Video Reviews

Here are the links to the other students videos that I commented on.

Liz

http://lizthesciencewiz.blogspot.com/2011/12/instructional-video.html?showComment=1323812013079#c6593747459143692752

Dan
http://dan-the-tech-teacher.blogspot.com/2011/11/multimedia-project-teaching-relative.html?showComment=1323811581701#c3072263787293809350

Maycee
http://yaytechnology.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-first-movie.html?showComment=1323810953951#c7250218934151880866

Harper's World of Science!!!

Hey everyone, Sorry it was late.

Here it is!

Internet Safety Project

So my project came from the experience I had this summer going to education week. My wife and I decided that it would be wise to go to a class entitled "Keeping the internet a tool for good." It was incredibly insightful and gave us great resources, but as they have ceased making visual or even written record of what is taught I cannot get you the resource info.

One of the things that shocked me was that as of the time that this teacher's resources were gathered, the average age of first exposure to pornography was seven, and average age of first intentional search was ten. This was awful! I was in utter disgust. How could have Lucifer gotten such a grasp on our society?

What were the most important things I learned from the class?

The class taught us that no filter, no matter how powerful, can totally block intentional seeking of pornography, but it can prevent the accidents from happening. The differences between a black-list filter and a white list filter were discussed. Black-list filters prevent known harmful websites from being accessed. While the white list filter has a password protected list of known websites that are good, and only these websites can be accessed. Websites can be added so long as the password is used. I think that in my home that we will use the white list type filters and have half of the password be known to me and the other half known to my wife.

Where can I go for information and resources that can be used to teach internet safety?

The I-Safe program is really good. I began the training for it, but didn't have the time to finish. I will want at some point to do so, just because it is a great resource, but I don't have the time at this juncture.

After doing this I talked to my parents Elders Quorum about internet safety when I was down there for a visit. I was shocked to see the attitude of defeat and complacency by these parents with regard to their children's own safety and morality. It felt like they had given up. Each comment had a tone of "there is just nothing we can do." EVEN THE TEACHER HAD THAT TONE!!!!! This I found infuriating and unproductive. At that point I nearly took over the lesson, and with passion I went and taught them that there ARE things that you can do to protect your children, and that it is important that they know what they are and implement them.

They had some background knowledge, but most of it was very out of date. The idea of filters for mobile devices they thought was impossible. I taught them about the different kind of filters and strategies that were taught in the class. I hope that it found place with some of them, but the pessimists still were the most vocal group. Did it make an impact? I hope so, for that ward's youth are in dire trouble. But I fear though that it fell upon deaf ears and that I was unproductive in my lesson. Let us hope that was not the case.

My Storyboard

Hey everyone I am making a video for my Class to teach about light. here is the storyboard for it.

Personal Technology Project #3 Logger Pro Sensors

For my third tech. project I worked with logger pro and it is a blast!

So, I did work with three sensors, the light sensor, the dual force sensor, and the motion detector, but the motion detector that I checked out didn't work, and I don't have the graph of when I played with it in the tech lab. But I do have the data from the other two probes, as well as a way to really apply the analysis that is available.

The first lab is to sense the effect of light pollution in observing the night sky. First I take measurements in a small computer lab that has some stand by lights on.

As you can see here, about two of these standby lights were easily visible by the sensor. However, the next data run I increased the light pollution by activating all the computer screens while still keeping the room light off. While I could still see the led's you can see from the graph below...

That the sensor couldn't tell the difference, it all basically appeared to be the same level of light. This also can happen with our eyes, making it impossible for us to see the stars.

The next lab was to observe the sinusoidal motion of pendulums. By setting up the motion detector in the plane of motion for the pendulum, you can track its movement and see that it is very much sinusoidal. However, my motion detector did not work for me today.

Lastly, there is a lab that could be really advanced to explain the connection behind force and acceleration. First you would have to have already covered Hooke's Law for springs, Gravity, and the 2nd law of motion. Then by attaching a spring to the dual force sensor and then attaching that spring to a hanging weight, and by setting up the motion detector directly beneath the setup, you now have a complete system to record and analyze force, position, velocity, and acceleration. By setting the mass and spring in motion and recording simultaneously, you can then see the relationship wit

h utmost clarity between position and force in Hooke's law, and the relationship between force and acceleration in Newton's second law of motion.

