Waching daily Mar 7 2018

A new course, with a new story to tell,

and new materials to help you tell it.

This video lays out the basic structure of Big History.

Let's start with a brief description

of the eight thresholds of increasing complexity

used in the course, and then do a quick overview

of the course materials.

Let's start by looking at the course itself.

If you haven't seen David Christian's TED Talk,

or if it's been a while, check it out.

Now, here's the short version.

Big History is made up of eight thresholds.

Each represents a moment when the universe got more complex--

so much so that there was no going back.

The first of these thresholds is the Big Bang.

All of the matter and energy in the universe

came from this instant.

About 400,000 years later, the first stars lit up.

As the stars burned, new elements were formed,

but it's actually in their fiery death

that we find all of the elements that exist today.

That's our third threshold.

From this leftover stuff floating in space,

new stars form.

One percent of the material not sucked into the creation

of new stars becomes planets, our fourth threshold.

One planet in particular has just the right conditions,

with just the right amount of energy and liquid water,

for us to reach the fifth threshold: life.

Zoom ahead a few billion years and those first instances

of life have evolved into humans.

Collective learning, which humans are

uniquely good at, represents the sixth threshold.

We roam the earth as foragers until the planet becomes

so populated that we need to find a way to feed everyone.

With the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago,

we cross our seventh threshold.

Finally, around 250 years ago, humans learned to use energy

in new ways during the Industrial Revolution,

and voil￠, our eighth threshold, the modern revolution.

We haven't been the same since.

The Big History Project tells the story

of these eight thresholds over ten units.

So eight thresholds, ten units.

If you look at the timeline on the home page

of the school website, or if you do the math,

you'll notice that not every threshold has its own unit.

Here's how it breaks down:

Unit One is an introduction to the course.

It establishes the outline and explores the notion

of origin stories.

Unit Two looks at the Big Bang.

Unit Three deals with the first stars

and chemical elements, combining thresholds two and three.

Units Four, Five, Six, and Seven move

through the next four thresholds neatly.

Then, in Unit Eight, we talk about what David Christian calls

the unification of the four world zones.

Although this isn't a threshold, it's a critical part

of the Big History narrative.

Unit Nine looks at the modern revolution,

and Unit Ten ends the course with the look at the future.

A couple of key points to make about the structure

of these units.

They are not to scale.

What we mean by that is that the early units,

which focus on prehuman history, are much shorter

than the later units.

If the typical school year is eight months,

many teachers try to get all the way to Unit Six

by the beginning of the fourth month.

We'll talk a lot more about pacing in another video,

but it's probably one of the most important aspects

of planning your year of teaching

the Big History Project.

Let's talk about the content of the units themselves.

If you go to the home page of each unit, you'll find rows

of lessons that are broken down into articles, videos,

infographics, and activities.

All of the materials are designed to be downloadable

to make it easier for classrooms where not everyone has a device

or where the internet connectivity is sketchy.

But here's a tip: even if you don't download

any other materials, we do recommend that

you download the videos before you show them to your class,

just to minimize the risk of interruptions.

Each unit also includes

a unit guide that walks through the key ideas, vocab,

and possible student misconceptions in that unit;

a PowerPoint of the key graphics in the unit;

a text reader that includes all versions of every article

in the unit, in Word document format.

You're free to revise, edit, and reuse any of the materials

in the Big History Project for educational use.

These materials are there to make things easier for you.

Each lesson is displayed as a series of thumbnails,

which are just small images that make it easy to move

from activity to activity.

Something many people miss, so we're going to

call it out here, is that the lessons

are all available in long form.

We call this the lesson view.

The lesson view includes a ton more detail aimed at you,

the teacher.

This is where all of the details of the activities are displayed.

While most students don't end up using this view very often,

teachers tell us they find it helpful to use this view

for planning purposes.

In the lesson view, you'll find little hints

on the left-hand side of the page that link

to resources we think you'll find helpful.

And on the right-hand side, you'll find random related facts

and links to connected material.

The lesson view is also one of the easier ways to get

at the vocabulary for each lesson,

just look on the right-hand side at the top of the lesson page.

Back to the unit home page for a second.

If you look at the home page for each unit, you'll see

that after the last lesson, there's a row with the heading

"Other Materials."

These are resources that you'll definitely want

to consider using, but which aren't baked

into the unit planning documents.

