After reading this article, I definitely found it very opinionated yet more like a more forward giving of common sense. It kind of says, "Hello...America...are you there...wake up!"  A quick personal notes would be that I typically do not involve myself in the news.  I like to live in my safe bubble and line drive the curve balls when they come.  However, I have to stay up to date with some things or I will be completely out of the loop. The news makes people worry, sad, stressed, and of course informed. (This would be my main reason for my bubble!) I think that things are definitely changing as we speak with the new Next Generationscience standards coming into place for the next school year.  I have looked at them and they seem very STEM focused.  The content is not very extensive for the grade level I teach.  There are specific sections for technology and engineering though.  I feel the US is getting on track somewhat with STEM education in schools, but they seem to think that just by making standards more rigorous for students, it will make them chose a STEM career.  Making the standards more rigorous is fine, but when the student is so discouraged because they do not understand the content or concept of any of it...how are they going to get through school to have a STEM career??? Kindergarteners do not learn how to color, cut, tie shoes, write their name, eat over their lunch tray, etc. anymore...and you cannot guarantee they will learn it at home anymore either.  All in all, I feel the US is not fully focused on the education of our future.  The government seems much more concerned about other things.  Another side note...how can lower elementary grades implement STEM ideas into teaching when resources are unavailable due to budget cuts?

My students made shadow sticks to investigate how a shadow changes throughout the day.  They know that it appears the sun is moving across the sky.  They did not know that the sun doesn't move.  (Now they do!) They created a shadow stick to see how a shadow changes size throughout the day based on the position of the sun in the sky.  Morning, longer shadow.  Noon, shorter shadow.  Afternoon, longer shadow.  All of this was fun for them and a good idea, but with every good idea comes challenges.  For the next 2 days, it was cloudy.  We could not see our shadow until after we took our unit assessment.  They were able to take their shadow stick home to investigate over Fall Break.

Week 3 Weather

While blogging, why not use a blog! A blog would be a great way for a community of people or students to become more scientifically literate on natural disasters happening now or ones that have already happened. For the age group that has to do current events, a blog post would be a great way to do this.  Everyone could view it as well as make comments.  I think that for my classroom of 2nd graders, hand building models of each disaster (ones that are buildable) would be more than thrilling for them.  Since the students are so tech savvy now, computer versions would also be cool to them.  They would get a better understanding of each natural disaster.  2nd grade is a young age to teach these devestating effects a natural disasster has on people and the environment.  (So is 9/11/01)  They just cannot seem to grasp the horror in the tragic loss of people and everything that gets (or got) destroyed.  (If anyone has any tips on that, I would love to know!) My husband is part of the GSAR team (Georgia Search and Rescue) for the area and surrrounding area that we live in.  If a major natural disaster hit nearby or depending how big it was, he would be immediately deployed to that area to help. I think allowing the GSAR team to come in and talk about the circumstances in which they are deployed, what they do to help, and other relief teams so as the red cross that are for disaster relief.  As grade levels, students could collect items that would help with disaster relief to send to the town in need.  Not only the displaced people will need supplies, but the people who are helping will need supplies. 

Ask a Scientist

I found this site interesting.  I was unable to get a immediate response from the website.  I have still not recieved an email about my question.  I do think this website is great for my students.  They always have a million questions and some of which I cannot always answer! I did get some answers from my peers in the discussion post.

Web 2.0 pres tools

The presentation tools I researched were Prezi and SlideSix.  I found both presentation tools easy to use.  Prezi was interesting becasue it was good for being very creative.  SlideSix is easy to use beacuse you could upload almost anything to it.  In SlideSix, you can add your voice into a slide as well.  I am interested in trying both as well as showing them to my colleagues.  i would recommend both of these presentation tools to try out.

Week 6 Post

Physical Science
Matter- Comparing Matter

http://www.internet4classrooms.com/grade_level_help/physical_science_second_2nd_grade_science.htm

The following website came from internet 4 classrooms.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/materials/changing_states/play.shtml

"Internet 4 classrooms is a free web portal designed to assist anyone who wants to find high-quality, free Internet resources to use in classroom instruction, developing project ideas, reinforcing specific subject matter areas both in the class and at home and even for online technology tutorials." (internet4classrooms.com)

http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/mnstep/activities/26393.html

This is a good lesson on matter.  the activity on Internet 4 Classrooms could be incorporated into the lesson.

As I shared on one of my discussion posts, I think the Oobleck activity is excellent.  After the students have done the experiement, they could then use a computer to answer questions that have been premade by the teacher as well as write a summary of the experiment.  Almost everything you can think of in todays time is operated by some kind of technology.  The students have to know how to operate computers in order to work these days. 

Cant you take the heat?

I can, it is already in the 80s in south Georgia!

For the heat transfer experiment, I chose tin foil, plastic wrap, a cotton t-shirt, and a ziploc bag. I hypothesized that the tin foil would hold in the most heat.  After heatingt my water on the stove and leaving it for 30 minutes, the temperature was still too hot to measure a difference.  I let it sit for another 20 minutes.  The mug with the tin foil over it did stay the hottest.  If I were to use a different material, I would have used styrofoam.  I had a piece, but it would not fit over the mug all of the way.