Earth Day

Earth Day 2010

Our school celebrates Earth Day by designing a dozen or so activities that the students cycle through, dependig on age and interest. These range from demonstrations of worm culture and composting, field trips to our water treatment plant and landfill/baler, drinking water facility, treeplanting, etc. Kids can choose to ride in a fully electric car, make solar powered robots, plant trees, and many other activities. It is pretty much a full day of activities and we culminate with a parade in front of school, everyone wearing goofy hats of recycled materials.

In conjuction with my final project here, my 5th grade class will create a “learning center” on global warming with poster displays, some short video from this course, and some demonstrations. The goal is to produce an age appropriate 15 minute primer on global warming for small groups of kids from 1st to 5th grade. Working in groups of 4, the presenters will trade off so each student is involved in activity.

Our center will consist of 3 concepts:

1) What is global warming?

Create a series of 3 posters showing the greenhouse effect.

2) Why is global warning something to be concerned about?

Show simple images of sea level rising, climate change, food web intreruptions

3) What can we do to help?

Show simple images on what kids and their families can do

We will also have an ongoing demonstration of the effect of global warning on Arctic sea ice:

As a demonstration of th ealbedo effect, we will have two pieces of aluminum, shaped roughtly like the Arctic ice cap on a table. One will be painted white, the other wil be painted dark blue. With a lightbulb representing the sun, it will shine on them both. A thermometer will show temps on each ice cap. Students will be encourage to touch each ice cap to feel the difference.

Example of visual 1

Example of visual 2

Example of visual 3

Here are some of the TD and NASA sources we will use:

1) Global Warming: The Physics of the Greenhouse Effect
http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/phy03.sci.phys.matter.greenhouse2/

2) Global Warming: Carbon Dioxide and the Greenhouse Effect
http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/phy03.sci.ess.watcyc.co2/

3) Inuit Observations of Climate Change
http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/ipy07.sci.ess.watcyc.inuitobserv/

4) Earth’s Albedo and Global Warming
http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/ipy07.sci.ess.watcyc.albedo/

5) Global Climate Change
http://climate.nasa.gov/kids/index.cfm

Connections in the Blogosphere

It was a pleasure reading the journals of my classmates these past two months. While I did not read every single post, I’m pretty sure I got to the great majority of them. The diversity of ideas combined with the range of grade levels and geographic locations made for compelling reading. Picking just a couple of sites to comment on seems unfair so instead I am going to give you my take on what makes a good blog as it relates to this class. A disclaimer... I did not always practice what I preach here - sometime life gets in the way and you have to hit that post button, ready or not.

I enjoyed the posts best that added new details and information to the topic. Having already visted and read the course content, I didn’t feel the need to reread them again in someone else words. That is why the personal stories held so much interest throughout the course. Beside offering new info, they also brought concrete meaning to sometimes abstract science concepts. Personal stories also allowed me to make a connection with the author, which can lead to valuable insights. The high school science teachers are the go-to guys for true expertise on subject matter, art teachers demonstrate right brain thinking, young teacher bring unfettered excitement and enthusiasm, and retired teachers share a wealth of experience.

For me, succinct was good. In this setting, I feel the blog should capture the essential essence of the particular module. Writers who captured the wonder of the natural world usually captured my attention as a reader. Tied to this is an economy of visual media. Every image should be an attention grabber and there were some awesome ones out there, including many excellent author composed photos. That said, fuzzy, pixelated, or too small pictures hindered otherwise good blogs. I was glad to see fewer Google Earth screen shots as we went along. They sometimes don’t capture the beauty of the original image.

The real value of taking a course like this is the sharing of teaching ideas and quality websites. Some folks are doing amazing things. It was especially cool to hear veteran science teachers share thoughts on how they managed to convey complex ideas to their kids. I now have more excellent science links than I will use in this lifetime.

I admired those who consistently considered Native connections. For me, living in a community that is not primarily Native Alaskan made that aspect of my blogging less compelling. It was harder work tracking down the stories or the individuals. In fact, much of the info I found about native connections came from non-native sources. I could write a blog just about that topic alone.

A few things that I personally was not fond of included harsh color schemes, especially when used with text, small fonts, poor grammar, multiple typos, and photos of large, dead, big game animals (not that they weren't cool photos, they just seem out of context to the subject at hand).

Finally, kuddos folks who figure out how to do neat sidebars, whole page background graphics, slideshow, embedded NPR stations, and the like. They really added to your websites... wish I knew how to do that.