon, I would have been a smudge mark on the Edinburgh pavement. Coming from the states and less traveled than my friend, I wasn't used to traffic flow in the UK and was looking left, instead of right, when beginning to cross the street.

People who have had a lot of traditional education need reminders like that once in awhile: some of the most prized kinds of knowledge may be less essential than more "pedestrian" types. Knowing how to walk about without dying is a kind of folk knowledge. You don't learn it in schools; you learn it in the streets.

Course Overview

Description

From the origins of civilization, the way information has been controlled has shaped what  knowledge is and does. In this course we will examine how various institutions of knowledge and communications media have defined culture and controlled how knowledge is preserved, transmitted, and sometimes censored. We will look at various world cultures and the ways they employed language, symbol systems, libraries, academic institutions, religious authority, and social privilege to maintain order and to develop and define their own identities.  This course, while independent, is a companion course to Honors 202 “Digital Civilization,” (taught with Dr. Daniel Zappala Fall 2011; Winter 2012), and will therefore anticipate the development and significance of modern-day information systems and digital culture.

Learning Outcomes

• History
  Students can characterize historical periods from antiquity through the Renaissance and identify and discuss representative texts, cultures, events, and figures.
• Knowledge Institutions
  Students can describe and analyze the characteristics and differences among knowledge institutions and media
• Communicating Knowledge
  Students recognize differences in the forms through which knowledge is preserved, communicated, and experienced and can interpret the consequences of these differences historically and personally.
• Knowledge Skills
  Students become aware of and take responsibility for their knowledge skills and develop new learning strategies, including collaboration.
• Sharing Knowledge
  Students can represent and share their knowledge of the history of civilization through formal and informal writing, oral communication, and teaching others.

General CalendarThe course will be divided into four different units that correspond with different knowledge media:

1. Folk Knowledge
2. Oral Knowledge
3. Written Knowledge
4. Print Knowledge

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Welcome to Reinventing Knowledge

This blog accompanies a course in the first half of the history of civilization, "Reinventing Knowledge," taught at Brigham Young University during Fall, 2011 by Dr. Gideon Burton and Dr. Zina Petersen. We will be posting readings and media, previewing class discussion, and highlighting student blogging here.