{"id":1293,"date":"2012-08-24T15:28:47","date_gmt":"2012-08-24T22:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www2.nau.edu\/news-p\/wordpress\/?p=1293"},"modified":"2012-10-29T15:13:46","modified_gmt":"2012-10-29T22:13:46","slug":"professors-dream-course-imagines-landscape-of-everybody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/professors-dream-course-imagines-landscape-of-everybody\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor\u2019s dream course imagines \u2018landscape of everybody\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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\"Paradis<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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Bringing blog success to the classroom<\/h2>\n

<\/strong>Professor Tom Paradis just wanted to update his architectural history websites but ended up launching a blog that continues to draw international attention.Now he plans to apply that lesson to his dream course: GSP 399: Architecture, Landscape and Preservation.<\/p>\n

The conversion from website to blogging platform has emerged into a highly successful blog<\/a>, pictured above, that gets hundreds of visits each day. Based on that experience, and some testing of student blogging in a summer program Paradis teaches in Italy and in a course on the Flagstaff campus, he\u2019s confident of success.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe blog project is an ongoing, comprehensive documentary of their learning throughout the semester,\u201d Paradis said, noting that students learn to write professional posts, imbed links and digital photos and write informative captions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey will be creating a landscape blog of their field experiences,\u201d he said, which can be used to \u201cshowcase what they\u2019ve learned\u201d when the students apply to graduate school or seek a job.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Tom Paradis<\/strong>\u00a0designed a \u201cdream course\u201d to help students understand influences on human landscape design, but his motivation is strictly down to earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis class is about common, ordinary landscapes,\u201d said Paradis, professor and chair of Geography, Planning and Recreation. \u201cWhat we\u2019re interested in is the 95 percent of stuff built for you and me. Students, as geographers and planners, will work in real-life communities, so they need to understand the landscape of everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a\u00a02011 Distinguished Teaching Fellow<\/a>, Paradis was given the opportunity to develop and teach a dream course, and he already had a good start. The course to be offered this fall, GSP 399: Architecture, Landscape and Preservation, results from years of tinkering with an urban design course that was \u201cjust too much information.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to see a series of classes,\u201d Paradis said. \u201cThat\u2019s the dream and that\u2019s what I\u2019m doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 399 course is actually an eight-week session that is preceded by GSP 303: Community Design. Together, they form the six-credit course series Urban Design, Architecture, and Landscape.<\/p>\n

Paradis calls GSP 303 \u201can evaluation course. Students evaluate what\u2019s not working and then \u2018fix it\u2019 with 3D modeling.\u201d In 399, Paradis will ask students to \u201csuspend your value judgments and understand why a place has developed as it has. What are the dynamics of the place? Why has it changed so much and what are the rules?\u201d<\/p>\n

Understanding architectural history, Paradis explained, is crucial in the discipline of geography and planning.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s vital for students to be able to go into a place and visually understand how it developed over time,\u201d he said, offering downtown Flagstaff as an example of how respect for historic preservation can be the basis for revitalization. \u201cIt\u2019s very useful to understand how geography happens and how places change. That\u2019s the fundamental lesson of this course.\u201d<\/p>\n

The courses reflect Paradis\u2019 own interest in applying architectural history as a context for making livable, sustainable communities. As he put it, \u201cHow do we take commercial strip landscapes dominated by cars and traffic and turn them into pedestrian-oriented places where people want to be?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bringing blog success to the classroom Professor Tom Paradis just wanted to update his architectural history websites but ended up launching a blog that continues to draw international attention.Now he plans to apply that lesson to his dream course: GSP 399: Architecture, Landscape and Preservation. The conversion from website to blogging platform has emerged into…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}