Topic for Presentation

Aerodynamics

Information Sources:
www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/bga.html
www.PBNation.com
www.youtube.com

Scratch Project Content Standards and Changes

Original post link

Standard 2: Content of Science
Science subject matter focuses on the scientific facts, concepts, principles, theories and models that are important for all students to know, understand and apply. Through the integration of the fields of science and the development of unifying themes, students will understand the interrelationships among biology, chemistry, physics and the earth sciences. Scientifically literate students will make connections in the formal education setting and will apply their knowledge and skills to daily life experiences. The objectives describe the specific subject matter/concepts that students are to master at each grade level.

My Version of Food Web

I changed the grasshopper to a more reflective example of a grasshopper, I also altered the sizes of all of the insects or animals in the project. I made small changes to the scripting and also altered the background to make the project more visually stimulating and uniform.

Scratch

Science project link

This is an interesting project which conceptualizes the food chain for elementary students. It offers a simple view of the food chain with easy to understand concepts.

Convergence Culture

Convergence culture can be described as the collision of commercial media production and amateur media production. Today, mass media has to compete with and / or integrate the production of amateur produced projects which arrive via web 2.0, cell phones or other capture devices. The implications on todays education process of this convergence culture is becoming greater everyday. Today's students and educators are not only consumers of the mass media but also producers of their own forms of expression and technologies and often the blend the commercial with their own amateur (or rather non-commercial, as often many self produced productions do border on the professional) productions. Exposure to, and use of the internet and other tech devices is inevitable for todays students. Preparation of the student to understand the implications of their use of technologies is critical to allow for their responsible use of such. Schools necessarily need to limit access students have to devices, internet of other media until they demonstrate they have the intellecual capacities and responsibilty to use this participatory culture in a meaningful way. Fortunately for schools, tools such as parental locks, and content managers exist which can aid in limiting what students can participate in or view. Although, I am no fan of censorship, of course an instructor can not predict what a student's parents may want them exposed to and thus a degree of limitation is needed.

Dog Island.