Stuff included in this row?

Things like tests, quizzes, and older articles and videos.

There just wasn't room in the lessons

for our ever-expanding course.

In this case, anyway, "Other Materials"

isn't a euphemism for "I don't know where to put this."

So, let's recap.

Big History tells the story of eight thresholds

of increasing complexity over the course of ten units.

In addition to all of the lesson stuff-- the videos, readings,

infographics-- each unit includes a guide,

lesson plans, and assessments.

That's all for now, but be sure to check out

the Big History Project Teacher Community on Yammer

for more information about the course.

For more infomation >> Session 1 - How the Course is Structured | Big History Project - Duration: 6:05.

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Trump believes North Korea is sincere about denuclearization - Duration: 4:21.

For more infomation >> Trump believes North Korea is sincere about denuclearization - Duration: 4:21.

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What Is Massurrealism? ? ? - Duration: 6:21.

What is massurrealism?

It is the form of art rooted in the combination of mass media related art,

and surrealist imagery.

So, What does that mean?

Massurrealism is a direction in the arts whose style is based

on the dreamlike, subconscious imagery that  is being

highly influenced by the cutting edge technology and mass media of the present times.

That is to say, massurrealism merges the Human realities

of the modern Information Era with the deeply personal and evocative inner worlds of surrealism.

To fully appreciate that variety of influences and inspiration,

let's take a quick look at a few important moments that happened in art history.

At the end of the 19th century, some artists, such as those from the impressionists era

decided to do their work differently.

Instead of simply painting something to appear as it actually looked,

they began to express not only what they saw with their eyes but the realities they experienced.

Their works were vague and unclear, using for example, small, thin, yet visible brush strokes of color

that are very much like natural landscapes, but were intentionally painted to not be an exact replica.

Shortly after after this point in history, artists began to think less about the outside world,

and instead to express their inner world.

Artists such as the Cubists began to separate almost all links to reality

a "real world" served less as subject, and more as basic inspiration.

At the beginning of the 20th century comes Dadaism.

Dadaism went away from not only the physical way art is done,

but also further away from the style,

all the borders in the way of which art is thought about

and how art is made now no longer seemed to exist.

For the Dadaists, art was a way to challenge, and in many cases

purposely offend, the art establishment.

Manufactured objects became "art."

At that point art went from just exactly duplicating a subject,

to direct connection with the inner world of the viewer.

Dadaism led then to surrealism.

With seemingly no borders left to challenge, surrealists created expansive,

arbitrary art works filled with desolate landscapes, magnificent monsters and nonsensical objects.

Art was now almost entirely inside the inner world of the artist.

These strange images forced viewers to interpret art on their own terms

when confronted by the surreal and nonsensical,

each viewer will have their own unique interpretation.

After surrealism, abstract impressionism pushed art beyond representation into producing minimal art

an entire block of a single colour

could be sold to a collection for millions.

Art began to mean that any visual creation could be boiled down to just the "doing of art".

A massive canvas painted entirely blue,

or improvised primitive techniques with modern objects

sometimes even stepping on a painting.

Whatever it took to express oneself through the physical act of painting.

Every link between the outer world and the inner world was separated,

more now than ever.

With art at a crossroads, pop-art brought representation back.

Manufactured objects like the soup can were among many subjects and themes the pop artists used,

and at the same time, digital technology was starting to advance in leaps and bounds.

And with that, the final piece of the puzzle for massurrealism was in place.

So, in 1992

enter massurrealism to express this Information-Age art.

The term grew from a need to understand

the complex roots of the techniques

of artists at the end of the 20th century were creating.

In essence, every drama and advance and revolution and technique in the history of human art

was now up for grabs.

The inner world and the outer world could coexist,

expressed with everyday objects,

using the influences of the latest digital technology,

and traditional art techniques.

Artists today use many methods such as paint,

collage, photography, photo software, video software,

and even the communication methods of the World Wide Web.

Today you can see it everywhere in the journey of your life.

You see it in advertisements, movies, TV shows, and the internet.

But at its heart,

massurrealism is also about the real World of today.

We are all connected electronically

and can quickly send instant photos and videos,

all in real time.

Massurrealism as an art form

shows us that humans control the art,

and that art is still being made by a human artist

with a human message.

It is using these methods that

give the artist control over the creative work,

and not the other way around.