New Celebration

At the beginning of this semester I wrote a celebration about a time when I was kayaking and I had a Blue Heron flow me all the way down the river (if you haven't read it please look back to my previous posts and check it out). Now that it is the end of the semester I am going to write about a new celebration that has happened to me. To recap, a celebration is a way of recognizing something amazing in nature that you experienced. I was initially going to write about the changing of the leaves, because up here in the U.P, there is nothing as gorgeous as the changing of leaves. But just the other day as I was wrapping up my experiment, I saw a gorgeous sunset out of my classroom window and I decided then, that is what I wanted to write my celebration about. There is a picture of this beautiful sunset below. I chose to write about this because I am a sucker for a good sunset, but there was something magical about this sunset. The beautiful things about sunsets are they happen every night, but they aren't all the same. There are always some nights where the sun setting looks prettier than other nights. That is what I love about sunsets. What I loved about his particular sunset was how it reflected off the clouds like a priceless painting. It didn't even look real, it instead looked like a piece of art. I get this happy and indescribable feeling inside when I watch sunsets. Seeing that one that night made me feel calm, and took me back to beach nights as a kid. It took me back to a time when I was able to be at the beach all day until the sun was setting and I would fall asleep in my mom or dads arms. That's what I love about sunsets, the peacefulness and the memories they bring.

Bottle Habbitat

At the beginning of the semester each of our lab groups created a bottle habitat out of 2 liters, sponge corks, string, soil, plants and water. Now that the semester is over, I have looked at our habitat and I am pleased to say it is still alive and thriving. From what our professor tells us, so long as it doesn't get opened and none of the seals break, there is no limit of time to how long they can last. This is because it has adapted to its own environment and still gets sunlight. Because the plants inside are still getting sunlight, and will constantly have water, they can still go through photo syntheses which allows them to keep on living. I honestly can say I never though that these would make it to the end of the semester, but I have been proven wrong. I am not only confident that these bottle habitats work, but I also believe that if left how they are, they really will flourish forever. I am so convinced that I really want to use this project in my classrooms when I become a teacher. Below I have pictures of my habitat for you to check out.

"Odyssey" by Aldo Leopold

Another story I have recently read out of "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold is "Odyssey". I really did enjoy it and saw there were ways I could relate it to some of my class lectures. In this story Leopold relates to this thing he calls X and Y. If you don't know or can't figure out I should say, what these two things stand for, then the whole story is sort of confusing. It is kind of like a riddle. I have come to the conclusion (whether it is right or not) and X could be red phosphorus, and Y could be mercury. Neither of these things have related to what I have learned about in class recently, but I have read this story before, and tried to figure out what X and Y might be. I have had little luck, but in being asked what elements X and Y could be, those are the two that made most sense to me. This story helps explain bio-geochemical cycles mostly when talking about Y, but also touches on it with X. When the story talks about X being moldered underground and then sprouting a plant which is then being eaten or how it produces a plant that is burned and the smoke goes up into the atmosphere that talks about a portion of the abiotic factor of the cycle. When Leopold talks about Y in terms of its trips through the watershed that goes into talking about another element of the abiotic factor of the cycle. When reading about x and y they both give examples of what ever these two things are and their part in a cycle, the cycle they are talking about is the bio-geochemical cycle. This explanation of these elements in terms of the bio-geochemical cycle really made me think of them as a small molecule. It made me look at these things and think of them on a small scale than I think I normally would have. I feel sort of disturbed when I start to think of the atoms and molecules in my body. So much of the things we eat and drink are so bad for us, who knows what that is doing and how it is effecting the molecules in our body. I don't like not knowing where the meat or vegetable I purchase at the store come from, who knows what has been done to them chemically and that is what I am putting in my body...That is a disturbing thought to me.

