Some Interesting Links

Not a lot to report here in Katherine. I had a really nice birthday including unexpected gifts, birthday cake with candles and ice-cream, and a long lively discussion on the American versus Australian uses of the terms "squash" and "pumpkin" (among other topics). It turns out, when hanging out with linguists who speak three different Englishes (American, Australian, and British) and have knowledge of a further number of accents and dialects, that the conversation always comes round at some point to "you say what?" and "can you say that?" because the variations really are (almost) endlessly fascinating.

Today I went over to the Greening Australia office to find out about volunteering there. Volunteers work out in the plant nursery every Friday morning, so I'll begin this week!

I've been doing a bit of reading online, so I thought I'd share some sites with you. While visiting the Solar Cookers International website, I came upon this link about Mohammed Bah Abba who won a Rolex Award for his invention for keeping vegetables fresher for longer in his native Nigeria. It turns out that a layer of wet sand sandwiched (as it were) between two clay pots will quite markedly prolong the life of the produce kept inside the inner pot. A damp cover, possibly of leaves, is placed over the veggies. The website, by the way, is attractively designed, with great sound and graphics. It's designed to keep you actively engaged, so rather than give you all the info at once, you have to mouse over things or click on things to get more of the story. I think it's good website design. Beware, though, that it might load slowly if--like me--you have dial-up.

I also just read about Dave Calland's permaculture work with indigenous people out in remote communities. The paper is called Garden Djama In Arnhem Land:Permaculture Design With The Barrara And Djinang. It's not only cool work that he's doing, but he talks about cultural differences and the importance of respecting and learning about the values of the people you're working with.

Speaking of cross-cultural learning styles (I was, wasn't I?), I have also just been re-reading Peter Ninnes master's thesis Culture and Learning in Western Province, Solomon Islands in which he also looks at the literature on culture and learning--that is, comparing informal community/family learning with learning in a formal classroom setting--among Aboriginal Australian children, Hopi children and children in several African countries. If you want to know more, check out Chapter 2 particularly.

Along a related theme, I've also been reading about the Northern Territory Teacher Induction Program, at least as it was prior to 1997. I've no idea whether it's the same now or not. There seems to have been an academic conference with one of those typical academic conference titles: From Students of Teaching to Teachers of Students: Teacher Induction Around the Pacific Rim. The part I was rereading is called, tellingly, Strangers in Their Own Country: Teachers in the Northern Territory , as most teachers up here (and indeed a good portion of all people in Katherine) are from somewhere else.

That's all the online reading suggestions I have for now. Anyone want to recommend a single favorite online source of international news?