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.

Flower Graph

Dog Island

This dot com site was an amusing site proposing the freeing of your dog to an island of "only dogs", where your dog may be free from the slavery or rather "leash" of human bondage. The site offered no credible or verifible testimonials,authors of articles were unknown and much of the verbage on the site bordered on the inane. The site also predominantly displayed a top banner of advertisers showcasing products for dogs, dog foods, pet insurance etc.. With some triangulization I was able to ascertain that the origninal site was an attempt to oppose (or raise awareness of) the asian practice of raising dogs for meat as many of the references in the original website referred to the Dawn Fine Breed Meat Dog Center, a Chinese company that raises dogs for meat. These references have since been changed. Here is a link to the original page DOGISLAND.
The real Dog Island, an actual island off the gulf coast of Florida is currently predominantly owned by a private organization known as Nature Conservancy, which works to conserve the natural environment of native plants and animals by preventing commercial or industrial development in conserved areas. The Nature Conservancy, is however, not currently allowing 2500+ formerly domesticated dogs to live out their dream.