Forum Conversations: June 2009

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Math Made Almost Bearable: President Garfield's Proof of the Pythagorean Theorem

Name the New Laptops

Name the New Laptops Conest! The UHP just lucked out and acquired 4 new mini-laptops for our classrooms, but they need names. Our current laptops are Micaelangelo, Leonard, Donatello & Raphael, while our wifi routers are Jubilee, Rogue & Storm. Make your entry here or on facebook. Anyone can play. Be creative. An independent panel will vote on 7/31. Happy naming and good luck!

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream

UNM's Provost chose Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream by acclaimed Los Angeles Times journalist Sam Quinones as this summer's inaugural work for the Lobo Reading Experience, a summer reading program for UNM Freshmen. Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream is recommended (not required) reading for freshmen enrolling at UNM in the fall of 2009. The book will be used in numerous discussion groups and selected class assignments early in the semester, and a further series of events is being planned around a visit by the author later in the term.

So, has anyone in the Honors community (not only freshmen) yet read this book? If so, what did you think about it? Was it a good selection for UNM students? What did you think was most successful about the book? Least successful?

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Math Made Almost Bearable: Episode 3: President Garfield's Proof of the Pythagorean Theorem part 1

In this episode, Frank discusses the first half of president Garfield's proof the of the pythagorean Theorem.

Welcome

Welcome to the Virtual Honors Forum: a place where students, faculty, and staff of the University Honors Program come together for conversation. Just like in our real forum full of cozy couches, study tables and chairs, this is a place to share with others what you are studying, what has you mesmerized, mildly intrigued, or downright flabbergasted. "To share" is really the key phrase, for as many of us have discovered, real learning (and research) does not take place in a small room where we sit alone with a book. Learning is dialogue and research is collaboration.

On this blog you may find and contribute to conversations about amazing movies, brain plasticity, DDR, Harry Potter, J.R.R. Tolkien, or the ethics of cloning. But more importantly, you have discovered an interdisciplinary community of thinkers and learners who are engaged in a broad range of topics. We ask that you always conduct your conversations with courtesy and honesty.

Finally, we encourage participants to challenge and wrinkle the boundaries between the "thinkers" and the "learners"; to surrender your preconceptions and self-perceptions at the door; to accept an alternating existence between those two roles while in this forum. One day you might contribute as a "thinker," but the next day you read something which transforms you back into a "learner."