Backward Design Lesson Implementation

Last week I taught a group of four "student" volunteers.  I had three ex-students and my son (an interesting combination when trying to get something done over the summer).  In my lesson I asked the students to describe the ecosystem (abiotic and biotic factors) in a part of the intercoastal waterway (the turning basin in the Port of Palm Beach).  This was a lesson based on the principle of guided inquiry, where I gave them materials but they had to plan the lab, accomplish it, and analyze the results.  Given this is during the summer, I had to forego the testing and multimedia presentation that I had planned on giving in this lesson, as it was the lesson took about 4 hours to accomplish.  Students decided to use nitrogen, dissolved oxygen, phosphates, nitrogen, potassium, temperature, salinity, secci depth, a bottom dart, and forel ule for the aboitic factors and water column description.  They used a Niskin bottle for collection.  They also accomplished a video survey at different depths for the critters and a plankton trawl for the net plankton.  They forgot the fact that many autotrophs in the ocean are too small for the plankton net and had a hard time finding the right amount of primary producers (and detritus as DOM) for the consumers present.  After I reminded them about this their data lined up pretty good.  I think I need to cover this a little better in the form of a mini-laboratory when I get to lessons on the littoral and estuary zones to help them out with this point in the future.  Overall I think the students had a good time and seemed to hit my goals: planning a experiment, accomplishing it with scientifically acceptable procedures, and communication of the results.  While doing this they were able to describe a sub littoral community in the Lake Worth Lagoon.

Project Peer Review

Hello all, I am writing for a little help with a review of my project on the West Indian Manatee (my selected endangered species for the project).  I used Prezi with Microsoft PowerPoint, MovieMaker, Paint, and Sound Recorder to complete the assignment.  It is available at http://prezi.com/n-etwly_ttxo/manatee-project/.  It is a large file and has some trouble on line (at least with my old computer), I download it to the .zip file to run it off line where it runs a little better (the sound lines up better with the presentation, and the presentation does not look "jerky").  Can you guys take some time and evaluate this for me and let me know what I need to change?  Thank you for the time and I will repay the favor.

I put my question on Ask a Scientist but have not yet heard back.  I will keep you guys posted on the results.  The question was "Why does a cell have a theoretical maximum life span upon which it must die?"

New Course Project SCIE6662S-2

For my most recent project given to me by Walden University I decided to look over the project in terms of the technology that I would need to produce a multimedia presentation.  I think in order to do this I need to be able to merge into one presentation video, music, pictures, slides, words, and voice.  With this as a starting point I looked at Microsoft Movie Maker first to see if all of these things would be easily done there.  Although it is relatively easy to add film, voice, and pictures to Movie Maker it is a little more difficult to add a finished slide show with voice. 

I decided that it would be better to have presentation software that allows me to keep all of the formats inside it and play what I want in the order of my story board.  The program that I am leaning toward is Prezi (www.prezi.com), a non-linear presentation software program that allows me to develop all of the parts, group them, and play them in my selected order with appropriate transitions.  Keeping this software as my base I would then need to use a slideshow format, pictures, video, voice, and music.  I will be using PowerPoint for the slideshow and MovieMaker for the video.  I will be using .bmp formats for my pictures so it will be able to be incorporated into all of these programs as well as .wav files for the sound and music.  I can make my voice recordings through Sound Recorder.

I selected all of my program types for ease of use and compatibility with each other.  They all seem to work relatively seamlessly with each other.  This is important since I remember trying to use a PowerPoint in my blog page a few classes back and found that it was not supported by blogspot (www.blogspot.com) so I needed to convert it using Slideshare (www.slideshare.net).  This complicated what should have been an easy thing to do and took time learning a new program just to achieve somewhat unsatisfactory results (one of my blog group members could not view the slideshow).  Microsoft programs come with a good degree of support and most people have these programs preinstalled on their computers.  This allows a person to use help, have it on multiple computers, and you do not have to rely on an internet connection until you are building the parts as a storyboard to share.  This is important here in Florida since there are often power outages in the summer time and maybe a hurricane or two.  It should keep my frustration level down a little.