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Channel Islands Briefing For the Week of October 4-8
First, we need to go over some simple and helpful clues on the listserv practices. These suggestions will cut down on the volume of email you have to sort through coming from the list, and the size of the files your computer has to wait to receive.
1. Only post messages that are of interest to everyone to the list. If you are responding to a comment a teach posted, please direct that to their private email. That email address will always be up in the header as one of the FROM address. Do not send the mail as a cc to the teachers-l, just to the individual. This is also true when we ask for a reservation or feedback. Send that to camp@rain.org, not the list as a whole.
2. If you want to send picture files, please send any large files and attachments to camp@rain.org. If you have pictures you want fellow teachers to see, then you will need to mount them on your own server and create a link to them from the email. DO NOT attach them to the email. This is causing very long mail-read times for everyone.
You will soon see how much nicer this lets the list operate when it is honed down to messages of common interest to all. Please do announce class accomplishments, inventive hands-on projects, etc. We all gain from hearing about your successes !
The Week Ahead
Let's get right to work on the Chumash studies this week and there is a lot to choose from in the Social Studies track. We have two weeks set aside to focus on the Chumash, plus a great Trail Guide from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and a respected Chumash storyteller to join us in the days to come. Over in geology you will face the challenges of understanding how the islands came to be and may be surprised to learn they were made by several very different geologic phenomena. Under geology you can study each island's formation, mining activities on the islands, and the oil development activities that surround the islands. A fun fact is that asphalt chunks harvested from seeps from the Channel region actually became the road paving for famous streets in New Orleans and San Francisco! Reading also continues with Island of the Blue Dolphins and you can link the san Nicholas geologic history to this reading project too.
Special event for the week is the live chat with Dr. John Johnson of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Dr. Johnson has lived in Santa Barbara for many years, has hiked the remote mountains, and has discovered Chumash rock art sites hidden in sandstone rock formations. He has also taken on studying Mission records to track Chumash descendents so they can be Chumash representation in making decisions about archeological sites and artifacts. Dr. Johnson is the senior anthropologist for the museum, and is one of the best Trail Guides we have ever had the pleasure to join up with our classrooms. You can read some of his articles online in advance, and please work as a class team to come up with 4-6 high quality questions for this fun Trail Guide.
Send Chat reservations to camp@rain.org by Monday afternoon on the 5th please. If you can't make the chat, but have questions to ask, send us the questions in advance and we will post them on your behalf and forward you any answers we receive.