Friday, September 26, 2008

What I learned from others

I really liked how well organized others were laid out. They looked like notes and I liked that format better.

The Tech Savvy Teacher

Activity: Temperature of water

Standard: 3, Objective 2a
Observe and measure characteristics of water as a solid and liquid.

In the olden days, you pulled out your twenty pound microscope, gathered some slides and swabbed some specimens on them, then watched as your students all tried to gather around to take a peek through the lens. Today there are such things as digital microscopes which can be projected on a computer screen for all to see, and can even capture video. Other savvy options include computer programs to record the eclipses of the moon. With all of the many technological options for school teachers today to put a little "oomph" in lesson plans, we decided to take a test drive on the wide open road of advancements for the classroom and put one of these new inventions to the test.

To teach the characteristics of water we began by putting ice water in a pot and watching as the temperature increased, heating it to the evaporation point, and then collecting the evaporating water with a glass plate, allowing it to condense to form water. During this process we recorded our data with the digital thermometer and tracked the increase in temperature, noting the change in the state of the water from solid to liquid, making observations along the way, hypothesizing about the changes that might take place.


To the left is a fuzzy picture of ice water. It is important to get the water as a solid to start this process. Ask the students to hypohesize what will happen when the water is heated up. What will happen to the temperature?


Step two. Connect digital thermometer to computer and measure water temperature.

Step Three. Apply heat to the ice water making sure to chart the temperature increase of the water. Rationalize with the students if, and why their hypothesis in step one was or was not correct. Discuss the changing state of water and teach how the molecules move faster with heat and thus flow more freely.




Step four. Watch as the digital thermometer charts the temperature of the water. It should start to boil around 100 degrees. If the altitude is high this could be slightly lower as in our example it was about 95 degrees.





Be careful to take the necessary safety precautions.





After you have demonstrated how water turns into steam, then you can show the condensation process by:



Putting a lid over the pot and watching as the water formed begins to drip everywhere. Finally you can analize your data collected on the computer. Wasn't that fun?

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Bookmarks

Today we worked alot on bookmarks. It took forever and was kinda annoying but I could definately see the advantages to having all these great links in the same spot that I can access from any computer. It was under my Delicious account. I labled it on here as Bookmarks.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

More Appropriate


I was thinking that I should find a picture of Suzanne and I when not in swim suits, for obvious reasons, and I got one! This was taken when we did a weekend trip up to Logan to visit her sister's family.
And I wanted to post a video so you could see how crazy she is if you want.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Some reminder notes

Today in class we learned what RSS is: Really Simple Syndication. It basically summarizes all your favorite web-pages and puts them all together. www.sharpreader and www.webreader are a couple free ones. This means the information comes to you rather than looking for it. I'm going to do it through my G-mail account. Whatev.

Here's a picture

A couple of people have asked me about Suzanne so I wanted to put a picture on here and add a short explaination about how we started dating: she was in my very first ward in Utah so I met her in July of 2005 and we were good friends. We never really hung out but would catch up in passing. Then this last summer, in July my brother left for California to spend the Summer doing EFY and vacationing and I was suddenly friendless. When heading to the library one day I saw Suz and her room-mate Liz laying on a blanket on their grass reading a book so I invited myself over. We started hanging out all the time (mostly just doing reading parties, swimming and playing ultimate frisbee) and I began to notice how much we have in common. We did a road trip to California and I fell in love. This is a picture of us on the beach of San Clemente.

Trying to figure it out

I have never done a Blog or anything like it; however, I can definately see how beneficial it would be (particularly for parent involvement) in a teacher's life so I'm excited to give it a try.