Students spent time working together on their Virtual Thinking Projects today. Many students chose to do slow motion videos through claymation. The Virtual Thinking Projects asked students to design an innovation for a problem within Global Climate Change. The students have been working with virtual partners from California, Kentucky, and South Dakota on their ideas since January. We are excited to share our final videos on Friday!
On the third day of planetarium building we put on the legs and raised the roof. We now need to hook up the electronics and starting learning. Always love this way to engage students at the end of the year. There are a few additional pictures from our slow-motion videos at the end of the slideshow. We've just completed day 2 of planetarium building. We have the dome portion built and will be working on the "legs" of the dome today during class. It's quite a process and requires a lot of hands on deck. At least this year I have a large enough class to get it built quickly. If you'd like a little musical entertainment, check out the last video. For some reason the planetarium inspired a campfire song. Also, check out this first video of a physics student working on the analysis of his rocket launch. For his senior physics project, he and his partner launched rockets, collected data, and are analyzing the results using Logger Pro. Day 1 of putting up the cardboard planetarium requires putting together a lot of puzzle pieces and trying to remember which pieces went with each. Every year I try to figure out an easier way to get it put together, but it always seems to be challenging. The following videos will give you an idea of the first steps of putting it together. Although, I'll warn you there's a lot of off task behavior so it could get entertaining at times. I definitely would recommend that you watch the last two minutes of the third video as it shows the challenges they are still having with Glass. To learn more about how we built it in 2011, check out http://astronomypchs.blogspot.com/. Google Glass took a trip to Lewistown for the annual Envirothon state competition. We used it to record their presentation. Even though they struggled with detail in their presentation (their analysis), they still managed to hold a solid score for placement in the middle of the 27 teams. They ended up taking 11th in the oral problem. Other results included: 12th on the wildlife test, 7th in soils, 10th in range, 4th in forestry, and 3rd in aquatics. Overall we placed 6th in the written tests (five total), 11th on the oral problem, and 9th place for the whole competition. This was such an amazing accomplishment for our team. They were proud of themselves, especially as they compared their results to some of the most knowledgeable teams. They held their own and I'm super proud of them!
WARNING: IF YOU DON'T LIKE PICTURES OR VIDEO OF DEAD THINGS BEING DISSECTED, DON'T CONTINUE READING! Today, Google Glass took a trip to Advanced Biology. They were dissecting pigs and one of my physics students thought it might be nice to document the dissection. I love that they think it is important to share what they are doing in other classes via Glass and our blog. Below is a video and a few pictures showing the skinning of the pig and other processes of dissection. It seems in my absence from school that my charging cord for Glass has gone missing. Which unfortunately means Glass is on a little vacation. I must have power for my last videos and pictures to upload onto Google+, so until my new charger arrives to hopefully just be a duplicate our blog posts will be on a small vacation.
Today, we figured out how to translate using the Glass App Word Lens. We had a student in our class write a sentence in Spanish on the computer screen and used the app to translate it. We tried really hard to get a picture of what it looked like after translation, but we weren't successful. It was awesome! The word literally changes to the language of choice right before your eyes.
Before we knew what we were doing, we tried to pointing it at people's faces. We thought it would create subtitles of what they were saying. Unfortunately that was not the case, but as a result we got some interesting pictures of our attempt. Today in physics we compared experimental and expected values of acceleration. We showed that the acceleration of a glider down a slope is dependent on the angle of the slope. The students hooked up our Pasco photogate probes to the computer and collected 15 different trials at 3 different angles. As they progressed through the lab, the students formed a nice routine, one collecting data, one moving the cart, and another making sure the photogates were recording properly. You can see a glimpse of the lab be Seniors in physics are required to complete a physics research project. The project allows student choice in topic, but within the physics field. Students are required to come up with a list of testable questions, research them, and design new questions. After they have determined their focus questions, they complete a literature review and methodology. The second semester of the year is spent on data collection, analysis, and conclusions. The final step will be sharing their results virtually. We spent a class period trying to collect data on a "small scale" example of what a rocket might do. Our first attempt (on a previous day) happened within a minute of lighting it. However, on this particular day our experimentation just didn't ignite. That's science folks, but we'll get it figured out. More to come on this project. On a side note: We are on spring break until Wednesday, April 23rd so this blog will continue again on Wednesday. |