Languages

Here is the link to the short film I was supposed to show you but forgot! Do have a look.

Reason

Who needs a reason to enjoy TOK?!
Keep your brain actove on those snow days with sone more ogic prohlems. Remember, if you are a TOK student you need to be analysing your deductive processes rather than just playing the games.
Deductive logic - 'guessing', 'breaking things down', 'from the information given', 'certain assumptions' - is it just guessing?
Mrs O said - does deductive logic mean that you always get the right answer? If we have all the correct information then we can't go wrong. Of course, how do we know we have all the correct information or have applied it correctly? Think of the triangle example!

Inductive reasoning or logic - creating a theory based on the current facts to predict future truths or certainties. All the swans I have ever seen are white: therefore all swans are white. Drew is an IB student, therefore all IB students are Drew. Huh?! We find patterns and make educated guesses as to what will happen next. Of course, we never know when the pattern is not going to work!

Here is a link to the exercise we did in class on inductive reasoning.

Volunteer holidays

What will you be doing this Novruz? This summer? Sitting around, bored? Watching TV? Hanging out with your friends? Have you thought about getting together with your family, a groups of friends or even going it alone on a volunteer holiday?
Here are some links to various organisations which run holidays where you make a difference.

What a great way to gain Service experience at the same time as enhancing areas of interest to you and having an amazing life experience.

Maybe one of these activities strikes you as an interesting opportuniyt that you could pursue through school. If you have a group of interested friends, why not approach your CAS coordinator and see if it is possible to arrange it through school?

Emotion as a way of knowing

How do we see the world through our emotions? Are they a hindrance or a help when trying to develop an objective picture of the world around us?
Emotional Intelligence test is here.

Snake Oil Science

"I don't care what people say - it works for me".

Ointments, potions,lotions and pills - how do we know that the medicine we are taking actually works on our body rather than our brain simply telling us that we are better?

Here is a link to a review of a new book called Snake Oil Science by R. Barker Bausell.

Read this, or the rather longer article about the placebo effect at http://www.skepdic.com/placebo.html

Post a comment on what you have read- your own opinions and ideas, drawn from your cultural and educational background. What knowledge issues arise from your reading? Can you make links between the ideas explored and any of the areas of knowledge?

You should all have posted a comment by next Tuesday - December 1st. Happy reading!

Logical fallacies....

...and the dangerous adventure.

Follow this link for take part in the dangerous adventure. The website, by Eileen Dombrowski, a highly experinced TOK teacher amongst other skills, is a very useful source of all kinds of resources, ideas and information.

SOS

More on this project later, but here is a link to SOS's sponsor a child programme. I spent a very interesting morning at SOS Children's village here in Baku today - they do fantastic work and we are about to become more involved.

Wouldn't it be amazing if each homeroom in the Diploma programme sponsored a child for the two years of their programme? Or if every individual student did so...

It's a minimum of GBP20, or 25AZN a month. That's a dollar a day. Do you think you could manage that between you?