module ten

For my final blog I have decided to concentrate on  lesson plans for my multi age school to learn more about the Alaskan geology including the earthquakes and volcanoes acting up nearby. Volcanoes are not far from us here in Cooper Landing and it is going to be a great way to start the new school year in January when we explore and learn about volcanoes.  In order to learn about the volcanoes, we will need a little background knowledge on the earthquakes we feel, which happen on a very frequent schedule.
We will be able to learn through exploration through the Teacher Domain website, as well as other hands on materials.

Students will learn about volcanoes and then apply their knowledge by 1) exploring the physical characteristics of various types of volcanoes and 2) identifying the types of volcanoes featured around Alaska and 3) designing and building their own volcano.

Students will explore volcanoes in Alaska before we begin.

Students will enjoy seeing recent Earthquakes on this page.

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Module IX

Explain:  I learned a lot about the Larsen Ice sectors through this weeks TD.  Larsen  B sector was around for 12, 000 years and after being discovered was gone after only 100 years;  a mere blip in real world time.  what is of great interest is the abundance of sea life like clams,



Antarctic soft-shelled clam Laternula elliptica

http://peterbrueggeman.com/nsf/fguide/mollusca6.html

 that were discovered after the collapse; all discovered by accident as scientists were in the Weddell Sea investigating sediment.

After viewing the climate change of Greenland ice sheet

I found out that there is a difference in weather and climate change. and that weather events (ie hurricanes, floods, tornadoes) that take place during a climates period of time are for the most part stable and predictable actions of the earth. But if the

climate change a few degrees in temperatures, life would change radically and

rapid shifts have happened before and are a mystery which goes to show how  volatile the  world is and since it has happened before we want to know when it will happen again.

Extend:  The number of drops of water test was a fun activity to try with my school.  It was more difficult for our younger students to understand the analogy, while my older students and parents were way off on calculations.
The Nenena River breaking up and flowing through was quite a video; the speed of that river shows the power of water as it reshapes the land.  this is an excellent example of how a natural events reshape our land.
Evaluate:
I am ready for the final blog.  My slow Internet connections make this class almost unbearable
 to work on. 

My visits this week included:
James' blog which highlighted a lot of his life overseas and had some cool pics and videos.
Sandi's blog which had that photo of the pacific gyre which makes my stomach hurt thinking of the kind of water pollution and other pollutants that we don't always think about on a daily basis.
Bobbi Anne's site had that great photo for their dump site.  I attended an Americorp meeting to discuss how villages are handling recycling and dumps in their towns. I would agree with her about how hard it is to convince people to recycle.

Module VIII

Explain 

Global Warming has been a hot topic for a while but until I saw some of these testimonies by the people who live in Northern Alaska, you miss out on some of the things they are suffering through.  The idea that they will lose their ways of subsistence and life is hard to fathom.. Even understanding how in the past ten years  2000 feet of coastline was lost in shsimaref is hard to believe.   Finding out that Barrow is one of the most important places to measure arctic change makes me want to visit there.  I had always thought I would get around Alaska a little bit more than I have to this point, but there is still time.   In their statements the people say  winters are shorter, temperatures are rising,  and the climate is changing, and that they can't read the weather anymore through their beings. That feeling of knowing what to expect but you can't rely on it anymore because the land has changed too  fast for them to fully estimate what is going to happen next.

after watching this video

http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/echo07.sci.life.coast.climate/

it made me wonder what kind of sea life from the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean will move up to the northern wters to inhabitatin that area.

The interactive map of the arctic sea ice really shows the changes we and the rest of the world have gone through.

http://www.teachersdomain.org/asset/ipy07_int_nasadata/
and to think that is at its third lowest amount of ice since we have been recording data since 1979.

Extend

Thsi website on Antarctic Food Web Game is a good one for kids to do a little interactive puzzle
http://www.teachersdomain.org/asset/lsps07_int_oceanfoodweb/

and the sea ice water melting and how much it displaces is a good experiemnt
http://www.andybrain.com/sciencelab/2008/04/26/learn-about-volume-and-space-with-ice-water/

Evaluate

As I read and hear about the warming trends and I go outside today and I am chilled to the bone I feel like nothing is changing.  The wind cuts right through my  North Face Jacket which has a down insert and it is only 16 degrees  but the wind adds another 15 mph gust so the sind chill brings it down to a pretty cold temperature.

Three sites I visited this week include:

Jesse's whose page has some good humor, especially comparing smoking sections in a room with peeing in a pool.

Nick's who had a great picture of a water eddy and correlated that to the skies above  in the air masses  in our atmosphere.

Winsor's blog had me feel better with my timing in getting things done for the blog sinc ehs enoted who had been a slacker and not been caught up yet.

Module VII

Explain
This  weeks blogs covered some very important topics concerning the welfare of our state of Alaska and the people that depend on it for survival.  It is was really great to see younger people getting involved.  through this TD site:
Alaska Native Teens Help Researchers   we are able to see the changing of the arctic landscape; and it is scary.  The permafrost melting like it is just makes for a very uncertain future.  It is great that teens are getting involved to save and learn more about their environment. They are the leaders of tomorrow and they need to start getting involved to help learn and understand what is happening. With the change comes concern for the wildlife and lifestyle of the Arctic residents.  Their LIfestyle is at risk and who do you point the finger at?  We all are to blame one way or another and this was a really insightful section.

http://www.teachersdomain.org/asset/ipy07_int_arcticatlas/

This site was pretty cool because it gave some different visual perspectives to the areas we are focused on.

