Week 4 (post 2)

On Thursday the web presentation was a great exploration upon Astronomy, How stars are born. I took some notes from the PowerPoint presentation I was interacting with and there were some facts that I in reality had no clue about. For instance, I did not know that there is metal inside the composition of a star, guess this would make sense since they are illuminated. I learned that stars are categorized according to Temperature, Composition, Brightness, and occasionally distance. When you think about the birth and death of a star it is truly an amazing process, we mentally could never put our minds around considering it far more complex and violent then anyone had ever considered, as the author put it. I agree completely to this theory. I also watched the videos and thought it was cool to see the stars as they were exploding in the sky, we always hear about it but never actually experience it with the eye.

Week 4 (posting 1)
We did a lab this week on Acid Fruit Test. Here are my observations with in the lab! Vinegar will react with baking soda resulting with the emission of carbon dioxide pushing more air into the surenge and the pressure of the reaction causing the surenge to rise also seen with lime juice. Yet, this same procedure done with water and orange juice there is no reaction. In the end, I draw the conclusion that the more concentrated the acid is the more gas it will give off. When doing the same procedure with a real piece of fruit there was not as much of a chemical reaction either due to the surface area and the limitations of the contianer it was placed inside! Very Fun activty Dr. E I would love a copy of this lab for myself! Kelli

Week 3 (post 2)

Week 3 Thursday we went into the computer lab to log on to the website to calculate the food content and play the games of nutritional values of the foods we pick. I thought this was informational, and a great idea to use in my classroom I thought the site could easily be applied to any aged child and rather easy to navigate from the site different interactive games, powerpoints, readings, and other sites. I also think this activity was great for cooperative leanring within our science class because I was able to hear the opinions of the other people in my eled 320 class which was nice as many ed classes tend to be very individualistic Thanks for sharing Dr. E !! I will definetly use this program when I teach.

Week 3

This week on Tuesday we were given the Monoply Game to cut, glue,laminated, saved and used in our classrooms as an introductory game to Safety and Rules. I really thought this was a cool idea espically for younger kids anytime you can make it a game they will become more interested in the topic. Once, they become interested they will retain the information more effectively. I could not imagine going over and reading aloud the different rules of the lab. I know it would bore me to use a monotone and explain how they will hurt themselves if they use carelessness. It is super cool idea to get the whole class interacting, and interested the foundations of Science.
I think this could also be applied to middle school classrooms in the same sense; middle school boys are going to make fun and disreguard the Rules thinking they are silly, but in reality they need to take the rules serious and use caution in the Science lab. Therefore, the game serves as a useful method to interest adolesent teens in a non-lecture format rather then loosing them in some notes. Also Dr. E thanks for the fun formats for science Awards in both English and Spanish way to adapt to the multicultural planning.

Week 2 (2nd posting)

Thursday Week 2 We went over the notes from Ready, Set, Science we discussed about how students learn science. According to the reading Science is based up on two concepts one the scientific content and two the scientific processing. I agree with the author of Ready Set Science when they said students learn science based upon the framework science being a body of knowledge and an evidence-based, model-building enterprise that continually extends, refines, and revises knowledge. This framework moves beyond to explore more contexual factors as we see with the labs of the classroom and paper based tests commonly seen in the middle school classroom. It is the job of the teacher to foster and aquire the means of bridging these learning concpets with in the Science content area.

Week 2 (2nd posting)

Week 2

Week 2 This week we were working with temperature and the exchange of heat and cold as it is transferred through water. We did a lab on Tuesday and we worked with the high-tech Lab Quests. I had some problems with mine but, I really like it once I got the hang of graphing and charting all the different data points. As we put the temperature thermometer into the hot water our lab quest read consistently at 60-80 degrees and to my surprise once we place that same thermometer into the cold water it leveled off into a strait line reading that the temperature was consistently staying at 80 degrees. This was really shocking because I thought the spike in Temp difference would be detected on the Lab Quest! Over all very great lab I think students would enjoy. Kelli Leander