Palmer Museum and Lion Shrine Visit

Today, June 6th, in ECE497B we took a trip around campus to two of the most famous spots. We visited the Palmer Arts Museum and the Lion Shrine. We were to work on documentation and try to investigate some questions that we thought of prior to beginning our trip. Our group decided that each person would focus on a different form of documentation to try to answer some of the questions we sought out to find. I focused on taking pictures and I learned a great deal from the pictures I took and the answers I found from them. 

I chose this picture of the head of the Nittany Lion Shrine for several reasons. It captures some up close details that a normal picture of the lion shrine most likely would not. I also chose it because it allows us to examine the facial features of the lion shrine. By analyzing this photo, and reflecting on today’s discoveries, I have learned a great deal from this trip to the Palmer Museum and lion shrine. 

One major thing I have learned today, is that details can basically tell a story of their own. Before we left the classroom, we had several set questions on things we wanted to investigate. By investigating those questions, it led to wanting more information on other  ideas and concepts we came across while we were investigating. For instance, one question we had in the classroom was How many toes does the lion have? This picture I took shows that answer, which is 4. By answering this question though, I started seeing other things around the paws that I became interested in. I began to look at the wear and tear on the Lion. From this picture it is clear that there are marks all over the face. The lion shrine has obviously been around for a rather long time, so I begin to wonder how the majority of those marks got there. It could be anything from a shoe scraping to marks from weather. From seeing these marks I began to draw more questions that could be answered....

1. Has any part of the lion shrine ever been replaced?
2. Are their any good stories behind any of the marks on the lion?
3. Does anybody come clean the lion or care for its appearance? 

I began to think that this is really what research/inquiry based curriculum is all about. We as a class may start with some type of plan, but with the flexibility of a researched based curriculum other important ideas and concepts can be learned purely off the interests of the students. This also allows the students to take ownership for what they want to learn like I took ownership in making up other questions I would like to be discovered. 

This artifact worked perfectly for what I learned because it is a picture that I can reflect back to over and over again. In fact, when I took the picture I didn’t think about the questions that I previously stated. It was after class when I was looking through my pictures that I started to study this picture of the lion shrine head. This again gets at the idea about how important documentation is. Without this picture or all the pictures I had taken, I would have never been able to discover the marks on the lion shrine’s head and think of all the other questions I had from seeing this picture. This correlates with why documentation is so important in the classroom. Without pictures, videos, and voice recordings I as a teacher can never go back and reflect on my student’s learning and ideas. Therefore, I wouldn’t be able to see their interests and/or think of activities to base off their own interests.