Interactive life cycle of a star

This link is for an interactive life cycle of a star.  I wanted to archive this site for future use.   Perhaps for classroom use.


Interactive Life Cycle of a Star

The Birth of the Moon

My Astronomy paper for my final will be based on this concept.  This is a topic that has always fascinated me.  I will not only delve into how the moon was created but the fact that Earth has an iron core that Mars is lacking.  And the fact that this collision made it so that Earth was large enough to allow her to stay hot enough to keep her atmosphere unlike Mars.  This makes me realize why I love Science so much. 

Goldilocks, Gliese 581 g

The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast released a podcast on November 2, 2010 with some details on our newest find -  the “Goldilocks” planet, Gliese 581g.  What is unique about Goldilocks?  It is a planet the size of Earth situated in about the same distance from its sun as we are to ours.  To us, our place in the solar system seems normal.  Our smaller planets are much closer to the sun and some of our bigger planets are positioned much farther off.  But this is not usual in most solar systems, because of gravitational pull, larger planets are usually much closer to their suns.  This has caused quite a bit of excitement in the Astronomy circuits.  First, could it have life?  Second, we are getting much better at detecting smaller planets in other galaxies - meaning we will probably find many more planets just like Earth in other solar systems.

However before we get too excited over whether Goldilocks could sustain life.  Unlike our beautiful large yellow sun, Goldilocks orbits a red dwarf sun.  Which is a small and relatively cool star.  Could life still develop?

The 2 Best and 2 Worst WebQuests

In the previous blog my group reviewed 5 WebQuests from different perspectives.  Today we are ranking the 2 best and 2 worst.  We've agreed the 2 best are the Shakespeare and Earthquake WebQuests with Waves and Sounds and Foreign Country being the worst.

#1  By far Shakespeare was the best.  We agreed that it was a well thought out WebQuest and it met the criteria for all 3 of our perspectives. 

• The Altitudinist - Higher order thinking.
• The Efficiency Expert - Time Management.
• The Affiliator - Collaboration.

We liked the idea that research on specific topics had to be completed and then a Play derived from that information.  Students have to agree on how to create the play and then have to learn their lines.  Therefore a lot of thought and collaboration have to be put into this project.

#2  My group agreed that Earthquakes was the second best.  Not only did it met all three criteria but it also places the students in a real life situation where materials are limited but the consequences surrounding a bad design do have an impact on human kind.

#5  My group definitely felt that Waves and Sounds was the worst WebQuest.  It was rather anemic in that not a lot of thought was placed into creating it.  It was more of a treasure hunt in that the students just followed a list of websites to click on and then watch a picture.  Although I do have to say that the animated sine waves were neat to watch.  In the end we could not find any real clear goal to meet our perspectives.

#4 There was a consensus that Foreign Countries was the second worst.  We weren't sure if the competition would hurt or help the project since there was so much focus on it in the WebQuest.  We agreed it could go either way.  The Efficiency Expert felt that there was no clear time limit on the presentation making it run too long for other students to watch and cutting into their time slot. I think the worst trait is that there was no collaboration, in that it seemed to be an individual project.

The Altitudinist

 Macbeth by William Shakespeare

The Altitudinist: Higher level thinking is everything to you. There's too much emphasis on factual recall in schools today. The only justification for bringing technology into schools is if it opens up the possibility that students will have to analyze information, synthesize multiple perspectives, and take a stance on the merits of something. You also value sites that allow for some creative expression on the part of the learner.

Your Impressions

WebQuest - Listed with a number that I have used to rank each of the 5 webquests.                                         
#3  Gorillas
*Strengths - Saving the Gorillas poses the question "What should be done", which satisfies a higher level thinking.  The students are given the challenge that gorillas are endangered and basic info regarding their lifestyles.  In the end students are asked to:

It is time for you to make a decision. Think back on all you have found and decide how you would save the gorilla. What kind of activities are needed to guarantee that your grandchildren will still be able to see a wild gorilla?

I like the fact that students have to bounce ideas off each other to come up with an answer to save a species.  Its a huge topic and how 'we' handle the information 'we' know, such as the declining numbers of gorilla, combined with our future actions is going to determine extinction.  An important link or connection for secondary students to make since they are the next generation.  The students have to 'analyze information, synthesize multiple perspectives, and take a stance on the merits of something' to complete this activity.

