"you’ll see them slowly converge, as Jupiter drops lower but Venus climbs higher. The two will meet on the evening of December 1, when, as chance has it, the Moon is back to sit right next to those two brilliant evening stars. Mark it on your calendar — Monday, December 1 — the best Moon-planet conjunction in a decade. You don’t want to miss it."
The second picture was taken when it positioned itself ready for his meal. The scale was added for reference - also the flash overwhelmed the color on this picture so I reduced the brightness a bit so you can see it a bit better. Enjoy!
Well - Physical Well Being: I am back in the gym - that is good, my lab work and Dr's checkup went as well.
P/L Prep moved along and we are ready to start - thanks to the support of Dr. Garza!
BTSA - completed the curriculum mapping for Earth Science - turned out to be of use to other teacher's as well.
CSUSM Classes - completed six units: two graduate classes EDST 635 & 636 - excellent progress.
Personal: Lots of odds and ends - not enough time to do all I wanted to do - but one thing of note is that I have a new toy...er, tool:
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Photo credit (c) FreeFoto.com
“The students who succeed in schools do so largely because their intelligence happens to match the dominant paradigm in use in a particular classroom – or somehow they have found ways to adapt to it.”
“The question now facing schools is this: Can the system of schooling designed to process groups of students in standardized ways in a monolithic instructional mode be adapted to handle differences in the way individual brains are wired for learning?”
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in improving education.
Some highlights…. Come on – laugh with me! Remember it was written in 1995!
“…On year ago, disk storage of 1000 megabytes, or 1gig. Capacity cost around $1000. Today you can find the same capacity drives for $450”
“[on clinical notes] …a screen in every exam room… allows him[or her] to enter data as he [she] examines patients.”
“The physician also can dial CompuServe or the Internet and send professional messages to colleagues across the country or across the world.”
“When he leaves home, he may consult an alpha-numeric pager that is programmed to receive the latest stock market information…is [also] used by the office staff to send messages to the physician. In an emergency, via a cellular phone, the doctor can review a case with a colleague and have all his patient information available on a laptop computer.”
This had to bring a smile to your lips… oh to be so right and WRONG! In any case, I am sure you just picked up your latest iPhone, looked at it – and laughed!
Me too!
This fourth of July my wife and I took the plunge and headed to Alaska on the ms Amsterdam cruise ship from Holland America. What a treat! We left Seatle to Juneau on July 4th and came back on July 11th...All I can say it is way way too short!
The new soil scientist is on his way to KU to start teaching in Fall. We will miss him and the whole family! :( On the other hand, it will give us an excuse to travel, no? :)
I think it is a question of balance...
Model WWI Plane by Estefani & Nereida
Picture Courtesy of LA Fitness
Watch a video:
Since then they have added and improved each time:
Oh Sites – how a wonderful tool. Having come from the corporate world where groupware infrastructure systems such as Microsoft SharePoint or Oracle’s Portal Server are main-stay it is great to see a tool with robust features such as “Sites” come into the mainstream of Google Apps. This is a quantum jump in value-added to the whole Google Apps suite.
What is it? It gives the users the ability to create a web-site – but not just any web-site, but an integrated site right “out-of-the-box” no fancy knowledge is needed – you just bring it up and design your pages, integrate a file repository, different types of pages – all at your finger tips – it is incredibly easy to use. But what good is that? Can’t “Google Pages” do that? Yes, but SITES makes this is SHAREABLE – and with the power of group work, it becomes an unmatched tool for STUDENTS and TEACHERS in my case.
Kudos, Google!
Here is one examples you can see - click on the figure below to navigate to this example:
Although this is not public, this is my design of the Physics Unit "Site" complete with all the standards, handouts, warm-ups, lectures, materials, vacabulary, etc... All I have to say is - it is pretty impressive. From start to end the design took less than one hour while I learned the features of the tool... honestly, its that easy!
- Create a new document (YOU NEED TO DO THIS ONLY ONCE!) You will add your reflections to this one document every week
- Change the title of the document to: <YOUR NAME> - BLOG
- The document will have inside the following entries - with the LATEST ALWAYS ON TOP.
TITLE (Your own Design)<Date> <First Paragraph.....>
<Second Paragraph...>
<Optional: Third Paragraph>
<Date>
<First Paragraph.....>
<Second Paragraph...>
<Optional: Third Paragraph>
ETC...Content:FIRST PARAGRAPH: What did I learn this past week? Reflect on the warmups, the lecture, the reading, the labs, the assginments.SECOND PARAGRAPH: This is the important reflective paragraph: What does it mean to me? or, What does it potentially mean to me? What is the impact on my life?THIRD PARAGRAPH: This is for extra credit - one paragraph on any science topic of interest to you - in any field of science - something you have read, something that you find interesting, an article you have read, anything on the news that week - etc. This last paragraph is optional.QualityAlways spell check your work - do your best writing - show off! :)SharingFollow the normal protocol - SHARE with the teacher as "Collaborator" and Invite Collaborator. Please do not e-mail your document.
EXAMPLE OF POSTED BLOGS:
Oscar's Journal
2/14/08
Happy Valentine's day! This week we started the new unit - Physics. The emphasis was speed. How fast do runners, whales, and dominoes fall. I think Mr. Hirmas was trying to cover the standard. We also learned what is the standard for physics. Oh, the big idea... yeah: motion.......
What does it mean to me? well - I don't know except that as a soccer player... there is lots of motion. I found a cool site that talks about soccer and physics at: http://soccerballworld.com/Physics.htm
2/8/08
Well... the last two weeks we covered: the cell cycle, cell division (two types: Mitosis & Meiosis). We learned about the Mitosis phases - remembered by the phrase: "you Promised Me Ana's Telephone" the acronym Pro Me Ana Tel then becomes Prophase, Metaphase, Anaphase, Telophase - each leading to cytokenisis the actual dividing of the cell. We learned about sex - that Meiosis is sex division resulting in 4 daughter cells (Mitosis only two) but meiosis has 1/2 the chromosomes....something like that. We also covered mutations types and the disease cancer - nasty stuff.
What does it mean to me? Well honestly I am not sure. I am young so cancer and stuff probably won't affect me. But my grandpa had cancer and died - I wish I knew even more about how sick he was. This bio stuff is interesting and I feel better prepared to even talk to my doctor. Will I be a scientist based on this? I am not sure - I rather go into business - but it is good to know medicine.