"Thinking Like A Moutain" Aldo Leopold

I recently read the story "Thinking Like A Mountain", out of "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold. For those of you who haven't read it I strongly suggest reading not only that story but the whole book. I have and I really enjoyed it. The story starts out with a great description of a mountain, but from the perspective of everything on the mountain seeing the effects off the wolves and what they do on the mountain. From there Leopold goes on to tell about the day he watched a wolf die. This part of the story starts out by explaining one day him and a friend were eating lunch together on the mountain and they looked down to the river and thought the saw a doe, but to their error  when they saw this "doe" climbing the bank toward them they realized it was actually a wolf. As the wolf started toward them, half a dozen grown pups jumped out of the trees and joined the original wolf. Back in Leopold's time if you saw wolves, you killed them. So that's what they did, they started shooting at these wolves aimlessly. They had managed to kill the initial wolf they saw and when they went down to check it out, Leopold says they had reached it in time "..to watch a fierce green fire, dying in her eyes." This was the point at which Leopold realized there was something new he had never felt before when looking at a dead wolf. Something known only by the wolf and the mountain. Now this is a very famous part of the story. Many people may not know Leopold, but they probably have heard this part of the story. The story goes on to talk about how this happening was sort of a turn in Leopold life. It changed his life in a way that actually came to educate him and make him realize that less wolves does not in fact mean less deer. The story resumes from here talking about from that day on Leopold noticed a wolf-less mountain and new deer trails along the mountains side. This is because without the wolves there to hunt the deer the deer population rises. He also talks about how he has seen every last bushes being eaten, this is because there are more deer than food so everything is being eaten away down to nothing. The story continues to talk about bones (the deer dying off because there is not enough food) and how he now understands that just as the deer fear wolves, the mountain fears deer. He says this because with that many deer, they are eating away the beauties and lush greens of the mountain. The rest of the story talks about Leopold's realization such as these that he has learned due to the killing of that one wolf.

 The beginning of the story holds a lot of weight. It is really descriptive in an unique way and makes you really think. It is very deep, but also very creative in the way he introduces the mountain and how he goes about it in a way that plays part to every member that comes in contact with it. The first part made me feel sort of confused at first. I wasn't really understanding what I was reading. Once I dug into it a little more I felt very, holistic, in my thinking. It is hard for me to say if the beginning of this story is one that goes along with my feeling because I don't agree nor disagree. I feel like I am more of a holistic thinker than most people in our society today, but all in all I know I don't think the same way as Leopold. This to me is because I didn't grow up like he did. I have always grown up away from mountains and wolves. Yes I have always been a hunter, but I have never hunted wolves like Leopold. We lead very different lives and have experience different encounters with the things we have seen so it is hard to have a similar opinion which in turn makes it hard for me to have an opposing opinion as well. No part of this story made me feel uncomfortable. I think that hunting is a part of life and it will always be a part of life. I think people who don't educate their kids about hunting are foolish. No, Aldo's hunting techniques back then were not ethical, but they didn't know any better. They learned from their mistakes and worked to fix the damage they caused, and to me that's what counts.  Like I said before, I really like the story "Thinking Like A Mountain", I think it is really inspirational and an interesting read. I think anyone could think this way. Anyone that has read Leopold's work should know that he is a holistic thinker. I think the way he thinks is benificial to not only the environment, but to us too. It wouldn't be hard for me to think that way about where I come from. We don't have wolves but we do have deer. Funny yet sad enough it seems one of the biggest predators to the deer in my area is cars. Deer are getting hit by cars every night where I am from. Does it have the same effect on them in the area as the wolves did there? No, but it is still a factor to be taken into consideration. I don't think we should be hunting wolves in the U.P. just yet. I think they need a little more time (especially in certain areas) to continue to grow. If they aren't a problem, let them be. Once they start to show over population and begin causing problems, then I think it is time to do a little regulating.

Chernoff Face Activity

I have never done anything like this before, but found this to be a fun activity that you really can do with any age of students. In our class we did a "Chernoff Face" exercise. What this was is your teacher displays slide by slide what each feature of your soon to be face means. So you have this piece of paper and on it you are going to draw a face. On each slide you see the same three shapes (a horizontal oval, a vertical oval or a circle) but on each slide each shape means a different thing and stands for a different feature. So for example on the first slide you need to know what shape to draw your head. The shape you choose depends on your major. I am a math major so as you can see below, I had to have a vertical oval head. On the next slide you had to choose the shape of your eyes based off of where you were from. I was from the lower peninsula so I had to draw horizontal eyes. This continued for four more slides where you had to pick your pupils based on which types of sports you liked, your nose based off of which of the three pets on the slide you prefer, the mouth on the genre of food you prefer (out of the three given) and finally which type of music you liked the best based off of the three types given. Below you can see an example of what my face turned out like. After our faces were drawn we split into three groups based off of which of the three head shapes we had (from slide one). From there we split our groups up even further based off of what feature our group found as the 2nd most important feature on our faces. We did this one more time and then discussed how each group split up and why we each felt those were the 2nd and 3rd most important features on the faces. It was a fun exercise and like I said before can be done with just about any age with the tweeking of questions (features). 

