19 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2017
    1. Public areas and outdoor learning environments, including nature trails and ecological study areas, lend more opportunities for community interaction and social encounters that foster a sense of belonging, whereas quiet areas provide a place for students to refresh themselves, have a temporary escape, or quiet reflection, affording an enriched and enjoyable campus life

      Over all, I understand this theory. I understand that natural settings are important. Going outside is important. Allowing your mind and body to take a break from pressures and relief in a holistic manner is important, but each student is different. Students are able to decide for themselves if they will benefit from a more holistic campus or if they prefer to be in a unbalanced or city setting. It all depends on what kind of environment an individual prefers for their own relaxation and education.

    2. expresses something about the quality of academic life, as well as its role as a citizen of the community in which it is located

      Another way these two articles I read contrast is, although this theory might not be accepted by all universities, it does talk about how it would be beneficial to the student's health and experience in college. 'Lazy Rivers and Student Debt doesn't necessarily speak of benefiting students at all. The rock walls and pools and $85 million doesn't get supported by evidence or studies tat student's will benefit from where their student fees are being involuntarily put towards.

    3. “natural scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it; tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus through the influence of the mind over the body, gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigorating to the whole system

      This statement speaks of just how benifitial to all humans, not just college students. Although college students are under a lot of pressures and have tested to have very nigh stress levels, this statement could help influence many other places. Like i mentioned before, grade schools, as well as work places. Many adults who sit in an office all day long could benefit from outside time and natural rejuvenation.

    4. older campus plans emphasized disciplinary boundaries and newer campus designs are more amorphous and integrative.

      This sentence seems contradicting to me. If a newer campus is amorphous, meaning without a recognizable shape or form, how can it also be integrative? Can a campus be considered unorganized but unifying at the same time?

    5. Therefore, we propose that the natural landscape of a university campus is an attentional learning resource for its students

      After reading this article and my supplemental Article, "Lazy Rivers and Student Debt", both have contradicting views as to what students are drawn towards when deciding which university to attend. This article presents a theory that natural environment stimulate students and help their progress, which is a point of interest. The other states that students are more worried about the recreational offers of the university and extra curricular advances the college presents. I disagree with both. I would like to think that most students pick where they want to gain a higher education from, based on the educational aspect of it. Which school has the best professors? Which school has the highest graduating hiring rate? Which school offers the best programs for my major?Not which school has the largest park or which school has the nicest lazy river and rock wall.

    6. Cornell University Campus Master Plan

      This is an image of Cornell University. As you can see their master plan is to utilize 2/3 of their land as natural open space in order to sustain this natural holistic landscape. Cornell was also established in 1865. This is a typical type of landscape for the schools created in 19th and early 20th centuries.

    7. Student perception of the surrounding campus landscape and the opportunities it offers for intentional and unintentional learning or recreational engagement/activity might influence their overall campus experience

      A student that wishes to be in an environment where there is many opportunities to spend time outside and many options of places to be a a natural setting, need to go to campuses that have this to offer. This theory doesn't work for schools in city environments such as Georgia State. We have one park on campus and it is barely a park. It's very small and over taken by the homeless. Students who come to universities like GSU, know the environment they are accepting to live in. There isn't anywhere to put in green houses or farms in the middle of Atlanta. Georgia State is tightly integrated with the public and overlaps most of the time, like the homeless situation. Although the students might appreciate a nice natural setting to relax in, they knew it wasn't available to them upon going to school there. But despite the lack of greenery at this particular campus, there are so many learning opportunities and other factors to influence the students' experience at GSU. The buildings might be influential to an architect student, the roads to a civil engineer, or even the homeless people to a student activist. The environment influences in which way a student wants it to influence them.

    8. Thus, university students as a group are at a higher risk of attentional fatigue. Furthermore, increased technology use within today’s multitasking society is likely to hijack a student’s attentional resource placing her/him at risk of underachieving academic learning goals and undermining success at a university

      Again, I am slightly frustrated with this article and this phrase. College is a time when students are expected to go off, live on their own, act like adults, and make their own decisions. Yes, we now live in a time of ultimate destruction. We have the entire world at our finger tips. You have the ultimate entertainer all inside your phone and, in college, no one to tell you to get off of it. Although outdoor time is important, getting fresh air and relaxing in a natural environment is proven to stimulate one's brain and help concentration, if a college student doesn't want to go outside, they won't. There is no "recess" in college where professors or RA's make the students go run around. Having the option to go outside is very important, I do agree. Alternatively, trying to convert every college campus into one that solely focuses on having a holistic campus might not be beneficial to all the students or campuses.

