Compass

[sirderrin]

Jul 23, 2015 15:43:47 GMT -7 cajunlady87 said:

Woodyz you are one hell of a smart person with a brain of maximum absorption of everything you've been taught and learned. Patience is another one of your greatest attributes. You explained a compass usage with utmost and thorough instructions. I'll bet you even taught cwi something but TW is a little tripped up. Poor man needs you to go visit or vice versa so he can get a refresher course. I'm sure even AH picked up some great pointers with your explanation to teach to her kids.

As for my directions they're so simple. For those who missed them they are Cajun directions where no compass is needed and understood clearly by everyone, native or not.

They are up da bayou, down da bayou, across da bayou and in da bayou.

You left out the most important one! from da bayou!

[cajunlady87]

Jul 23, 2015 15:51:08 GMT -7 sirderrin said:

Jul 23, 2015 15:43:47 GMT -7 cajunlady87 said:

Woodyz you are one hell of a smart person with a brain of maximum absorption of everything you've been taught and learned. Patience is another one of your greatest attributes. You explained a compass usage with utmost and thorough instructions. I'll bet you even taught cwi something but TW is a little tripped up. Poor man needs you to go visit or vice versa so he can get a refresher course. I'm sure even AH picked up some great pointers with your explanation to teach to her kids.

As for my directions they're so simple. For those who missed them they are Cajun directions where no compass is needed and understood clearly by everyone, native or not.

They are up da bayou, down da bayou, across da bayou and in da bayou.

You left out the most important one! from da bayou!

LoL! Nope, that's another set of directions, remember Cajuns are special in that way.

From da bayou, from down da bayou, from up da bayou, from across da bayou, and some of us live on da bayou or over da bayou.

[thywar]

I always learn from Z Man. His explanation did indeed help me. CL, your Cajun directions, ehhh not so much. Lol

[angelhelp]

I looked at both links until I realized I wasn't getting it yet. I then went to youtube and found this link: m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8ckrHq00aI It clarified some of what I didn't understand from the other links. I'm not about to go outside now and try it, but after a night's sleep we shall see if I've managed to learn something. I want another few days before the pop quiz, though.

The declination issue was far easier to grasp. Back when I owned my first car, I put a compass on the dashboard, just to have at least a dim idea of which way I was going. One highway near my college claimed to be E/W, but the part that I used regularly was N/S. It took me way too long to locate it on a map and finally understand why its sign was "wrong".

I am definitely going to post directions in my classroom. Some of the kids know there's a "North St." and a "South St." connected by "Main St.", but Main St. isn't even close to being a true N/S road. The school itself is set at an angle; that's what messes with my head when I try to recall which way the windows face or which way I'm facing when I'm using my keyboard or computer (they're not the same). I think the students ought to know this stuff too. As pathetic as I am with noticing visual clues, most of them make me actually look good. A few years ago, I hung a laminated world map on the wall so I could reference composers' countries. I soon discovered what the Spanish teacher had also discovered: the kids had absolutely no idea of world geography. Each time my classroom was changed, I put the map back on a wall. My most recent addition was a pair of arrows, one black and one green. The black one points to "where we are". The green one points north (Mercator projection). Appallingly, some of the older kids had to ask why the green arrow was there. Both the Spanish teacher and I now make it a point to reference the maps as often as possible. I use a laser pointer because it instantly captures their attention. I'm thinking about art projects that can incorporate some of this... starting with having them draw a map of the playground.

[woodyz]

Glad you found something to make sense

I am definitely not any good at teaching/explaining things

I can't review the video because my sound has stopped working and I have not determined why as yet.

[angelhelp]

Don't sell yourself short on your teaching skills. This particular skill has been a bugbear for me ever since I learned why my Dad's compass looked the way it did/does. There are some topics that are very difficult to get into my head, and it's not for lack of trying. This had been one. So... what I did...

