'What's our Sputnick?' by Thomas Friedman

I loved this editorial!  That is exactly what I think and Mr. Friedman said it so well.  This was probably the best editorial (op-ed) I have read in awhile.  Al Queda is going to bankrupt us and they will really win. I started Mr. Friedman's book "The World is Flat" several years ago but never finished it. This makes me realize that I need to go back and finish this book.

Below is an excerpt from a letter written by former senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman to the editor of the NYT (New York Times) from another editorial written in the NYT by Thomas Friedman that was titled "Science, Education, and our Security":


     ' ''Americans are living off the economic and security benefits of the last three generations' investment in science and education, but we are now consuming our capital.
''Our systems of basic scientific research and education are in crisis, while other countries are redoubling their efforts.
''In the next quarter century, we will likely see ourselves surpassed, and in relative decline, unless we make a conscious national commitment to maintain our edge.''
Regrettably, our calls for recapitalization of our education base, by doubling the national investment in science and technology, have been as badly neglected as our warnings of the terrorist threat and calls for the creation of a national homeland security agency were' (NYT, 2005).

We continue to take money away from education and research and destroy the environment.

I went to Mr. Friedman's website and read another editorial that was even better "Is it Weird Enough Yet?" Please see reference below for website link.  I want to show this editorial to my students to see what they think about global warming. Below is another excerpt from the NYT (2011).

"Remember the first rule of global warming. The way it unfolds is really “global weirding.” The weather gets weird: the hots get hotter; the wets wetter; and the dries get drier. This is not a hoax. This is high school physics, as Katharine Hayhoe, a climatologist in Texas, explained on Joe Romm’s invaluable Climateprogress.org blog: “As our atmosphere becomes warmer, it can hold more water vapor. Atmospheric circulation patterns shift, bringing more rain to some places and less to others. For example, when a storm comes, in many cases there is more water available in the atmosphere and rainfall is heavier. When a drought comes, often temperatures are already higher than they would have been 50 years ago, and so the effects of the drought are magnified by higher evaporation rates.”  

Of course I really love what he has to say about Gov. Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann...... :)   Please go to the website and read this!

mj

References:

Friedman, T. L. (2010, January 17). What’s our Sputnik? [Op-Ed]. The New York Times [Late Edition (East Coast)], p. WK.8. 
Retrieved from the Walden University Library using the ProQuest Central database. 


Friedman, T. (2011). Is it weird enough yet. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/opinion/friedman-is-it-weird-enough-yet.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Hart, G. & Rudman, W. (2005). Letters to the editor. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9406E6D81630F937A35756C0A9639C8B63

Earth Science Activity

I teach life science and this was fun doing something with earth science for a change. For my project I found an activity on middleschoolscience.com's website that helped the students to grasp just how big our solar system is and how far some of the planets are from one another. In this activity one sheet of  toilet paper(tp) represented about 18 million miles in space. The students created a large sun and did cut-outs of the eight planets the day before. The next day during first period they went outside to create their solar systems. I had the students in groups of five or six. This was a complete disaster! It was hot & humid (we live in FL) and there was a slight wind. The tp was going everywhere and everyone was miserable. We went back to my classroom and we did this as a group project- much better! A group of students went out the back door to be Uranus- you need several students to hold the layer of tp up, one to count the tp, and another to hold the roll. Another group of student went out the front door and into the courtyard to be Neptune.   After my second class I got the hang of it and the next three periods were good.  If I were to do this again, I would borrow the gym & I would probably use string or twine. Yes, I had a few students who turned themselves into mummies! Probably not a great activity for the end of the year but they did grasp the concept!

Natural Disasters

Most of my students have lived through a natural disaster. Hurricane Charley hit our area in SW FL almost seven years ago.  Most of the children that I teach were in grade school but all can tell you how the hurricane affected them and their families.  My children were 8 & 10 at the time and can tell you exactly how Hurricane Charley, which was a direct hit, influenced our lives as well as Hurricane Wilma, which happened the following year.

After playing this SIMS-like website (that Dr. Booth recommended), I thought this would be a great way to get students engaged in natural disasters.  I played the tsunami game but there are others like flooding, hurricane, tornadoes, etc. This website has you buy different protectors like sand dunes, mangroves, sensory-protective equipment, concrete buildings to protect your community. The site is:
http://www.stopdisastersgame.org/en/home.html

After playing several of these games, this would be a great teaching segue into how you could help your community after a disaster. 

Gopher Tortoise

This is my Prezi presentation on the threatened specie the Gopher tortoise:

http://prezi.com/6gnigkk1ekh7/threatened-species-project-gopher-tortoises/

CFAJ-1

My question was: Are scientists going to put CFAJ-1 into a new domain as they did for Archaea? I did not get an answer from the website but I did look it up. It does not look like there will be a new domain. Actually some scientists are questioning the results of the testing. There are some questions as to if this actually is a new species and if this bacteria does take arsenic up as part of its DNA structure. It sounds like the closest relative is in the family Halomonadaceae- the ‘salt-loving” bacteria. So the answer is- no genus or specie name yet!

Evaluating Web 2.0 Presentation Tools

     I have well over a hundred PowerPoint presentations that I have done for just about every section of every chapter in our current textbook. It has taken me about five years to get this many. Every year I add video clips as new ones become available on United Streaming and I modify the slides to make them more appealing. Even though I love PowerPoint, I have been getting a little bored with it. Next year we are getting a new textbook so all of my work will be obsolete. After viewing Prezi, I think I have found the new medium for my future presentations for the new textbook. Students will love how you can zoom in and out of videos and target points that you want to get across. I think that the general outlay of your presentation is so much more interesting that students will be even more engaged. It’s so different from PowerPoint. I love how easy the “zebra” is to operate. When I was first learning how to do PowerPoint, it took me so long to get a firm grasp on how to do a PowerPoint. I feel much more confident that this will be much easier especially with a tutorial that I can watch over and over. I am not sure if I am able to use this in the classroom as I have not heard of any other teacher using Prezi but I don’t see why not. As far as I can tell, Prezi is free for teachers- big bonus.

     The other medium that I explored was Viddex. I loved how you could mix a video on one half of the screen with a script on the other half of the screen. To help get certain points across to the students or to emphasize certain points, I think that this would be extremely beneficial to any type of students. Any medium that keeps the students engaged and helps them to learn more effectively has my vote. I know that they can become really distracted when watching video clips. I think that by having multiple types of ways to display media can make the learning experience more fun for me as well as the students.

21st Century Skills

There are so many great website that are out there that would be wonderful for us to incorporate into our classroom. These are some sites that I have found interesting. I teach life science so most of them relate to what I teach.

This is an interactive human body website:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/index_interactivebody.shtml

This is an interactive skeleton:

http://www.klbict.co.uk/interactive/science/skeleton.htm

This one is how you can build a skeleton in your classroom:

http://www.ehow.com/how_6762723_build-skeletal-system.html

This is a good website environment-themed lessons.


www.classroomearth.org

I love the utah site for genetics, cells, & DNA!

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/insideacell/

p://learn.genetics.utah.edu/

This site is a little advanced for my students but some of you may like it:

http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/