*Weakness - The format that the information is given seems a bit juvenile to me for secondary students.  I am wondering how serious I would have taken this WebQuest as a secondary student.
#1  Shakespeare
*Strengths - I really, really liked this WebQuest the best.  I think Josh, Jeremy, and I agreed that it satisfied all of its requirements in making a good WebQuest.  As far as higher level thinking the students were posed the question "do you really have a good grasp of what life was like when he was alive?"  To find these answers they have to research:
     1. The actor - What it was like to act in Elizabethan England compared to Shakespearean acting during our own time period.
     2. Historian - Learn what life was like in Elizabethan England and the personal life of William Shakespeare.
     3. Director - The students have to research theatre practices of Elizabethan England and look at the things done at the Globe then and now, as well as at other theatres of Shakespeare's day.
     4. Linguist - The students will research the plays and poetry of William Shakespeare and the language he used.

After the students finish this research they have to follow a census guide to help them determine as a group what information needs to be included in the final product.  The students have to "analyze information".  The next step is to decide as a group how to synthesize the information in order to plan a creative presentation.   The last step includes creating a scrapbook of Shakespeare's time period and a final presentation with either a PowerPoint or Skit created completely by the group members.  I really like the conclusion of this project.  It truly is a PBL and forces the students to take all their knowledge to a creative level.

*Weakness - I don't see a flaw in the WebQuest

#2 Earthquake
*Strengths - Jeremy, Josh, and I definitely agreed that this was a rather intriguing project.  The students have to use prior knowledge about the different types of earthquake waves and building designs to create a building design that will withstand an earthquake.  Of course, the limited supplies to create a strong building is the biggest challenge.  If the students succeed their design should hold up to testing.  This all is part of higher level thinking.

*Weakness - I don't see a flaw in the higher level thinking of this WebQuest.

#4 Foreign Country
*Strengths - I like the idea of making this project a contest.  Students do have to analyze their country for a variety of topics such as interesting places, pictures of the people, monuments, natural wonders, events, festivities, and/or anything else that can be found.  The students then have to use their information to create a PowerPoint presentation making sure to make the presentation as interesting as possible to win the contest.  So students might strive for 'unique' information.  I feel it satisfies a higher level of thinking.

*Weakness - I don't like the fact that there is no collaboration.  Without someone to bounce ideas off of or to help weed through nonsense I'm afraid it lacks some higher order thinking. 

#5 Waves & Sound
*Strengths - This project could have been an interesting topic had it been organized with more thought.  However...

*Weakness - This WebQuest seems to be more of a treasure hunt than a project.  Students merely click on sites but are not really given a clear goal.  This is not an impossible project.  The author however states as the conclusion:

Congratulations! You've just mastered a difficult concept of Physics. While it may not have been easy or clear, through the innovations of technology, we have helped you further your knowledge and give you key learning concepts.

What!?!  That just blew my mind.  To me this is a very incomplete WebQuest with not a lot of thought put in it. 

Hydrogen Gas Clouds

I was searching for an article on how our Sun was created from a Hydrogen gas cloud for my Astronomy test tomorrow when I found another interesting article on Hydrogen gas clouds.  Frankly, my textbook is horrible and I have found that I have to do extended research if I want the specifics on any sort of Astronomical function.  I don't mind doing research to further educate myself but I do mind sinking a $100 in a fairly useless textbook.  In any case, I came across this article Massive Gas Cloud Speeding Toward Collision With Milky Way written by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.  I found it rather interesting and I wanted to archive it in my Blogger for further reference.  I think its phenomenal that we know things are going on like this in our universe.  Furthermore that we understand it and it is activity like this that has helped us to understand the birth of our Sun and other stars like it that occurred millions of years before we were here.

The cloud, called Smith's Cloud, after the astronomer who discovered it in 1963, contains enough hydrogen to make a million stars like the Sun. Eleven thousand light-years long and 2,500 light-years wide, it is only 8,000 light-years from our Galaxy's disk. It is careening toward our Galaxy at more than 150 miles per second, aimed to strike the Milky Way's disk at an angle of about 45 degrees.


An excerpt from the article:

"This is most likely a gas cloud left over from the formation of the Milky Way or gas stripped from a neighbor galaxy. When it hits, it could set off a tremendous burst of star formation. Many of those stars will be very massive, rushing through their lives quickly and exploding as supernovae. Over a few million years, it'll look like a celestial New Year's celebration, with huge firecrackers going off in that region of the Galaxy," Lockman said.

How Many Solar Systems are in the Milky Way?

Excerpt from a letter to NASA

So far, astronomers have found about 70 solar systems and are discovering new ones every year. Given how many they have found in this neighborhood of the Milky Way galaxy, scientists estimate that there may be many billions of solar systems in our galaxy. Whether this estimate is correct, and how similar other solar systems are to ours, remain to be seen. It has only been a few years since the first solar system apart from ours was detected, so this whole subject is still in its infancy. By the time our friends who asked the questions are adults, we will know a great deal more. Perhaps someday you will help find the answers. And even if you don't, you may grow up in a time when humankind has a much clearer idea of how we and our home planet fit into the cosmos.



