Prezi

I examined only one presentation tool and had pretty much decided I was going to use before I even looked at it. Prezi is used by the IT department at my school and they are close friends of mine. When we met and they brought up this tool I was reluctant to use it. They always poke highly of it and recommended it highly. But with all the new tools I am already learning, Atlas Rubicon, PowerSchool, and more, I was hesitant to get involved with another new technology tool. After watching the presentation and playing around with Prezi myself, I quickly changed my mind.

I already use a lot of PowerPoints and am very familiar with how to use it. I thought Prezi though was much simpler and the actual learning curve will be quite small. Prezi seems fun, simple and easily adapted to almost any context. I also think that if someone else were to borrow my work, they could easily and quickly change it to make it suitable for their own use.

When I started working with Prezi I was very pleased and surprised at just how simple it is. There are not so many tools and menu options like in PowerPoint. The tools are more readily accessible without having to search through so many different menus to search for exactly what I am looking for. Though that might become problematic when I get more sued to it and try to more complicated things, time will tell.

For sure I will use Prezi and I am excited to see what I can accomplish with it.

Week 2

I chose the question about how did the type of surface affect the momentum of the marble? I used three surfaces; kitchen linoleum, living room wooden planks, and bedroom carpet. I marked a spot on a car ramp to ensure that the marble was dropped from the same spot every time.

The results I got were in line with what I had expected. I felt that the smoother the surface the further the marble would travel. So the smooth linoleum allowed the marble to travel the furthest, then the wooden floor, and then the carpet. This is what I expected because of what I know about friction and how it affects movement.

The only real challenge that occurred during the experiment was that the marble occasionally did not roll straight, or it got caught in a crack of the wooden planking, or in the kitchen it ran into an obstacle before stopping. I would just repeat the reading until there was not an error in the results.

To get modified results you could increase the height of the ramp or the mass of the marble. Both of these would increase the amount of potential energy of the object and thus increase the momentum.

The experiment could easily be replicated in the classroom. It would be more interesting for the students to allow them to use toy cars. Students would also be able to use different cars and see which car has more momentum. This would then lead into discussion, or investigation on how each car is different. For example, mass, streamline, wheel size, etc.

If I were to do this in the classroom I would like students to learn the relationship between mass, or potential energy, and momentum, or kinetic energy.

What if the Polar Ice Caps Melt

Everyone knows that sea levels will rise and coastal areas will be flooded, the exact amount is always debated.

But one phenomenon that I think is more destructive will be a disruption in the Great Ocean Conveyer Belt. This is the current that travels around the world's oceans circulating all the water. If the ice caps were to melt then this would cause the fresh water to remain above the salt water near the north pole. In order for the process of the belt to continue it needs to sink at the poles to allow the cycle to continue. The less dense fresher water would not sink and potentially stop this conveyance.

The result would be that the warm waters from the Gulf of Mexico would not bring those warm nutrient rich waters to Europe causing drastic temperature drops. This effects plankton, the basis of many food webs and deep water bacteria that regulate hydrogen-sulfide emissions. This toxic gas then would poison life on Earth and reduce further the already fragile ozone layer.

While scientists are not sure this will happen the possibility is frightening enough! Some scientists have concluded that a similar event was the cause for the Permian-Triassic Extinction event which killed off about 96% of all marine species and 70% of land species.

So I am not so worried about a little water rising up as much as I am worried about the possible long term potentially catastrophic events.

Reflection of STEM Lesson Plan

I personally did not enjoy creating a lesson plan through that format. Perhaps I am not all that knowledgeable how to use it effectively. For me there was a lot of different steps and many of them seemed repetitive. For example I felt that I must of talked about the preparatory set up two or three times. It was also a very rigid system that seemed to involve a lot of writing.

I use primarily Backwards by Design but I often have to be flexible as I switch schools every few years moving from country to country. This means having to adapt to different systems and different levels of planning. I find that those that are the most basic and most flexible are the easiest to adapt to.

The STEM system is very in depth and pulls from a variety of ideas like Bloom's Taxonomy and others. This ensures that the lesson will be of the highest educational value and that it employs the latest in educational research. This also means however, that it is a very lengthy and complicated process.

I feel that this is just one way to approach it and it may be effective but that it would take some time to get used to. I am sure with more practice it would become more easy to use for lesson planning.

In short I am glad I do not have to plan like this other than for this course!