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Color and light

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The session opened with 스텔라장(Stella Jang) - Colors  as the pre-9:30 AM opener followed by the  Limits of Light video from Austria.  Launch of Limits of Light was at 9:30 AM sharp to an empty room. Necessary as the morning session was fitting in both Limits of Light and CD spectroscopes. The weather was good for the CD spectroscopes with bright sunshine between cumulus clouds associated with tropical storm 09W Bavi passing to the north of Pohnpei. The Tripltek was deemed unsafe for use as the battery has expanded with enough force to crack the armored case. The Tripltek was factory reset although IT recommended not even turning the unit on.  While the video ran, the CD spectroscopes were brought out.  Students on the porch viewing the visible spectrum. Sapwkini lists off the colors in order while Elain notes them on her cell hone.  Elain taking notes on the colors and their order. ...

Waves and sound

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Preset water for power off, water off, which happened. Set up for a packed session. The little round bottom flask proved very useful as a way to demonstrate the fundamental frequency varying with the amount of water. The rock was used to chime the rebar. The kettle proved superfluous.  The PVC pipe was used to demonstrate the first overtone and the fundamental frequency. The sidewalk was used as the student center did not make a good imprint last term. Work was then done on the board. Followed by the sound demonstrations including the web sites.  Lab was indoor with resonance tubes. Harston and Franson check for resonance.   Maylanica, Leila'Ona, and Seniko working together. Seniko was doing data recording for the group. Pouring water to find the resonance point. Ellinae with the tuning fork, Austin recording data. ...

A return to AI feedback in Moodle

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This summer physical science will again pilot AI feedback in Moodle. This summer the laboratory reports are dropping the explicit rubric and using essentially the same marking system but without an explicit rubric. The original rubrics for the course appeared as above circa 2010.  December 2016 By 2018 the rubric used in Schoology had shifted to a ratings scale to conform to the way rubrics are set up in a learning management system. With a shift in ratings terminology and points, this structure would carry over into Instructure Canvas. March 2021 statistics rubric built on outcomes in Canvas Canvas allowed course learning outcomes to be included directly in the marking rubric. Physical science rubrics also included content criteria. January 2026 in Moodle By 2026 rubrics in Moodle had become minimalist. Experience had indicated that students were not reading nor reacting to the rubric marking. Where in Instructure Canvas learning outcomes could be included in rubrics, in Moodle le...

Clouds

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The morning session began with coverage of weather sites for Micronesia. Then the lecture pivoted to precipitation types. This term the cloud videos were dropped and the lecture was done from the white board.  Collision-coalescence rain Orographic precipitation and Bergeron process After the break cloud types were covered, also done on the white board. This was followed by roflling through the Google Photos album of clouds. Late in this process the discovery was made that a slide deck of cloud types already existed and might have been less meandering and confusing. With the rock types slide deck exercise having just happened the day before, the slide deck on Snapseed and Google Slides was skimmed through quickly. To handle the changes in Snapseed late this spring, a live demonstration using Smartboard mirror was done. None of the slide decks have been updated with the new Snapseed screens. 

My Lovely Sha Sha, latitude, and longitude

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This term Binky was replaced by My Lovely Sha Sha  My Lovely Sha Sha  Complete with a name tag The string proved very useful for securing Sha Sha to a branch Location of Sha Sha to the west of the student center Tied to a Campnosperma brevipetiolata branch Obscured from some angles Non-obvious even from close range. Class opened with a slide deck on setting up GPSTest for Android. The deck also mentions iOS Compass and iOS GPS Tracks . Scrap paper was provided so students could reference the coordinates as they walked. iPhone compass doesn't display decimal places for the seconds. Of 14 students 12 students had iPhones. Compass doesn't display decimal places for arcseconds. Note that one iPhone had a Compass app that looked different and displayed decimal degrees. The phone appeared to be an older phone. One student found that GPS Tracks would report two decimal places ...