This week focuses on the Paul Salopek and his Out of Eden Walk where he is documenting the journey that our ancestors have taken to across the globe. This project started in 2013, beginning in Herto Bouri, Ethopia and eventually ending near Cape Horn in South America.

I started out by looking at Paul’s start in Ethiopia. Milestone 1 is in Herto Bouri, a place where there is not a whole lot. Here Paul speaks with Idoli Mohamed who is an Afar (a group of people that live in the region). He is a pastoralist who wants his children to go and study in order to make their lives better then his own. Idoli says this land has two main problems, a bush called Wayne that blocks the sun for the fields and that animals do not eat. The second problem being the lack of water. Idoli hopes with education they could move to anywhere else but there.

The next point I wanted to cover is in the middle of where Paul Started and currently is. While Milestone 20 is not the geographic center, it is the beginning of Chapter 3 and Paul is currently working on Chapter 6. In this section Paul is aboard the cargo carrier MV ALIOS in the Mediterranean Sea. He is going to the island of Cyprus from Israel.

While Paul did not get the chance to speak with anyone on the vessel, he was able to get some sense of what it was like to travel aboard a cramped ship. Ancestors most likely traveled in much smaller boats, like canoes, to get to Cyprus. But in ore recent history people have crammed into cargo ships in order to travel and move about the modern world.

Milestone 74 is the newest entry into Paul’s epic journey. This one coumes out of Yusan in China. Due to the pandemic his travel was suspended in Myanmar, and after a coup there he had to leap frog by plane in order to travel into China after the borders opened up again.

Here Paul spoke with Jiang Ji Bing, who grows flower that are used in medicine and fertilizer, But business is bad because the borders were still closed for trade. He plans to only pick the flowers that are remaining and then pack up to go back to Tengchong where he is from. A sober setting for Paul, a painful display of how the pandemic is affecting all jobs that were once able to sustain someone.

Paul will continue his trek, and if you would like to know more then go to National Geographic and read about all of Paul’s astonishing milestones.

This is the home page and mission statement of this organization. That mission is very clear in the sites name, simply a stigma free society where all stigmas are eliminated and especially those that pertain to mental illness. They have many tool kits for business or personal use, but the one that will be focusing on will be one designed specifically for students.

This kit has many resources that will help students better understand how to handle and help their mental state. It has cross-subject lessons so a wide range of teachers can implement this into their teachings. It also comes with comic books that teach students about those that are diversely-able and how to include them in groups and how to think about how to empathize with them. Plus countless other tools that will help teachers grow their studnets’ understanding of themselves and others.

By going to WE.org I was able to navigate to the Stigma Free Society site where I found the focus of today’s blog. WE is a very useful organization for all teachers to help broaden and bolster their teachings.

Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most prolific American writes of the 19th century. In this hyperdoc, by Heather Marshal, students can learn and quizzed on the mysterious death this great author. This doc gives links to materials on Poe’s death in preparation for the students to write an essay on the topic.

This is a group essay that must compare and contrast the conflicting sources on what happened to the horror writer. There are also mini assessments for the students to turn in as they develop their essay such as turning an a hypothesis which will be the basis for the essay.

All in all it is an entertaining way to present students with an essay assignment that does not require the author’s writing which had been discussed in class. Instead it engages the students to research and use their reasoning skills in order to determine what they believe to be the truth.

This week I took a virtual tour of Mount Vernon, George Washington’s prized estate where he would blend form with function. This tour is massive, starting with the 21-room mansion and ending when you want. Each room has factoids, not only is the mansion tour-able but so are the surroundings such as the outbuildings, sheds, grounds, and so much more.

This tour is so immense it is unlikely that anyone, including myself, can see everything the first go around. The tour is fully 360 in every camera position, there are also videos that you can play that explain some of Washington’s choices towards design as well as how some of the objects in the mansion were used.

This is a great tour for those who love history or Revolutionary Era architecture. It is easy for anyone to use, and if you’re looking for something to show in the class room or to give as an at home assignment. The sky’s the limit with Mount Vernon.

Sword Art Online (that is a link to watch the first episode for free from crunchy-roll) is a Japanese Anime where video game players are trapped in Virtual Reality game. I was recommended this show by a friend sometime ago but never thought I would want to read the subtitles. Reading the subtitles was not as bad I had thought it was going to be. While the second half of the show takes place within the video game, the first half gives deep insight into Japanese culture.

The first thing I noticed was how similar their buildings and streets are to those around the U.S. and how similar the video game cultures are. SAO starts off with shots of homes, businesses and crowds of people. The houses were those that would have looked at home in many neighborhoods across the nation with windows and doors similar to our own. These were urban homes, not rural or suburban ones, similar to row homes in cities here in the U.S. The crowds of people that were excited for the release of SAO looked like video-game crowds that swarm stores here for the new Madden.

While the exterior of these homes are not too different from those around Philly or Boston, the interiors have a number of differences. Many of the homes in SAO had wooden floors that were walked with bare feet. All of the characters took off their shoes at the front door before entering the rest of the house. The interior doors were also very different, unlike the hinged doors here they have sliding doors for bedroom doors that remain exposed instead of sliding into the wall. The doors were often times made of what looked like framed paper of frosted glass.

One very specific detail that was different was how they read in the show. One character was reading a magazine and the pages appeared to be read right to left and up to down instead of left to right and across. This actually threw me off guard. I did not realize that was how Japanese was written down and read.