Here is the graph that I could make with only the force sensor working:

I Learned So much about these probes. There is no way I am not going to have these in my classroom. I learned that they are an incredably robust and effective means to record data for learning science. As I am going to be doing basic mechanics in my physics classes, the force plate, the force probe, the motion detector, and the photogate would probably be the best ones for me to have. But I would love to have them all!

Personal Technology Projects: Stellarium and Celestia

I Love teaching physics, but astronomy is really my passion. However there are a lot of misconceptions that students have about our universe, and correcting them can be quite a challenge. These tools are wonderful for that.

What did you learn about Stellarium? Stellarium is an earth view based astronomy tool. Its basically a free version of Starry Night Deluxe. The navigation system has a steep learning curve so you would need to teach students how to navigate it. It is very flexible as it provides information about the entire night sky across the entire world, and has the ability to give accurate representations in time forwards or backwards.

What instructional problems could you use this technology for? This could be helpful in determining the cause for the phases of the moon. Many children think that crescent moons and new moons are caused by the shadow of the earth. Using the program you could see views like this:

This shows the moon in the night sky, a

common occurance that the kids should have experienced by now.

This shows a zoomed in view of the full moon

We have gone forward in time and the moon is now in a crescent phase. (hmm... its getting hard to see it because of all the daylight. I wonder why? :) )

Oh well we can just turn of the atmosphere! That gets rid of that pesky daylight problem.

But what is this? a new moon right next to the Sun! Hmm.... So that means it cant be the earth's shadow. So who's shadow is it?

What are 2-3 activities you could use this technology for in your own teaching? This activity meets the 6th grade standard that:

Students will understand that the appearance of the moon changes in a predictable cycle as it orbits Earth and as Earth rotates on its axis.

Another activity could be tracking the motion of the international space station, and predicting when it will fly in our field of view. We could then have a

late night activity to see if we can catch a glimpse of it. This hits the 2nd objective in the 4th standard of 8th grade core curriculum: Examine the forc

e exerted on objects by gravity.

Now for Celestia:

What did you learn about Celestia?

Celestia is an incredibly cool 3-D space exploration program. It is filled to the brim with the latest information on the exact cuardinates of stars, planets and galaxies. not really designed for surface view, it is more for getting a perspective on the form and scale of the universe.
What instructional problems could you use this technology for?

Helping kids really understand the size and scope of the solar system.

Another is to help them see why Pluto really isn't a planet.

like see here:

Here is the ever famous Hale - Bopp Comet up close and personal. Lets zoom out and take a look at its orbit around the sun.

Hale-Bopp's orbit is shown in red. The other orbits are other comets in our solar system. You can see how they are incredibly elliptical orbits with no real correlation with eachother.

When we compare that to the orbits of the planets we see that planet orbits are very different. The planets are all basically in the same plane and have roughly circular orbits.

Now lets compare this to Pluto and the other dwarf planets. Their orbits are a little less circular than planets, but not as eliptical as comets. They don't have tails like comets do, but they don't orbit on the same plane that planets do. thus we needed a separate category for these comet-like planets, so the dwarf planet category was born.

What are 2-3 activities you could use this technology for in your own teaching?

Again the above activity would be wonderful for teaching the third standard for 6th grade science: Students will understand the relationship and attributes of objects in the solar system.

Another Standard Celestia would be great in helping kids understand is 6th grade science #4: Students will understand the scale of size, distance between objects, movement, and apparent motion (due to Earth's rotation) of objects in the universe and how cultures have understood, related to and used these objects in the night sky.

Which can easily be done with just playing around with the program while taking note of the data on the side.

All in all I am incredibly excited for these programs.

Personal Technology Project Ideas

There are three technologies that I want to learn how to use, probes/sensors with Logger Pro, stelarium, and celestia.