Thanks again for calling Dr. Marc at The Space Place.

The Top 10

I have to start with WOW! The work the kids put into their Wikis were so professional looking. I understand there are templates that can be used to make web pages aesthetically pleasing but the work still had to be put into it. Something at the end of the video caught my attention when the teacher stated that her kids learned more from doing the website work than being taught by the standard method and then be tested. My guess is that by doing this hands on activity and learning through it Fact vs. Opinion that all of these kids would indeed score higher on a standardized test in this area. I think its great. Not only did they learn Fact vs. Opinion (which I have found is a difficult subject for kids when I have had to teach it) but they learned job related skills by developing a website. Kudos to the teacher!  To check out a Wiki that elementary school kids created themselves click on The Top Ten.

Does this activity differ from much of the activities you engaged during your K-12 education? How? or How not? Give examples.

Absolutely! I come from a totally different time frame. Some of my classes had one computer but they were the old OLD Apples. The kind that only have a flashing prompt when you turned it on. You then had to slide a disk into it to play games or practice typing. There was no Internet, at least not the kind accessible by the public.  I do have to give props to my 10th grade computer programming teacher who taught us how to use DOS by having us create pixelated cartoons that moved.  That was quite cool.  But I gave away the kind of technology there was at the time by same "DOS".  The advancements that have been made since then are phenomenal.

Is your learning style addressed in this activity? How? Give me an example.

Yes.  The kinesthetic or tactile portion of this project being hands on is definitely appealing to me as a student.  The fact that the students were taking part in gathering data to determine Fact vs. Opinion is much more appealing to me than listening to a teacher give me examples.  Also there is definite visual appeal.  Its not that I learn better when something is visually appealing, its that I want to take part in something that is visually appealing.  Before I started this class, my favorite part of blogging was positioning pictures just so around text to help make my point or build my story.  It may be just a personal preference I have but it is something that drives me. 

This project was implemented without the use of textbooks. Are you surprised? Are you interested in teaching in a similar way when you become a teacher?

No, I'm not surprised at all.  There aren't many subjects that need a textbook to guide a lesson.  Its a lazy cop-out if you ask me.  And sometimes I wander if its not because a teacher is not comfortable with the subject he or she is teaching.

I think science is better taught without a textbook.  For example: "What is a mineral?"  For a child to understand what a mineral is they need to see it, touch it, and for Halite - taste it.  If a child has never seen a mineral, how does reading from a textbook help them to understand what a mineral is.  My child is in 3rd grade learning science from a textbook.  Not experiments or first hand experience.  But purely from a textbook.  What is he learning?  Nothing.  At least not from class.  The fact his mom is enthusiastic about science and has the time to sit with him and show him different minerals makes him lucky.  What about the other kids?  What are they learning?  And we wonder why kids form a bad opinion about science at an early age. 

What are your concerns and what do you anticipate as being barriers?

Actually, what bothered me about the video was in the introduction.  I could not believe how much that school had when it came to technology.  Its not that I don't think they should have it.  The kids deserve it.  But what about the school my kids attend?  I've been in a couple of schools in Marion county and we don't have near the amount of technology that one school had.  The first thought that went through my head was, "That's not fair!"  So how do struggling schools and counties compete?  How much difficulty would a struggling school have in carrying out such a neat project, especially if their computer systems were outdated and slow.

Blogging and Sharing

1. What do you like or dislike about keeping a blog for this course?


I've had a Blogger since 2007.  I can see its value and I personally like keeping a blog.  I think it helps develop thought and writing skills.  Basically the old adage "If you don't use it, you lose it" applies in this situation.  I think blogging is an excellent way to practice writing skills.  Over time, I have seen significant improvement in my own writings from the beginning to now. 
 
2. How can keeping a blog make you a more effective teacher?


I agree with the video, Sharing: The Moral Imperative, in which a comment was made or inferred that blogging can be used as a way to reflect.  I think my teaching skills could grow, just as my writing skills have grown.  This could be useful for several reasons.  I could use my blog to go back and reflect on my early thinkings because we tend to forget what are train of thought was while creating anything.  I could also use it to critique my thought processes.  Often if we write something down and come back in a few months to a year we can see it from a second point of view.  Almost like we are critiquing someone else's work.  This would enable me to improve lessons from year to year. 

