Banana patch ethnogardening

The banana patch was heavily overgrown this term. After a viewing machete safety videos in A204, the class walked down to the patch. I had preloaded the machetes in my car and pre-positioned the car at the agriculture area so the class did not have to cross campus with machetes. This took more time than I anticipated, and I had to jog back to the class to meet them on time. This approach, however, works better than any other. At the end of class the students simply put the machetes in the car, I do not have to lug a couple dozen machetes back across the campus.

Deep in Clidemia hirta

Sasha

Mitchell


Naoya pulling Clidemia hirta


The Clidemia hirta was tall and thick




Fanning out around the overgrown garden

The instructor




Vanessa Hadley clearing bush




Jon Jose



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Moodle bulk grading of manually marked quiz and test questions

Image
Manual marking of an essay type question on a quiz or test in Moodle can be done student by student but that process involves a lot of clicking and scrolling as one has to open each student's submission. There is a bulk marking screen available. In the test or quiz click on Results. At the upper left side is a stealth drop down list menu under the word "Grades" that includes the option "Manual grading." Choose manual grading. On the far right click on the blue "grade all" hyperlink. That will open up a all of the submissions for question one on a single page. One can now mark all of the question one submissions manually for all students in the course. 
Read more

Experimenting with the PlantNet and iNaturalist apps

Image
The application of image recognition technologies as the back end to botany apps is providing increasingly relevant search results. Over the recent winter break I began looking at whether the apps now available might be useful to the ethnobotany class here on Pohnpei. Some apps had a more regional focus in the past and were better at north american or european plants. Pohnpei has a both unique indigenous plants and many introduced plants from around the world -  a challenging environment for any image recognition system. A student working with a plant identification app for the first time My criterion was that the app had to be appropriate for use in my classroom. The app could not contain advertising and the app had to be free, my students typically do not have the ability to pay for an app. The app would also have to be fairly small as my students often use phones with limited memory and processing power. I settled on PlantNet and was impressed with the ability of the a...
Read more

Traditional food dishes of Micronesia

Image
Clara, Jennette, and Joanie presented ground hard taro cooked in an umw, effectively a hot rock oven. Pohnpeian: rotama. Pingelapese: sero. Mwoakillese: rodma. Mortlockese: Amahd. Kosrae: rodoma. After cooking in an umw the rotama is pounded with the petiole of a palm frond. Rotama is made from hard or swamp taro, known as mwahng on Pohnpei, mweian on Pingalap, pula in Mortlockese, and pahsruhk on Kosrae. In traditional times on the outer islands the women had primary responsibility for tending the taro while the men handled fishing and climbing tasks. Joesen and Noeleen presented fermented breadfruit from the outer islands of Yap such as Woleai and Eauripik. The raw ingredients were actually brought in from Yap, Noeleen prepared the maare.  The leaf wrap is ti leaf - Cordyline fruticosa. Pauleen, Barnson, Trisha, Verginia, Con-ray, and Maylanda from Kitti, Pohnpei brought in mahi umw, koahpnoair koakihr, and uht sukusuk. Above is breadfruit umw, mahi umw, o...
Read more