danaleeling

This term two students asked to meet the class at the trail head down by agriculture, and other were waiting down by the gym for the class. So at 3:20 PM I picked up moss with sporophytic spore capsules from the Premna obtusifolia on the eastern edge of the campus. I also grabbed a fertile Microsorum scolopendria frond and a Davallia solida frond. I knew a fertile kidou frond and ulungen kiehl would be harder to find on the trail. At 3:30 I was back at the classroom and headed west with the dozen students I found there. I found the cyanobacteria Nostoc at the east edge of the main parking lot along the drainage gutter. I put everything into a plastic bag. The one note for future terms is to bring more bags, smaller bags, clear bags. Everything was a jumbled mess by the time I reached the nan mahl. Heading west I took the most direct route, the students trailed in a broad arc. Up at the Lycopodiella cernua patch, which is increasingly well developed, I pulled out the Nostoc and be...

Since spring term 2014 laboratory two has been moved to occur between the LRC and the south faculty building. This laboratory builds on the Monday linear RipStik velocity homework which was then covered on Wednesday. The Wednesday lecture included the segment speed post-to-post for the RipStik to demonstrate that the speed is changing slightly and the slope, if inspected carefully, also reflects those subtle speed changes. Wednesday also saw coverage of stationary and infinite velocity objects on time versus distance graphs. This provides a solid introduction to laboratory two. The shift away from the gym was made to permit moving into the computer laboratory at the end of this laboratory to assist the students with making a graph with five trend lines and to continue to assist the students with using Schoology. This session is particularly necessary for getting laboratory one correctly submitted. Laboratory three will be the last laboratory in the term start set to use the computer la...

Monday, the first day of class for the fall term, I briefly covered the syllabus and introduced the course. By 12:30 I passed out the pre-assessment which was slightly revised and expanded from previous editions.The pre-assessment problems focus on density. On Wednesday when I pass back the marked pre-assessment and go over the answers, the students are also being introduced to the mathematics of density and one of the twin core themes in the course. The course focuses on mathematical models and writing. Laboratory one remains essentially the same as it has been for the past seven years. The laboratory acts to introduce metric measurements in centimeters. Centimeters will then be used in laboratories two, three, and four. RipStik demonstrations are also now all done in centimeters and seconds . Jessica Reyes and V-Ann Nakamura To keep the laboratory within a 90 minute time frame, I switched a few terms ago to electronic scales to determine the mass. The quadruple beam Cent-o...

The Monday RipStik run exercise ran from the fifth pole at the sidewalk down to the south faculty building entrance. The posts were measured at 305, 305, 305, 307, 307 for a distance sequence of 0, 305, 610, 915, 1222, and 1529. This differs from practice in prior terms where the posts were all taken to be 305 centimeters apart. Approaching the y-intercept of (0 seconds, 0 centimeters) Heading downrange, times were 0, 1.22, 2.63, 4.14, 5.55, and 7.25 seconds. Runs end at the opening to the south faculty building. Given the weak performance on the pre-assessment, I plant to dissect this data in class on Wednesday. Plot, trend line, slope, and then segment velocity calculations leading into speed changes post-to-post. Slope is speed is the planned theme.

Just over a year ago the ethnobotany class students planted bananas out in an agricultural area of the college. Each term the students engage in cleaning up the invasive species collection around the bananas, and works on learning some of the varieties of bananas growing in the patch. Although positive identifications will have to await fruiting, the patch is thought to contain karat, menihle (Manila), uhten lihli, uhten ruhk, uhten kapakap, uhten rais, akadahn, kaimana, uhten pisi (Fiji), and daiwang (Taiwan). Instructor Lee Ling holding Clidemia hirta (riahpen roht), an agressive invasive, and explaining the relationship to the indigenous Melastoma malabathricum var. marianum (pisetikimei).    Virgina Sartilug works the west edge of the banana patch    Judy Andon surround by the invasives Costus speciosus (Cheilocostus speciosus) and Clidemia hirta   Katielyne Nianugmwar curring back Clidemia hirta   Ruthy Phillip works while Rock...

On the fall schedule this term day two was to be an ethnogarden cleaning exercise. This fall the few plants rescued from the now incomplete soccer field are over behind the gym. On the way across campus I named plants for the class - beginning their preparation for the final examination in December. This slowed progress across campus. On the way across campus I realized that no one had picked up a machete anyway, so I continued the walk and talk tour deviating up to the main road for Magnifera indica and down the LRC for the Ponapea ledermanniana. Around behind the women's residence hall and out into the sea of polystachion grass to learn the few plants that had been moved. Then up into the Japanese "Haruki" cemetery. Jasmine struggling to survive amidst a sea of polystachion grass. This walk and talk actually worked rather well as part of the week one introduction to ethnobotany and probably should simply be built upon - using day two not as a garden cleaning day ...

Underneath the focus on physical systems,  SC 130 Physical Science  is built on a foundation of connecting physical systems to their mathematical models and communicating the results in writing. Laboratory exercises lead to the writing of a full laboratory report that is marked for content, syntax, grammar, vocabulary, organization, and cohesion. The majority of the laboratories investigate systems that involve a linear mathematical relationship. Reports include xy scatter graphs, best fit linear trend lines, slope, and y-intercept analysis. The course outline includes the learning outcome, "Students will generate mathematical models for physical science systems." This serves a general education program learning outcome, "Students will be able to present and interpret numeric information in graphic forms," which in turn serves an institutional learning outcome for quantitative reasoning: "Students will be able to reason and solve quantitative problems from a ...