Presque Isle; Marquette MI

A few weeks ago my class took a little field trip down to Presque Isle. Here, we started off talking about the different types of trees in the area and how to identify them. From here we went off into the woods and looked for specific things. Such things included; parasitism, commensalism, mutualism, intraspecific competition, interspecific competition. Also, we were asked to look at the micro habitat and how how it is different from the surrounding area, find an animal and describe its niche, as well as observe the biochemical cycle of Presque Isle.

This being said I will start with the example of parasitism I observed. It was really really hard finding all of these things in the area. This was because it is not a very big area and while we were there we did not see many animals at all. While we were there though I did manage to get eaten by many many little mosquitoes. I later realized that these mosquitoes where like parasites benefiting from living off of my blood.

An example of commensalism that I saw while we were there was with a squirrel and a tree. Even though we saw very few animals there two animals we did  see were squirrels and chipmunks. The example of commensalism that I saw was the squirrel using the tree to its benefit to house not only itself but all of its acorns. This helped the squirrel but neither helped nor harmed the tree.

I saw an example of mutualism before we even got up to the woods. Down by where you turn to come into the parking lot there are some flowers, sort of over by the playground. Over there when we were driving in we were stopped because the car in front of us wasn't moving while we were sitting there I was looking at the playground and then the flowers and I noticed a bee in the flowers. This is an example of mutualism because both the bee and the flower are benefiting from one another presence.

Finding interspecific competition was hard, but finding intraspecific competition was easy. As we were walking there were two squirrels fighting over something, I assumed some sort of acorn or food substance. This was funny to my because you usually don't see squirrels fight, or I don't at least. So even though it was kind of funny to me it was still a nice live example of intraspecific competition. I though I was seeing this again later in the day when my partner and I were walking back, but this time it was a squirrel chasing a chipmunk. This chipmunk had its cheeks full and my guess is that squirrel wanted what ever it was that chipmunk was carrying. Although to some that might have looked like playtime, to me it was an example of interspecific competition.

The micro habitat on Presque Isle is different from it's surrounding area because unlike everywhere else that part of the land hasn't been touched. Deer and chipmunks and birds and other animals are still able to and still do roam around freely in those parts because the have the food, trees and other plant life needed to survive. The areas surrounding Presque Isle are full of buildings, cars, roads and all this other stuff that has taken the place of these beautiful animal and plant organisms. These trees and animals couldn't survive in the surrounding areas because of the lack of space and other things.

The animal I choose to write a niche about was the squirrel; mostly because it was the only animal I saw more than 2 of. The squirrel has a niche of seed dispersal. They store food for the winter, but they do not find it all. So what ends up happening is they plant seeds in locations other than where they found them.

The biochemical cycle of Presque Isle is this; Nitrogen in the animals proteins (like deer) go into the ground where there is nitrogen in decaying matter and waste. Fro there bacteria "fix" nitrogen to be useful to plants which goes up through the soil into helping plants grow, the plants that the animals eat. The nitrogen in these plant proteins go back into the animals that eat these plants and the cycle starts all over again.