Extend:

  This  is a pretty good website that I have used in the past for learning about the periodic table.Although the

TD one is pretty good too!  The peridoic table is a great research  project for students to make a brochure of what an element can be made up of and how it relates to the others.

This weeks readings and videos on greenhouse is one that affects all of us. It  is a very real situation that  worries me about what the world will be like for my children as they move into their teens and older.  As we all  learn to become more green and focus on ways to become less dependent on fossil fuels car manufacturers are becoming more aggressive with their hybrid fuel efficient vehicles.   

Here is a web page of how to use alternate energy vehicles and how they save your wallet and the planet. http://www.alternate-energy-sources.com/hybrid-cars.html

I previewed these blogs this past week:

Kevin's  site had some good information on whether there has been global warming in his experience.

carolyn's blog was interesting because she found a connection with how she grew up and the river was full of PCB's as compared to native Alaskans and the importance of their waterways.

Lila's web page is pretty awesome! She has some good things in there for me to learn from..and I found out she is expecting a baby any day now.

Module VI

Explain:
Phun Physics was a lot of great new information.  I had never thought of evaporation as a cooling process but after reading about it there was a definite aha moment for me.  I also appreciated the safety lessons for doing labs.  We pretend to be scientist when we do labs in our school and the kids love the goggles...but they are the cool ones that look like oversized glasses and are a lot easieer to put off and on.
Extend:
What I plan to use with my students is the NASA sites.  These I will bookmark for future use.  NASA sites are always great  and there are so many to choose from.
Evaluate: 
After the week we had here in Cooper Landing with over 30 inches of fresh snow falling onto the ground I definitely experienced the relationship between the jetstreams and how it affects the weather where we live and found this on the TD site:
What Causes the Gulf Stream? 


and saw that the polar front jet stream is instrumental in both creating and moving storms over the United States. This weather also causes havoc on internet out here because all of our systems have gone down and been slow which makes me wish I had more time in a day to remove snow as well as do my work. 


Blogs I visited this week:
Kris Owens  blog was of interest to me as she teaches in the same district as I do and I learned some more about the school she teaches at and things they do.
Kenai Kathy East has a really outstanding blog with the great links to volcanoes, tsunamis and earthquakes.
Tyler's Alaskanwisdom had some great insight into how the weather affects the deer population.

Module V

Module V
Explain: What new learning or reflections have you taken from this module? 
the ideas.

Warmer Oceans Affect Food Web  was an interesting video to watch since they had ideas that the oil spill was not the only reason for the decline in habitat in Prince William Sound.  With a decline in the amount of small forage fish, herring, and sand lance there has been a decline in sea lions  not only in PWS but also in the Gulf.  This to me is of great interest becuse I remember when I was in college in Florida and a guy I knew was going to fly up and help clean up the oil spill. Being in Florida and reading about the spill all the focus was on the tanker, but after hearing first hand accounts of someone who cleaned it up on the beaches left me to believe that oil was going to ruin that part of the world. 

This site was really cool:

Interesting Ocean Facts

it was great reading and I even forwarded the link to others that I know. Their home page was really cool too. I had fun reading the qoutes and reflecting on my youth  when I lived  closer to the sea, when actually i onlylive an hour away from it here in Cooper Landing.


Extend: How might you use this week’s information and resources in your lessons? 
This weeks information that will be utilized includes:
Destiny of Density Differences - Lab!

Evaluate: How useful, insightful or relevant are this module’s information and resources?
This weeks information is relevant in the fact we are trying to use Google Earth for classwork.  Technology is the issue out here in Cooper Landing when there are days we get very slow response times on the internet.

blogs visited this week:
Sabrina Sutton's    I thought it was great that Sabrina had come to appreciate more about herself as she experienced more of life off of the island.
amy peeke has a beautiful family pic from Mass and a great family tradition.
Alison Larsen    I enjoyed visiting your site and liked reading about your thoughts with interesting ocean facts.  I emailed that link to some people to see and read.

Module IV

Explain:  I am enjoying using Google Earth through this classroom because I have wanted to teach more about it to my students.  The seismic activity page is a really good one compared to the one I had been using.  http://www.aeic.alaska.edu/recent/sub/index.html

As well as the ruler feature of Google Earth.  There is a lot of cool stuff to learn about navigating this web site.

Extend: This has been a really good week for me to help plan my unit on Volcanoes for my class.  Through technology and some hands on projects I feel really good about how much information the students will get.  The Aleutian Trench

Evaluate:  I found the opening page of module IV to be the most enlightening.  It reminded me of why I wanted to come to Alaska 18 years ago.  I wanted to feel the earth move and to be able to see it happen.  As much as the eruption of Mount Redoubt changed my travel plans as we were in the air and redirected to Fairbanks I love the fact that Alaska has moods in its seasons and you need to be prepared for anything.

visits  this week

http://www.scienceinalaska.blogspot.com/  Alicia Weaver’s site has “The joy of the journey is in the ride”  she seems to be an adventurous person enjoyingher first assignment in Alaska

http://danadair.blogspot.com/ 

I agree with you on the footage and imaging being better on our site here versus discoveryeducation.com which has become our new science book in our district.

http://mglehe.blogspot.com/2010/10/module-iv.html  Martha Gould-Lehe 

Iliked the way she set up her blog so you click on the modules as a link.  My goal is to try to do that versus having everything post as it does on my site.