I looked at that video all the way through and saw that I could follow the directions (no pun intended) even if I didn't fully understand why he did what he did. Next, I posted here that I'd found a solution. Today I went through the video again, pausing it frequently, and taking note of each step. There were 4 steps to what he did. More importantly, the notes are in my own words.

The park across the street has hosted orienteering events in the past. I probably can't participate due to being at work, but nothing says I can't follow the trail, so to speak, and finish the course independently, at my own pace.

In retrospect, being told to do x, then y, then z doesn't help me much until I know why, but to understand the why, I needed to know what x, y, and z were. Like in math, I need to know what I'm supposed to be thinking as I attempt to solve a problem. If I don't know why I need to be thinking of something, I can't proceed on my own because I can't derive the needed steps out of thin air. Knowing this about myself gives me insight to diagnose why a particular student has trouble with a particular task.

[marc]

I learned long ago that some folks have an internal compass, and some just don't. Most of us are somewhere between the two extremes. It has nothing to do with intelligence, cunning or skill. It is my strong opinion that we are born with it - or not.

While some things can most certainly can be learned, or improved upon, pathfinding is a whole lot more efficient if happens automatically inside of your head. It is something that you "feel."

If you have it, you likely drive people around you crazy because you go places without specific directions - because you know "it's over that way."

[angelhelp]

I learned a long time ago that most people have some sense of direction. I have no such innate thing but I'm well aware of having a different, albeit less useful, skill set.

As a kid, I was often asked which way we were going, or to point to north. I'd look out the car window (conversations like this invariably occurred in the car) to find the sun, account for it being either morning or afternoon (hence east or west), and provide an answer. I was always wrong. After some years of this, I tried thinking aloud, in hopes that some fault would be exposed in my thinking, enabling me to rectify it and answer correctly, but it did me no good. I'd point to wherever the sun was, name the direction, and was nearly always told that I was pointing south. I grew up having literally no idea where anything was in relation to anywhere else. God forbid I had to take a detour from a "known" (memorized) route; I'd have no idea if I was even going generally the right way. Most of the time, if I opened a map of the area, I had no idea where to begin looking for anything, let alone my location at the time. Highways had names; on maps, they had route numbers. We used the names. Having a second name, i.e. a route number, just made it that much tougher since, as my students will tell you, I am as bad with names as with direction.

The first time I opened GoogleEarth was a revelation.

[woodyz]

Most of my life I was able to find my way with some kind of internal compass

I hardly ever needed a map and then I might look at it once an get an idea of the road ahead, and learning to use a compass with a map was always pretty easy

but since my stroke before this last one I have been lost several times or find myself not sure of which way I am going

its very frustrating because I know I should know and I know it should be easy to figure out

just today my Wife wanted to go by the library on our way to WalMart

So I went to the library and she asked me why I was going the way I went when it wasn't the shortest way

as soon as she said it I knew it, but until then I thought I was going the only way

so I understand how getting turned around can be confusing

[angelhelp]

Confusing is such an understatement. I can't count the times that I finally got the route to a particular destination in town, in my head, only to have Airborne drive one day and take a different route. For him, it's just playing, like I do with musical harmonies when others are struggling to determine harmonic structure and sequence from an aural sample.

For me, there is usually only one way to get somewhere. There are plenty of places in town where, if you dropped me off and told me to walk home, I probably couldn't find what direction to go without making a lot of exploratory guesses. You wouldn't have to blindfold me either; I don't memorize routes well unless I drive them. If I know ahead of time that I need to memorize the route, I immediately start taking notes. Distances and street names are imperative. Direction usually means putting the sun on the other side of the car for the trip back, assuming the car lacks a compass.

If I haven't been somewhere in a while (a few months), I have to mentally rehearse the trip before I leave the driveway because I'm likely to make some boneheaded turn somewhere along the way if I don't. Having been somewhere once is zero guarantee that I can find my way back there next time. I can only imagine how puzzled you must've been, however momentarily, when Mrs. Woodyz asked why you picked a particular route that wasn't your usual shortest.