image from http://xkcd.com/1080/
How to see
The following picture shows the weekly food consumption for a family in the United States. Your goal is to make some meaning out of it - to treat this like a "find" that tells you something about the present day U.S.
In other words, I am going to ask you to "read" this "document" like an historian would. To do that, you will perform a routine called "See Think Wonder" that will give a logical, orderly way to examine a source.
In other words, I am going to ask you to "read" this "document" like an historian would. To do that, you will perform a routine called "See Think Wonder" that will give a logical, orderly way to examine a source.
![Picture](/uploads/1/2/7/6/12766086/1678091.jpg?834)
Step 1: "Seeing."
Work with a partner or by yourself. Open up a google doc that you will share with me. Make sure it is titled "Thinking Journal". Make sure both your and your partner's names are clear in the document. Then, go to the photograph and begin the activity. Look at it very closely. Note down everything you see that seems important, meaningful, or simply curious about this family's weekly food intake into your google doc "journal."
Step 2: "Thinking."
Review your journal notes and speculate about what you think you can already know about this situation from tjhe details you noted. What do these details tell or suggest about the US, about this family, about their food, etc.? What sort of larger picture can you draw from these observations?
Step 3: "Wondering."
Begin asking questions. What bigger or deeper questions about this situation are emerging for you? What do you still not know? What do you still need to know to make sense of these details or prove your speculations, or hypotheses?
Work with a partner or by yourself. Open up a google doc that you will share with me. Make sure it is titled "Thinking Journal". Make sure both your and your partner's names are clear in the document. Then, go to the photograph and begin the activity. Look at it very closely. Note down everything you see that seems important, meaningful, or simply curious about this family's weekly food intake into your google doc "journal."
Step 2: "Thinking."
Review your journal notes and speculate about what you think you can already know about this situation from tjhe details you noted. What do these details tell or suggest about the US, about this family, about their food, etc.? What sort of larger picture can you draw from these observations?
Step 3: "Wondering."
Begin asking questions. What bigger or deeper questions about this situation are emerging for you? What do you still not know? What do you still need to know to make sense of these details or prove your speculations, or hypotheses?
We are now going to do an exercise called "Compare, Contrast, and Extend." This will allow us to do a more in depth analysis of the documents.
Choose 2 documents from the list below. Rather than do ALL the steps above for the "See Think Wonder" exercise, you will do these 3 instead, entering this information into your journal:
1. Comparing means looking for similarities. Which aspects, characteristics, objects of or in these pictures resemble aspects of the American family above?
2. Contrasting means looking for differences. Which aspects, characteristics, or objects of or in these photos seem different or contradictory from the first picture?
3. Extending means adding new information and looking for new avenues of research. When you add all of these photos together, what new things do you now know about your topic, and what further questions are developing?
Beginning at the top left and going clockwise, the families pictured are from: Beijing, China; Ecuador; Japan; Kuwait; Rural China; and Mali. All pictures are taken from Hungry Planet, by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio.
Step 2 is to examine your hypotheses (the "thinks") and your questions (the "wonders" and "extensions") and inquire about where you can go to prove your theories. Let's go through the activity below
Becoming a Source Specialist
Finding information is a piece of the research process. Finding “good” information is another piece, and an extremely important one. Your job - collecting evidence to support your theory - will be successful only if you gather facts that convince others that your theory is valid. Good information is credible (from an “expert” on the topic), accurate (matches information that you know or find in other sources), reasonable (makes sense), and supported (information is backed up by other facts, studies, etc.).
Your mission is to find GOOD information to support your theory, while keeping an eye out for BAD information. You probably do this already on an instinctive level, but we are pulling your decisions out of the realm of “feeling” into the realm of “thinking”. Why? So you can become a source specialist, a researcher who knows what information s/he needs and can defend every one of his/her information choices.
How will you prove your information is valid? Use the Source Specialist Guide on this page to think about your source and complete the following two activities:
Add this information to your thinking journal
Becoming a Source Specialist
Finding information is a piece of the research process. Finding “good” information is another piece, and an extremely important one. Your job - collecting evidence to support your theory - will be successful only if you gather facts that convince others that your theory is valid. Good information is credible (from an “expert” on the topic), accurate (matches information that you know or find in other sources), reasonable (makes sense), and supported (information is backed up by other facts, studies, etc.).
Your mission is to find GOOD information to support your theory, while keeping an eye out for BAD information. You probably do this already on an instinctive level, but we are pulling your decisions out of the realm of “feeling” into the realm of “thinking”. Why? So you can become a source specialist, a researcher who knows what information s/he needs and can defend every one of his/her information choices.
How will you prove your information is valid? Use the Source Specialist Guide on this page to think about your source and complete the following two activities:
- As you research, choose one source that you find and explain - using the guide - why this is a “good” source of information.
- As you research, choose one source that you find and explain - using the guide - why this is a “bad” (or weaker) source of information.
Add this information to your thinking journal