Sunday, January 11, 2009

If students took after ants...

Watch this video and then consider what work was accomplished by an ant colony. The colony moved 80 tons of soil and in human terms carried the dirt a kilometer.
What if our students worked to their potential...even near, what they could accomplish.
I am planning on showing this at school to see student reactions.
I thank Clif Mims for his blogpost. He is the person who led me in this direction.
http://clifmims.com/blog/archives/1634

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Lori -
The late great biologist Lewis Thomas write about bees and ants and people. If you haven't read Lives of a Cell you should check it out. Great reading, even for us non-biologists.

He says about ants: "Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into wars, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves. The families of weaver ants engage in child labor, holding their larvae like shuttles to spin out the thread that sews the leaves together for their fungus gardens. They exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television." --Lewis Thomas

Now, if we were just as industrious as ants. But we like to think of ourselves as having free will to choose what to do. Industry and individuality - we don't want to see ourselves as hive beings.

Jarrod said...

o_O

Holy cow, I am using that video in my classroom. Math, English, science, it doesn't matter. I'm using it!

Clif Mims said...

How did your students react to the video, Lori. I'd enjoy learning about the lesson plan/instructional strategy that you used with this, too.

All the best,
Clif
http://clifmims.com