In this lesson students explore the creative concepts and technological practices on which Hip Hop music was constructed, investigating what it means to "sample" from another style, who has used sampling and how. Then, students experience the technology first hand using the Soundbreaking Sampler TechTool. Students will follow patterns of Caribbean immigration and the musical practices that came to New York City as a result of those patterns, finally considering the ways in which Hip Hop reflects them. Moving forward to the late 1980s and early 90s, what some consider Hip Hop's "Golden Age," this lesson explores how sampling might demonstrate a powerful creative expression of influence or even a social or political statement. Finally, this lesson encourages students to consider the conceptual hurdle Hip Hop asked listeners to make by presenting new music made from old sounds.

In this lesson, students use examples from visual art as well as rap to enter into a "structured academic controversy" that explores the concept of originality.

The 24-hour-a-day music video programming of MTV gave musicians and their audiences a platform to fully explore the experience of sound and image. In this lesson, students will investigate the ways musicians used video before MTV, then consider how MTV changed the way artists have exploited the surprising territory where sound meets image.

In this lesson, students follow the life journey of Blues musician McKinley "Muddy Waters" Morganfield, from his early beginnings in rural Mississippi to his music career in Chicago, Illinois. In learning about Waters' life, students consider the ways new environments might inspire people to express themselves in different ways. Students then reflect on ways new experiences might have spurred their own personal growth by creating a life roadmap.

This lesson explores the possibilities created by the new technology of cassettes and how people made use of them. In many ways, the digital future and its interactive possibilities were prefigured by the cassette era. By viewing and discussing clips from Soundbreaking Episode Eight, students learn how the Grateful Dead allowed their fans to tape their concerts and freely trade cassettes of their recordings, a move that helped establish the group as innovators in how bands cultivate relationships with their fanbase. Students will also consider how the cassette allowed individuals to express themselves through the selection, sequencing and re-packaging of commercially released music. In the last part of the lesson, they will look at the Sony Walkman and related devices, the first portable cassette players that led toward the current age of iPods, Mp3 players, and other forms of personal digital listening devices, exploring a period in which the boundaries between "consumer" and "producer," and "fan" and "participant" began to erode, allowing even the casual music fan a degree of access to the creative process.

In this lesson, Gospel music is used as a way to introduce students to the rhythmic concepts of beat, meter, backbeat, subdivision, and syncopation. By clapping and counting along to videos of Mahalia Jackson, Sam Cooke, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, The Staple Singers, and Beyonce, students practice hearing and identifying these various aspects of rhythm. Students will also use an interactive TechTool to gain a deeper understanding of the syncopated rhythms that allows Gospel, as well a popular music in general, inspire us to move.

In this lesson, students investigate these questions by analyzing videos of dancing through the decades. With the help of a worksheet, student groups watch footage of the Charleston and Lindy Hop, the Mambo, "Love-in" dancing, Disco, and Break Dancing. Based on their informed observation of these styles, they then debate whether dance has "evolved" in American culture, or remained mostly the same.

Taking Sam Phillips as a case study, this lesson explores the role of the producer in the recording studio as one defined by an ability to guide the recording process but also to affect the wider cultural context. After investigating what a producer does and why an artist might benefit from a producer's services, this lesson looks at the way Sam Phillips' approach in some ways reflects the trend of urbanization in the American South. Like Phillips, many of his artists came from rural backgrounds and were seeking the benefits of urban life. That move toward the urban, and the racial mixing it fostered, was almost encoded in the music, as the lesson activities will illuminate. Finally, the lesson looks at Phillip's guidance of a young Elvis Presley and suggests how the music they produced created an opening for African-American music to "crossover" into mainstream American popular music.

Phil Spector and George Martin both created defining sounds of the 1960s, but, inevitably, as music and culture changed, so too did some musicians' ideas about allowing producers to exert control over their music. Some of the Singer-Songwriters of the early 1970s, such as Joni Mitchell, accepted little or no input from producers, focusing on the clarity and directness of the lyrics with sometimes minimal musical accompaniment. In the latter part of this lesson, students use a handout with information about both Betty Friedan's seminal The Feminine Mystique and events in 1960s Second-Wave Feminism as a backdrop by which to consider Joni Mitchell's decision to "self-produce"in the early 1970s.