PBS/NOVA Predator Invasion Documentay

In my MSED class we recently watched a PBS documentary about predator. This documentary talked about interspecific and inraspecific competition between species and the trophic level pyramid. Interspecific competition is compeition between different species. An example the documentary gave of this was the wolves hunting the moose in Yellowstone Park. Intraspecific competition is competition between the same species. An example of this from the documentary was the moose fighting for food/plants to eat to survive. Since there was an over abundance of moose, they were eating plants faster than the plants could regrow. This created a shortage of food which was causing the moose to die off. This created a competition for food, for survival. It also discussed how predation effects certain species in areas and how introducing animals that didn't originate from a certain area are effected and effect an area when they are brought in. There was a lot of content and information in this video and I learned a lot. One of the things I learned was what the trophic level pyramid was. What this pyramid consists of is at the bottom level you have the producers (plants), then the primary consumers, then the secondary consumers, then at the top you have tertiary consumers. I never knew what this was before but I enjoyed learning about it. This documentary was a great teaching as well as learning tool because it really helped reenforce and explain vocabulary we had been learning in class. Some of the species that were in this documentary were panthers, wolves, and bears! The documentary discussed wolves from Yellowstone Park. It talked about the original wolves that were there, but then also talked about wolves that were introduced to the area from another place. I understand the point of the reintroduction of the species into the area was necessary. It helped the  plant life in Yellowstone flourish because the wolves were eating the moose so there wasn't an overabundance of moose eating all these plants. For that reason I agree with the reintroduction of this species. On the flip side I don't think reintroducing these wolves to the area is ok. They started dying off for a reason, and I think it will just happen again. Reintroducing them into the area just seems like a temporary fix to me. The underlying issue is us as humans and until we fix the way we live our lives, we are going to have to continue to settle with temporary fixes.

Frog on a log at the Bog...walk

My class took a bit of a field trip to a bog in our area. Here there is a trail that leads through and around this bog and has signs posted throughout the walk. We were given a packet to fill out and help us learn about what a bog is how it's created and the difference of that area compared to surrounding areas as well as being able to explain the adaptations of the "pitcher plant" and why they exists and demonstrate our understanding of living things and the differences and similarities between them. I really enjoyed going through this walk. It was nice getting away from the city aspect and getting back to some nature. That is one thing I love most about Marquette; you can enjoy the city, but you are never far from nature and the peace of its quite. It was a little harder to enjoy because there was construction noises going on in the back grounds but that aside I did get to learn a lot. I have heard of bogs, I have seen bogs, but I have never known how they are created. I really enjoyed learning about that. I think the part that fascinated me the most was reading on one of the signs that in Europe, where they mine peat for fuel (peat is the remains of dead plants that collect at the bottom of a swamp and what the bogs sit on basically), scientists have found EXTREMELY well preserved bodies that date back to thousands of years ago, that have been found in bogs! It just amazed me how something such as a bog could preserve a body so well...and makes me think if we should be looking more into that and considering using peat to preserve specific things in the future. Overall the whole walk went well. I learned a lot and got to see a lot of really neat nature. We learned about the pitcher plants that I have never heard of before. They actually eat bugs. They are a small carnivorous plant that has little spikes in their flower that trap bugs. I was really fascinated by these also. Below are a couple pictures I took from the bog walk. They do not to the actual place justice, but they are still a pretty sight to see.

What's in your Mystery Container?

In class last week my group was given a film container (some of you might not even know what that is...wow I am aging myself). In each container was different elements. We were first told we could not open the container, but then asked to write down as many questions as we could possibly think of that pertained to the container and what was inside. Once we wrote down close to 200 questions (and believe me, we could have kept going) we were given a dish. In this dish were all the possible items that could be in our container. We had to use all of our senses (with the exception of taste) to try and duplicate our container without looking in our original film container. We used a scale, but found that to be misleading because the objects that we duplicated actually weighed different the the original objects. Once we though we knew what was in our original container we were allowed to open it. We did manage to duplicate it. Many times during the process of trying to guess what was inside I felt very frustrated. I was getting really frazzled by the unknown. the point of this is to simulate how scientists feel when researching and trying to make a discovery. The only difference is in the end, they can't open the container to see if they were right. This simulation really got me thinking about how much patience you have to have as a scientists. You are constantly seeking the unknown, and sometimes that can get really frustrating. I have learned that sometimes you just need to step back, and go back your original thinking, because sometimes you make things more complicated than they really need to be by over thinking.

