Eager to get our hands on the resources of the Smithsonian, my fellow Cultural Literacy teacher McCall Goughenour and I arrived at the Heinz History Center bright and early.
"It's like getting a backstage pass" - Ms.G on the thrill of having the museum to ourselves in the still hours of the morning.
The Smithsonian is rolling out the Learning Lab in Pittsburgh--we are among the first cohort of high school teachers to work with the digitized collection. Many features of the collection include learning about history through interacting with objects.
So many moments of transformative learning have come from these past few weeks working alongside Dr. Illah Nourbakhsh and the CREATE Lab team.
As I am wrapping-up week three of my summer residency with The Fluency Project at Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab, I want to post one of the most stirring of these "important moments".
The above is a video filmed on location at the CREATE Lab. Summer intern, and my friend, Sufyan Abbasi walks us through his studding data visualization, putting the enormity of the Syrian refugee crisis into context.
Whether the cause is genocide, political instability, or global climate change, the result is clear--there is a global refugee crisis of epic proportions. Think about it--the opening ceremonies of this year's Olympics will feature athletes marching under the banner of refugee status.
We must take a deeper look at critically important issues... This data visualization helps us to go beyond the numbers and explore the narrative of the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean.
