Daily Recap: Monday, 3/23

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a relaxing and enjoyable spring break...

Investigating Technologies:
Today was the first day in our last Suite rotation of the school year. We should have interval one finished by the middle part of next week.

Anatomy and Physiology:
Today was the first day for the rat lab. We spent most of the periods going over introductory information. There was some time at the end of class to begin the "Introduction" unit. Don't forget that everything you need to complete the rat activities (with the exception of the dissection manuals) is available on the course website. This includes answer keys. Also, don't forget to check out the introductory podcast for this unit. We will be working on the rats for the next several weeks.

Biology:
We began our unit covering taxonomy and classification by discussing why classification is important in biology. We also gave some examples of things that are classified by people on a daily basis. There was time at the end of the period to begin working on tomorrow's assignment, which is to read textbook section 17.1. The reading strategy is students' choice.

Update on Discovery

The crews of Space Shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station have both been busy since Sunday's launch. Discovery's primary mission is to deliver the last set of solar panels to the space station. This will increase the amount of power available up there for scientific experiments. They are about halfway through their two-week mission, and here's a short recap of what's been going on:

Sunday evening: launch

Monday: One of the biggest jobs on Monday was to use specialized cameras mounted on the shuttle's robotic arm to inspect the exterior of the shuttle for any damage that was sustained during launch.

Tuesday: On Tuesday Discovery docked with the International Space Station. The two crews exchanged personnel...one astronaut will be leaving the ISS after several months in orbit and returning to earth aboard Discovery. One member of Discovery's crew will stay aboard the ISS when Discovery departs. (It's like a space version of "Red Rover".)

Wednesday: The shuttle and space station worked together to unload a "truss" which will support the new solar panels.

Thursday: Two astronauts performed a 6-hour spacewalk to install the truss that was deployed on Wednesday.

Friday: The new solar wings were deployed on Friday. They will be installed during later spacewalks.

Saturday: A second spacewalk, this time lasting 6.5 hours. The objectives of this one appeared to be some work in preparation for later missions to the ISS.

Sunday: The shuttle and space station performed a maneuver today that slowed down their combined orbit slightly. This was important to allow them to "dodge" a 4-inch piece of space debris. The third and final scheduled spacewalk will happen tomorrow.

NASA's website has a ton of great information and pictures of this (and other) missions. It's definitely worth taking some time to check it out. Also, if you're really interested in this stuff, there's a 45 minute animated video on YouTube that details the entire mission.

That voice you keep hearing...

One of my biggest accomplishments over spring break was to finish up a class I've been taking called "Podcasting in the Classroom." There were basically two parts to it. In the first part, we looked at what podcasts are (duh) and how they can be used as a part of our daily "stuff" of teaching. Pretty basic, but I found a ton of really cool science podcasts that I'll be sharing with you as time goes on.

The second part was a lot of fun. It focused around creating, editing, and publishing a podcast that could be used in class. For my project, I created a 9 minute podcast to introduce the rat unit to my anatomy classes. You can find it under the "Rat" section of the class website, or direct link to it here. I don't think it turned out too bad...

This is Bizarre...

No comment...

And so it ends...

Here we are...Sunday night. Spring Break has come and gone for another year, and I'm setting here trying to get mentally prepared to get back into the classroom. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to go back. Spring is definitely my favorite time of the school year, and there's a lot of really cool stuff going on between now and the end of the year. Not to mention that we've got some AWESOME stuff planned for class during the last quarter. But it still takes me some time to mentally get out of the "break" frame of mind and back into the "school" frame.

I meant for this to be a "how I spent my break" magnum post, but instead I think I'll give you the details with a series of smaller posts over the next few days. There's a lot to cover...