The Inquiry Wheel

During our lecture the other day in my MSED class we discussed the inquiry wheel. Below you can see a picture of what an inquiry wheel looks like. As you can see there is a circular section in the middle that says "questions" and arrows point from that circle to 9 other boxes, each it's own type of category. Note that there is no specific order of this wheel. This is because when scientist are asking questions, they have no specific order on how or what type of questions they are going to be asking.The purpose of an inquiry wheel is to allow the scientist to always be asking questions throughout the whole process of whatever experiment they are conducting. If something with the experiment goes wrong or the results don't turn out, you may have to go back and ask different questions, but the whole point is it allows you and helps you to ASK QUESTIONS. The inquiry wheel is also flexible because it doesn't require you to go in any step by step specific order. The wheel allows for constant reflection as well as improvement which is one of the reasons it is so nice to work with. I personally have never heard of this wheel before. Then again, I haven't taken a science class since my junior year of high school. I really enjoyed learning about the inquiry wheel and I really think that it is more effective for scientist of any ages, but especially the younger scientist to use. I remember back in middle school hating science experiments because we had to follow a step by step series of questions we had to ask and answer about our experiment. If something didn't end up falling into place or anything like that then we had to change our whole experiment and start over on the series of questions. Unlike that method, like I said before, the wheel allows room for improvement so you can take the data or information you've already gathered and build from it apposed to starting from scratch like we used to have to. I really think it is a nice model that is helpful and useable for many ages.

What's alive?? You'd be surprised...

My science class conducted a bit of an experiment last week. The purpose of this experiment was to see if we could classify certain objects as "alive", "product of a living thing", "was alive now dead"or "never alive". We took a baggie and in the baggie we had a wet paper towel. Folded up in the wet paper towel was plants (with their roots) that we had gathered from outside, a piece of a straw, bird seed, sand, pop corn kernels, beans, cotton ball, penny, tooth pick, and a rock. Each of these objects we had to list in the spread sheet under one of the given categories above. We allowed the plants to peak out the top of the paper towel but they still had to be in the bag which we inflated with air and stuck by the window so they could get sunlight. A week later we gathered our bags and opened them. To our surprise our plants were still living and there were more plants growing!We had to now put a mark under the proper category these items should belong in. Our group got all but two right, but the two we got wrong were shocking to us! Below you can see a picture of the items that were in our paper towel. If you look at the popcorn kernels and the beans you can see plants sprouting out of them. I was shocked that our plants were still living, but on top of that I did not expect at all to see new types of plants forming and branching out of the corn and beans! I am still a little dumb founded to think that popcorn kernels and beans could sprout and produce a plant like that, in such short of time! I felt this was a really neat experiment and I strongly encourage anyone to try it with almost any ages of kids!

Dangers of DHMO...are there any?

I recently was shown a video in one of my classes by my professor. It was a video she had made discussing the dangers of DHMO. If you are anything like me you are probably wondering what DHMO is....well don't worry, we will get to that in a minute. In the video my professor talked about the dangers of this substance and how it causes fatalities every year to a number of students as well as how it is destroying certain elements on campus (making metal rust). When we were finished watching the video our professor had us vote whether or not we thing DHMO should be banned from our campus. Everyone but two of us voted to ban it. When our teacher asked those two students why they didn't vote to ban it they responded with "there wasn't enough information given about the substance". Their response was just what our professor wanted to hear. They were right, we did not receive enough information and it turned out that all of us (with the exception of two) voted to ban water from our campus...that's right WATER. DHMO stands for die-hydrogen monoxide, or in other words two hydrogen one oxygen (H2O). Needless to say most of us felt pretty silly. I personally wish I would have thought through a little more than I did and realized what were were actually witnessing versus what was being asked. The point of this exercise was to show us that you can't vote against things, or really on things at all unless you have enough information. Without the proper amount of information you might do what we did and vote against something that is actually a very important element in our everyday lives...like water. I now realize the importance not only in science, but in life as well, of having all the information you need about something before coming to a final thesis or opinion.

"Are you smarter than an 8th grader?"...I'm not!

In my MSED 251 class we were asked to take a short multiple choice quiz. This quiz was the equivalent to one that an eighth grade teacher would give to their students. At the very end of the quiz once you have submitted it, you are given the percentage right you got as well as the option to go through and look to see what questions you answered right, and what the correct answers to the questions you got wrong were. During the quiz there were many questions that contained material I know I have learned before, but just could not recall the information enough to be sure on my answers. Once I finished the quiz I didn't feel like I had done too bad...until I saw the percent I had gotten right. 50%...50%! I haven't scored that low on anything ever in my life! I was shocked, pretty disappointed in myself, but hopeful that it meant I had a lot of room for learning, or in some cases re-learning material. Walking out of class that day after seeing how poorly I did on that quiz really made me worry about what that meant about how my performance in that class was going to be this semester. It made me worry that maybe this was going to be a more challenging course than I had originally thought. I knew this was going to be a more tricking and difficult class this semester, but am I out of my league so to speak? I am hoping that this is not the case and that I have a MUCH more successful outcome for the class. I am choosing to look at this experience as a positive one. One that means I can only go up from here. Yes 50% is bad, but now I know what my weaknesses in the subject are, and where I need to spend extra time studying. I am excited for this course and all it has to bring the rest of this semester.

