I Hear it's Saturday

OK, we're on ship time again, and it's B4 today.  In some places, I hear it's Saturday, but we don't have any sense of that.We did gain one more hour during the night, so I woke up early and was rewarded with a ice sunrise.

Global Studies class was devoted to discussion of student group projects. The students are dividing themselves up into groups of six, and each group will work on a sustainability curriculum project that should be directed toward high school students.  The Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia is giving a grant for the best projects, and they will make them available for schools all over the country to use in their classes.  Most of the kids are excited, but the assignment is designed to include enough ambiguity to let them go their on direction. This ambiguity is a little tough for some of them who just want to be directed, but it should be a great growth tool.  I got to speak to the two sessions about library resources and the importance of  correctly citing the information that they use.  I expect some pretty impressive results to come from most of the groups, and I would love to have had this as a project when I was a student. The groups are choosing their own possibilities.  Another challenge will be to incorporate six of the countries we visit into the project with data, pictures, interviews and anything they choose.  UVa education students back in Virginia will be their consultants on the pedagogy (a great word) through email.  Expect to see these presentations at the end of the voyage.

Here is a group of our library student assistants, and they are going to start to be busier as they help more of their fellow students with their research.  The students on the ship have access to the full complement of UVa databases and full-text journal  sources online for FREE--about 70,000 journals, magazines and newspapers.  This is important because many of them have already used up their allotment of free internet minutes on trip planning for ports.

Roaming around the ship after my work shift, I came across a music class on the Gamelan. There is a set of instruments on the ship and Prof. David Harnish is offering a course. It has a pleasing sound.

We've started posting a quiz in the library and awarded a flying disc to the first winner who could tell us the length of the Titanic (from a multiple choice quiz).
The new question is:  According to the US Dept of State, "Japan maintains an overall agricultural self-sufficiency rate of about______"
a. 15%
b. 298%
c. 40%
d. 63%

I hope this will help the students as the prepare for each port.  They are supposed to create a sheet of 25 things about the port before they get there so they can converse with people about their country.

Here is today's bird, flying about the ship and diving for flying fish--a Red-footed Booby.

The day ended on a nice note as the Captain slowed the ship and changed course slightly to miss a distant rain squall.