To many, the sense of limitless possibility The Beatles arrived at while working inside Abbey Road Studios was part of a broader pattern of change connected to the 1960s countercultural movement. Political and social events, including student protests against the Vietnam War, a popular interest in the study of Eastern religions, and the publication of books such as 1964's The Psychedelic Experience, helped to inform The Beatles' musical decisions as much as the music the group invented fueled the rise of a new youth culture. The Beatles provided the soundtrack to a new experience. As popular icons that challenged social norms and encouraged creative thinking, recording artists like The Beatles began using multitracking technology to make music in the studio that could not be reproduced on the concert stage and that expanded our understanding of what popular music could be and what it could do. The studio was no longer a predictable space for recording live performances; it became a laboratory for constructing sophisticated musical imaginings. As such, it was a perfect reflection of the new youth culture's spirit.

PLUMA is a narrative-based language learning program for the first three levels of college Spanish. This program is a complete curriculum and can stand on its own. This program is organically aligned with ACTFL, featuring Can-Do Statements as an organizing principle and as a springboard from which the learner can direct and personalize their learning. It is grounded in narrative-based teaching and learning that evolves from people’s lived experiences and fragments of the history and culture of their countries of origin.

" This class examines tools, data, and ideas related to past climate changes as seen in marine, ice core, and continental records. The most recent climate changes (mainly the past 500,000 years, ranging up to about 2 million years ago) will be emphasized. Quantitative tools for the examination of paleoceanographic data will be introduced (statistics, factor analysis, time series analysis, simple climatology)."

Here is the link to the new Passion-Driven Statistics e-book!

Github book https://bit.ly/PDSe-book

pdf version https://bit.ly/PDSpdf

Passion-Driven Statistics is an NSF-funded, multidisciplinary, project-based curriculum that supports students in conducting data-driven research, asking original questions, and communicating methods and results using the language of statistics. The curriculum supports students to work with existing data covering psychology, health, earth science, government, business, education, biology, ecology and more. From existing data, students are able to pose questions of personal interest and then use statistical software (e.g. SAS, R, Python, Stata, SPSS) to answer them. The e-book is presented in pdf format for ease of use across platforms.

http://bit.ly/EditPDSe-book

For more information, contact Lisa Dierker, ldierker@wesleyan.edu or check out the Passion-Driven Statistics website at https://passiondrivenstatistics.com/

This class provides a historical survey of the ways that people have interacted with their closest animal relatives, for example: hunting, domestication of livestock, exploitation of animal labor, scientific study of animals, display of exotic and performing animals, and pet keeping. Themes include changing ideas about animal agency and intelligence, our moral obligations to animals, and the limits imposed on the use of animals.

Provides an overview of the impact of nutrition on aging and the impact of aging on nutrient needs. Examines food access, procurement, preparation, and enjoyment using a socio-ecological framework of health and wellness. Evaluates age-associated psycho-social, economic, and environmental influences on individual food security and institutional program delivery. Emphasizes nutrition and food for healthy aging.

Learning Outcomes
Use an understanding of the relationship between nutrition and aging to identify challenges to healthy aging.
Create effective wellness promotion strategies that account for psycho-social, economic, and environmental influences on individuals and communities.
Apply knowledge of clinical, community, and commercial resources to promote the nutritional well-being of older adults.

This collection of learning activities allows students to explore phenology, phenological changes over time, and how these changes fit into the larger context of climate change. Students explore patterns of solar radiation and seasons as well as phenological cycles and ecological affects of these patterns.

It's tough to find phonics and fluency materials that are made with andragogical principles in mind. This textbook or curriculum is specifically designed for adult ESL learners. The content focuses on learning American English phonetic rules so that learners become proficient spellers and fluent readers.

Through a series of four lessons, students are introduced to many factors that affect the power output of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels. Factors such as the angle of the sun, panel temperature, specific circuit characteristics, and reflected radiation determine the efficiency of solar panels. These four lessons are paired with hands-on activities in which students design, build and test small photovoltaic systems. Students collect their own data, and examine different variables to determine their effects on the efficiency of PV panels to generate electrical power.

Physical Geography, also called earth science, is the study of our home planet and all of its components: its lands, waters, atmosphere, and interior. In this book, some chapters are devoted to the processes that shape the lands and impact people. Other chapters depict the processes of the atmosphere and its relationship to the planet’s surface and all our living creatures. For as long as people have been on the planet, humans have had to live within Earth’s boundaries. Now human life is having a profound effect on the planet. Several chapters are devoted to the effect people have on the planet.The journey to better understanding Earth begins here with an exploration of how scientists learn about the natural world and introduces you to the study of physical geography and earth science.

"This course introduces the structure, composition, and physical processes governing the terrestrial planets, including their formation and basic orbital properties. Topics include plate tectonics, earthquakes, seismic waves, rheology, impact cratering, gravity and magnetic fields, heat flux, thermal structure, mantle convection, deep interiors, planetary magnetism, and core dynamics. Suitable for majors and non-majors seeking general background in geophysics and planetary structure."