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Floral litmus solutions

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The one week crash and dash through chemistry began with the periodic table. I have learned to move slowly into this material, lingering up front with the basic concepts: the students either never encountered or have mostly forgotten everything about atoms. This term one student came up with proton and neutron, no one remembered the electron. But then electrons are inconsequentially small. Plus I cover the reason the atomic mass is not a whole number, isotopes, there only being two spin directions.  Wrapped up Monday with the geometry of the second period orbitals in three dimensions. Still not accurate, but conceptually easier to wrap ones mind around. Wednesday I launched into bonding. At the end of class I added the floral notes at the bottom explaining to students as to what to bring. This actually helps: many brought red hibiscus and some brought red coleus, both of which perform well. Spathoglottis plicata still performs superbly.  This
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Botany lab 13: Floral morphology and smartphone apps

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Laboratory thirteen had twin goals. One was to familiarize students with the botanical parts of a flower. Two was for students to learn how to label an image and put the image into a slide deck using only their smartphone. The second skill set will be the one students working for a state government, national government, or non-governmental organization as a natural resources and agriculture managers will put to more use.  Before the lab class mets, students were told to have photos already on their phone of the front and back of complete flowers showing all four whorls.  In the lab session students learned to use app tech to generate labelled images and put these images in a presentation. This is a follow-on lab to an earlier lab that covered the use of Snapseed to reduce image sizes and then use those images to produce a vegetative morphology quiz in Google Forms. There will need to be multiple labelled images prepared in order to handle the labels. The parts to be labelled include:
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Snapseed and Google Slides: Labeling images for use in a presentation

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Walking across campus this rainy morning every single student I saw had their heads down, staring at a rectangle of plastic and glass. I see fewer and fewer students heading to class clutching an opened laptop computer. Watching students thumb type with speeds equivalent to my own touch typing speed, thanks in part to autocomplete, I am more convinced than ever that smartphone productivity apps are the future for which graduates must be prepared. The end of the laptop program for students means fewer students have a laptop. Yet the vast majority of students have smartphones. Despite owning smartphones, the students' ability to use their phone as a productivity tool is surprisingly limited. This week in my botany course students will again use the image editing app Snapseed. Snapseed is available for both Android and iOS. The students will learn to label flower parts in images, and then use those images in a presentation .  This exercise will also reinforce the students' knowled
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Ohm's Law

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The unit in electricity began on the Friday of optics week with the first 50 minutes of shock and awe. On Monday Power comes in many forms. Wednesday deployed a new presentation on electrical appliances.  The lab on Thursday used the simplified single meter Ohn's law lab. This forces the students to continuously change their connections from across the load to in the circuit, reinforcing that voltage is across a load, current is measured in the circuit. If the circuit is preset with two meters the students do not have the physical interaction of the change from measuring current to voltage.  As a future recommendation, preset the rigs. Less chaos and disorder. This term I kept the rig as simplified as possible.  One group had not seen snaps before. They had no idea that one pushes them together to connect. Shirlyann records data, Brenda reads data values, Harriet prepares equipment Margarette recording data, Lo
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Growing with Canvas

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When the college introduced Instructure Canvas I was invited to be among the pilot faculty. For training I was provided an all expenses paid trip to the laundry folding table on my back porch. That was January 2021 and the nation had closed borders. My training consisted of working my way through Growing with Canvas. When I asked what time refreshments were being served at the training, my spouse kicked me off of her laundry table and told me that the store was across the street. Growing with Canvas is an excellent introduction to the tools available in Canvas and I highly recommend working through the course. This course really was my training. Of 100 faculty, 64 have engaged with the Growing with Canvas course. 36 faculty have not. The mean time spent in the course is 10.8 hours, with a median time of 6.4 hours. The time investment in Growing with Canvas is no more than that one might spend binge watching a season of a streaming television show. One of the more common faculty develop
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Botany lab twelve photosynthesis

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Using the Neulog equipment, Centella asiatica, a lamp, and Centella asiatica There was an anomaly in the carbon dioxide data where the values collapsed to the probe minimum of 350 ppm. The chamber was being warmed by the lamp, I was left wondering if perhaps the experiment should proceed using only ambient light in the classroom.  Data values at 11:41. Carbon dioxide is up around 426 pp at Mauna Kea at present, so the 422 reading seemed quite reasonable.  This is the data that was gathered with the time in minutes. As seen in a pilot run at home, the carbon dioxide spiked before falling steadily, collapsing just after 27 minutes. Resetting the probe did not help.  Oxygen levels also behaved oddly at first, dropping for eight minutes before increasing. Again, unclear the cause of the anomaly. The directions on offsetting the probe were followed, as they were for the carbon dioxide probe. I hope to obtain the USB module so I can connect the probes to a
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