3. Will you consider continuing to post to your blog after this course is over? Why?


I most certainly will.  I posted before the class started and I want to continue to use this valuable tool after.  In fact, I have a trip to Nanjemoy, MD I'm dying to share on Blogger.  My family and I kayaked old wooden WWI shipwrecks.  We took beautiful pictures of ourselves standing on those ancient ships and the ecological benefit these massive wooden giants have created.  We also took pictures of 3 nesting bald eagles.  It truly was an amazing trip.  One I want to share with the rest of the blogging community.  I completely agreed with the video's message of using blogs to share teaching methods. 
 
4 Keeping a blog helps you develop four new media literacies:
Appropriation - The ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content.
Collective Intelligence - The ability to share and pool knowledge and compare notes with each other toward a common goal.
Transmedia Navigation.- The ability to follow the flow of information and stories across multiple modalities.
Networking - The ability to search for synthesizes and disseminate information.

Give me a concrete example of how blogging in this class is evidence of your abilities to do one of these four new media literacies.

Collective Intelligence for the simple fact that I have been following classmates blogs since the first blog list was posted.  I like to see what everyone else is thinking.  I fear that sometimes I make a topic too complicated.  I put too much thought into things that really need to be brought to a point.  I like reading how my classmates do this, since we are all using the same topics.  It also gave me an opportunity to peek into their thoughts and even see how much importance and thought they put into the class and their assignments.

The VARK Questionnaire Results

The VARK Questionnaire Results

Your scores were:

Visual: 4

Aural: 7

Read/Write: 7

Kinesthetic: 7

You have a multimodal (ARK) learning preference.

I am a little surprised about the Aural results.  I prefer visual with hands on.  I do like a step by step written instruction added to the visual.  I don't usually like to receive any instructions verbally.  I tend to space out after the first few moments no matter how hard I concentrate.  For this reason, I do not like to give instructions verbally without demonstrating and I tend to trip on verbal ONLY instructions.  I find I'm just as bad at given them as I am receiving them. Therefore, I tend to stick with what I know.  I feel more comfortable giving a hands on instruction followed up with a written instruction.

Other than my score on aural, I think its pretty accurate.  Then maybe again I'm a bit more aural than I thought.

I made my Picasso with no ears because I don't think listening to directions is my strong point.  But she does have big eyes to watch demonstrations and a really big mouth because I tend to ask lots of questions when I'm learning.

The Limitations of Twitter and Texting

hw mch thort cn B cr8d n rel8ed n 140 chars or less?

This is a challenge... for me anyway.  I think its obvious when I'm trying to relate what I'm thinking I use a lot of room.  But what goes through the mind of the person reading it?  One of two things; first, depending on what the topic is about -  I'm thorough.  I believe my Intro to Special Education teacher referred to my last paper as "Wow!! very thorough and comprehensive."  It's probably because I have to sit and validate everything I write by backing my theories with examples.  OCD on my behalf, I suppose.  And then there is the second thought that could be going through their head - "OMG, she turned a 2 page paper into a 5 page paper."  And YES - I did.  Not everyone wants to spend all their free time reading my thoughts.  Especially when they have 30 more papers to read.  Sometimes keeping it simple and getting directly to the point is worth its weight in gold.  Wish I could take my own advice.  I wouldn't drive myself so nearly insane writing a simple paper.

 

Needless to say, I don't like hyphening my thoughts down to 140 characters.  Trying to find meaning and making sure my reader understands that meaning - is frustrating for me.  At the same time, I can see the advantages of pinpointing, well... your point.  In other words, cutting all the bull out and stating your thoughts directly.  Which at this point in this blog you've already figured out that I do indeed lack the ability to get to the point.  

 

So... yes indeed - I did alter what I was going to say to fit my ideas in 140 characters or less.  In fact, I used the texting translator just so I could shorten each word and add a bit more.  The movie Why Schools Kill Creativity was really good.  I don't think I added my opinion to Twitter in a justified manner.  Its such a big topic and the ideas in it very innovative.  How do you shorten a response to 140 characters or less and not add several replies just so you can finish your thoughts?  But that would have been breaking the rules and I had to find a way to shorten my thoughts, so I did.   I'm still not happy with my reply but you'll have that.  

 

At this point, I think its safe to say that Twitter and texting do have an impact on what I have to say on more thought prevoking topics.  I have to abbreviate or hyphen my thoughts into a cute compact package.  Although I do have to say, I don't think it slaughters my thoughts completely.  I see it as a challenge to come up with a way to say what I'm thinking without adding superfluous information.   

Advice from Mommy

dnt sit 2 clse 2 d tv. yr Iyz wl cross!

uv 2 giv respect 2 gt respect

An apple a dy keeps d dr awy

\_/ lots of OJ

dnt T2 strangers