Celebrate 1 (kayak)

"Celebrates" are not hard for me to recall or remember. Actually, it was very hard for me to pick which one I wanted to use as my first Celebrate. After narrowing it down I decided I wanted to use my "kayaking Celebrate" as my first one. There was this beautiful day in July a few summers ago, it was on a Sunday; I know it was on a Sunday because that is the only day I have off in the summer. Anyways, on this gorgeous Sunday in July the weather was impecable. It was sunny but not overbearingly humid and there wasn't a single cloud in the rich blue sky. My boyfriend and I both decided it would be a perfect day to take the kayaks down to the river and do the 5 mile route. As I carried my kayak into down the enterance slope and into the river I noticed this blue heron siting on a near by tree looking at me. I didn't really think much of it until we started paddling. Once I started to approach the area next to the branch the blue heron was sitting on, he flew away. I just assumed I had frightened him and he was gone. Well as I went further down the river and around a bend I saw the heron again, sitting on another branch. I watched him the whole time up until I got close to him. Yet again, once I got close to him he looked at me, and then flew away. I was confused as to why he kept waiting for me to get to him before flying away and wondered if I'd see him again. Sure enough a little while down the river there he was, looking behind himself as if he was waiting for me. This time I pulled back behind my boyfriend waiting to see if he would fly away when my boyfriend got close to him. To my surprise he didn't. He stayed there looking at me waiting. Once I got close to him he continued to look at me and then once again flew away. I didn't understand why when I got close to him he would fly away, but when my boyfriend was near him, he just stayed there, looking at me. This continued until I got to the end of the route. I felt so distracted by this heron that I really can't recall much of the rest of the route, my entire focus was on this bird. When I was getting out of my kayak the heron watched me pick up my kayak, I looked at him, he looked at me and just as I turned to walk away, he also flew away. It seemed like the perfect way to part after playing catch up all afternoon.

Getting to know me

Well, for starters I wanted those reading my blog to get to know me a little bit. I am 21 and in my third year of school at Northern Michigan University  studying Elementary Education with a math major, integrated science minor. I absolutely love children...which I guess makes sense since I am going to school to be an elementary teacher. I chose to attend NMU because I love how Marquette supplies it's residents with the best of both worlds; you can be in the city, or drive a few miles out of town and all of a sudden you are in the middle of no where. To me that is just pure bliss. I am an outdoorsy person, so any chance I get to be outside I take it. I am a ski instructor for children over Christmas break and in the summer I am an assistant manager at a orchard in my town. Speaking of my town, I live in Torch Lake, MI. It is a small but beautiful town about an hour south of Traverse City. I am very lucky. My front yard is Torch Lake (voted the third most beautiful lake in the world) and just through my backyard and across the street is Lake Michigan. I am surrounded by beauty whether I am at home or up here and I love every minute of it. As much as I love the outdoors and seeing new areas and all the beauty that encompasses them, I do like to be inside sometimes also. I love watching movies..preferably series. I am a huge fan of the "Harry Potter" series as well as the "Lord of the Rings Series." Living in Northern Michigan (lower peninsula), I have experianced cold winters, but nothing like the kind of winters we get up here in the U.P. There are just some days it is too cold to go outside and explore, and those are the days I love to snuggle up on the couch and have a movie day. Cleaning is another thing I really enjoy doing on those days you just don't want to be outside. It sounds weird but I really like cleaning. It kind of calms me down as well as makes me feel much better about the area I am in. I can not stand messes, call me OCD but things need to be clean, neat, and organized in my house. I think that is a pretty good description of me for now. All in all I am just a very enthusiastic person who loves kids, is determined to be a teacher and loves to be outdoors! I hope you enjoyed this first blog and I look forward to posting more for you to read in the future!