    9. Recognizing Campus Landscapes as Learning Spaces Kathleen G Scholl, Gowri Betrabet Gulwadi

      Supplemental Reading: Lazy Rivers and Student Debt

      This article from Inside Higher ED is a hot topic many college students discuss. Throughout this article Chris Christie and Elizabeth Warren, both influences in American politics, discuss their views on the large amount of money universities are spending on recreational complexes like lazy rivers and rock climbing walls. Although not all places of higher education are buying these two specific things, the price of college is going up, the rate of student debt is increasing, and students aren’t usually seeing how their student fees are benefiting them first hand. Although things like free pizza and movie nights or free t-shirts are all greatly appreciated by students, using the LSU example, $85 million renovation to the rec center might not have been where student fees needed to go, especially not when student fees were increased by $100 per semester. On a personal level, I don’t benefit what-so-ever from Grammy award winner Lil Wayne coming to perform at my school’s panther palooza this year, but for some reason my student fees went towards it. Meanwhile, every day we run out of parking, desks in Sparks hall, and the speakers in my music class are broken. (listening to music is pretty important in a music class) As a college student, I personally didn’t make a decision of where to college based of the rec center, even though I am very active in going to it and using the facility. If GSU put in a lazy river, I can agree with Jane Wellman, it wouldn’t influence the decision of prospective students. Updating dorms, expanding parking, making sure the education buildings are fully functioning, these things will draw more students in and raise profits.

  2. www.histarch.illinois.edu www.histarch.illinois.edu
    1. The two concentrations differed from each other. The more northerly one consisted of two sugar jars, a stoneware jug, miscellaneous pressed glass objects, - 207 - and a variety of bottles. One of the sugar jars had a hole broken through the base.

      What exactly were these people looking for? Pieces of shared cultural? Relevance to Anglo-Saxon or African American history? These artifacts, although important, don't seem to reveal much about Parting Ways as a whole.

    2. A discovery made in 1978 not only calls into question the identity of the occupants of the graves, but adds yet one more dimension to the nature of the cultural heritage of the - 206 - Parting Ways residents, in this case a somewhat enigmatic but dramatic one.

      This grave stone is not one to honor these four men who fought for the country. But, despite the boring headstone, slaves didn't usually get any sort of recognition after death. Because they were property and their lives weren't seen as lesser, this headstone might have been very honoring for it's time. It tells of their duties and their land.

    3. Parting Ways is a very special site, in that it was occupied by at least three families of African Americans who were free of those constraints which might have been imposed on them under the institution of slavery.

      Parting Ways seems to serve as a trophy for these 4 men. Although slavery was still very much intact, they were able to make a life for themselves. After the war they were granted the land, were married, and farmed. They more than likely lived a life in poverty, but were able to escape freedom over all.

    4. Although the town clerk's map explicitly designates discrete portions of the ninety-four acres as having been cleared by each of the four men, they still placed their houses close to one another.

      This is something you continuously see throughout history, even though there is plenty of space for the 4 men to live very spaced out, they still choose to place their houses near each other. This might have been for social purposes. Maybe the men were all close personally.

    5. The enlarged house is the one seen in the photograph.

      All though it seemed as though he added a lot to the house, this picture doesn't seem much larger the the drawing previously shown in the story. But because the house was no longer standing, how were they able to tell building infrastructures from two separate times?

    6. If we were to rely only on the documentary sources for our knowledge of the life of the four men who lived at Parting Ways, we would have little on which to proceed.

      At the point in this document I am wondering why this piece of property and these 4 men were so intriguing to the team investigating them. In the beginning of the story Howe and the other 3 men that resided on this property seemed like ordinary men who didn't have much of a history behind their lives.

    7. The ninety-four acres of land on which these four men lived were provisionally granted to Cato Howe in 1792, although there is no record of an outright grant of title to him

      94 acres is quite a bit of land to be granted. These 4 men were given this large piece of land by the government but there was no actual record of it, this seems strange to me. How can such a piece of land go unrecognized? Was it because they were colored men?

    8. but since he was but one of a large army, he shares his anonymity with all the other foot soldiers who have served their country's cause in countless battles from Lexington to Danang. Like them, he returned home after his release from the Army and lived out his life in a modest way

      This statement is very raw. It is very important for Americans to fail to realize just how many soldiers are protecting us. It's not just the fallen or the major names we need to recognize, but every man involved in the Army. Although Howe might have entered the Army to escape his previous life as a slave, it was still a courageous act from him, as well as every other man involved in the battle.

    9. Total Value: 27 dollars.

      Although the dollar had a completely different value in the 1800's, this amount of money shocks me. A cow is worth over $1,000 nowadays and you can't even find a chair for under $20, let alone 5. It is very interesting to see just how different life was just through the value of the dollar.

    10. For my supplemental reading, I chose Historical treasures lost, damaged in Italian quake" on CNN.com. This article speaks of the damages done by the measured 6.2 earthquake in Italy that left many historical buildings damaged. Among those were hundreds of years old cathedrals, basilicas, and churches. This devastating earthquake damaged "293 cultural heritage assets" and 50 of them were completely destroyed.