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| News/Education:
Mar. 13, 2008
Presenting to Tomorrow's Leaders |
The Gorilla Foundation was invited by a local Magnet school, North Star Academy, to present an overview of Project Koko to three of their 7th grade Life Science classes. This was a great opportunity for us to assemble and test a focused collection of multimedia slides from our new Koko Teachers' Panel evaluation CD for this type of audience. The results were astonishing — the students (and teacher) had no idea how intelligent and emotional gorillas could be, or that we were continuing to learn from them, and our staff had no idea tha 7th-grade students could be so perceptive, insightful and concerned. Here's a glimpse of the content — which we hope to make available later this year after a review by the KokoTeachers' Panel. The 36-slide presentation. which included 10 short video clips, took about one hour, including 15 minutes for questions — and there were lots of good ones from these students (see below).
| Section 1: Meet Koko — Interspecies Communication Research with Gorillas |
 The theme of the talk is: Interspecies Communication as a way of Exploring Gorilla Behavior, Cognition and Conservation. We first introduce Ndume as a non-language-taught gorilla, and listen to his and Koko's vocalizations. Then we introduce Koko and Penny via a 3-min. video that shows how and why our language research program has been so successful. Then we review the mechanics of teaching sign language to a gorilla, and show how Koko's first 10 years of language acquisition unfolded. The charts show both new words added each year (note that, like human children, there's a rapid spurt in the first few years—200 new words in year 3 alone), and that Koko's cumulative vocabulary grew to almost 900 words during that same period. |
| Section 2: Koko's Current Language and Learning Abilities |
 Koko's current vocabulary is well over 1000 signs, and she understands over 2000 words of spoken English. Some people ask if it's really American Sign Language (ASL)? We use a video clip to demonstrate how Koko speaks ASL, but sometimes modifies the signs slightly because of gorilla hand anatomy (smaller thumb-to-finger length ratio). Then we show Koko learning a new sign, inventing new signs when needed, and even using signs to express insults. We summarize the learning process and point out that sharing our language with gorillas can both improve their care in captivity and may hold the key to their survival, through human empathy. |
| Section 3: Koko's Emotions — What Can we Learn through Language (and Art)? |
 Do gorillas really feel? After seeing a 1-minute video of the story of Koko's Kitten and how she mourned for her little friend All Ball, it is clear that a gorilla's feelings are a lot like ours. Then we see Koko expressing another feeling, frustration, when someone doesn't understand what she's saying (sound familiar?). To help Koko express her feelings in other ways, we gave her the tools to paint. Though she is sometimes very self-critical (video), she has produced some wonderful work (eg, Bird based on a real bluebird who used to visit her). But Koko is not unique — meet Michael, who also spoke sign language and was an exquisite representational painter. We finish this section with some examples of Koko's sign sentences, and a summary of what we've learned about and from gorillas by teaching them a human-based language. (Gorillas seem to have their own gestural language, which we're beginning to learn from them now.) |
| Section 4: Conservation — The Crisis, Our Role and Your Role |
 As the roles have slowly reversed over the years—from Penny being the teacher to Koko being the teacher—so have conditions in Africa, where gorillas are rapidly being driven (by us) into extinction. Michael relates a story in sign language about his own personal experience with the "bushmeat crisis" — telling us how his mother was killed by poachers, which we think he witnessed as an infant. There are now lots of bushmeat orphan gorillas in Africa who need sanctuary, and we've helped create one in Cameroon named after Michael. The map of Africa shows how dire things are: with over 50,000 lowland gorillas being killed in the last 10 years (50%) and mountain gorillas hovering at a very precarious 700. We then suggest a number of careers that can contribute to the solution of this problem, including Teacher, Scientist/Engineer and Caregiver, and conclude with some examples of famous "conservationists" who are making a difference through many different fields The last "famous conservationist" shown is "you" — the student, by designing your own customized career that leverages your interests and skills with what's needed most.
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| Section 5: Thank You — and How to Learn More |
 Finally, Koko shows she has a strong sense of identity and can be considered a conservationist too (she's clearly an ambassador for her species). The video shows her signing "Gorilla, animal, Koko love" in the mirror, in response to Penny's asking "Who's that?" It's interesting that for years, Koko has answered the question "who are you?" by signing "Fine animal gorilla," but more recently Koko' has responded with: "Fine animal person gorilla" or just "Fine person gorilla." (Are gorillas consciously evolving beings like us?) In the middle video clip, Koko signs "thank you" to the audience, and we invite everyone to visit Koko.org to learn and see more.— especially the short videos on KokoFlix, which allow people to get to know Koko better than all the photos, charts and words we've ever produced.
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Sample Class Responses / Questions:
— "Awesome"
— "Did Koko ever have or want another kitten?"
— "Do you think Koko could translate for us what other gorillas are saying or feeling?"
— "Is Koko ever bad, or does she get mad?"
— "Do you get to go in with Koko like Penny and Ron?"
— "Do gorillas dream?"
— "Does Koko like music?"
— "What does she watch on TV?"
— "How did she meet Ndume? Will they ever mate?"
— "Do Koko or Ndume ever play board games or games of chance?"
— "Will Koko teach her baby to sign?"
— "Is Koko following the elections?"
— "Can we write a letter to Koko to thank her and ask more questions?" (teacher)
Conclusions:
1) These students were really engaged with "Koko," and to most of them our story was a revelation.
2) There is not enough animal behavior, intelligence or communication taught in schools today.
3) It would be nice to spend more time with these students, or conduct follow-up classes, to see if they could help us design experiments to answer some of their own questions, and to explain how some of the subjects they're learning now could be applied to interspecies communication research and conservation projects.
4) Short video clips that tell a concise story seem to provide the best way to demonstrate and motivate the learning of complex information (eg, how to teach sign language, how gorillas express their feelings, how similar are they to us).
5) It would have been nice to learn more about their current curricula so that we could make our material an integral part of it — and perhaps even design standard interspecies communication and conservation modules to be inserted throughout the educational process (both here and in Africa).
We hope to learn much more about how students respond to Koko, and how Koko can both motivate and "teach" students to utilize what they're learning in school to envision and develop exciting careers that contribute much to their fellow humans and other great apes — who need their (and their parents') help now.
The newly selected Koko Teachers Panel should have a lot say about this following their evaluation of a new KokoTeach CD later this year. Please stay tuned, and remain optimistic that we can succeed as a team.
Contact Us:
If
you have questions regarding the Gorilla Foundation's education program, email
education@koko.org
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Please Help Koko Save Her Species
©
Copyright 2008 The Gorilla Foundation/Koko.org.
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