Bento = curriculum making...

Bento is part of Japanese food culture.
It is described by Wikipedia as a "single portion take-out, or home packed meal"
It usually contains 3 elements (a little like the classic 3 part lesson perhaps ?)

  • rice
  • fish or meat
  • vegetables - fresh, cooked or pickled

These are arranged within a box - there are various designs of box, and also various combinations of bento.
The art of curriculum making is a little like making up a bento box:
  • There is a need to be creative within a fairly restrictive framework
  • There are plenty of possible combinations, but not all of them will be as 'tasty' as others 
  • There will be some favourites that some students will want every day, but won't be too all people's tastes
  • There will be the opportunity to try a 'taster' of something new by replacing something that usually goes in the box
As these are take-aways, you could also use the analogy of a take away box, and this links to my Landscape in a Box idea and article in 'Teaching Geography'.
There is also a trend for placing images of popular cultural figures such as Hello Kitty into the designs.

Image by Flickr user dompling (Dominique Ahkong) made available under Creative Commons license

There could also be a link to geographies of food here, and the various cultural variations on the idea of 'convenience food', which is what bento represents....

Since starting to write this session and begin to join it up with some other forth-coming ICT/Geography CPD sessions, I've discovered that Human Geographers at the University of Edinburgh have already adopted the idea for their lunchtime meetings...

So, what's in your packed lunch today ?


P.S: For more on food and geography check out CHOP ONE RED ONION..


Will be developing this idea at a number of forthcoming events... I think it has some mileage...

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