danaleeling

Images from laboratory one which explored the density of soap. Harmony beauty soap with a density greater than one gram per cubic centimeter was used along with Ivory® Aloe soap with a density of less than one gram per cubic centimeter. Jessica carves soap into a rectangular slab to permit a simple calculation of the volume using the length times the width times the height of the soap slab. Cecelia has finished cutting a slab. Early in the laboratory the students are asked to predict whether each type of soap will float or sink in water. This is then demonstrated. Later this is linked to the slope, which is the density, being greater or less than one. The slabs have to massed. Marla assists Stacy on massing a soap slab. The soap is cut into slabs of different sizes to generate five pairs of volume and mass data. Later, in the computer lab, the students enter the data into a spreadsheet and perform a linear regression. The slope of the volume versus mass line is the density of...

On the previous Thursday I has said to bring no books on Tuesday. The class left A101 at 3:30 and headed directly into the field, no roll call taken, no hand-outs, just out into the field on a sunny day in January. Tuesday the class looked at moss on a nearby tree that also featured two types of lichens. On the way to the trailhead the class had previously stopped to examine Psilotum nudum located just to the south of the agriculture building in a hidden valley. This was a new addition to the hike spring 2009. Because psilotum was "dumped" back in with the ferns in the new monilophyta classification, something I only learned fall 2009, I opted to skip the psilotum 2010. Only one small plant without cones was seen fall 2009 and the effort was not worth the gain in knowledge. On top of the ridgeline The class stopped on the ridgeline to view the lycopodium Lycopodiella cernua and the sun-loving fern Dicranopteris linearis . Lycopodium is a member of the division ...

Rainbows over campus... and working together at home... ...these are indeed greeting card moments .

A convenience sample survey of 58 students in the MS 150 Statistics class at the College of Micronesia-FSM Palikir national campus spring 2010 asked about social media membership. As in prior terms, MySpace led Bebo by a small margin. FaceBook was tied with Tagged at third rank. While FaceBook has gained considerable traction on the planet, Micronesia still remains primarily MySpace and Bebo turf. Site Spring 2009 Fall 2009 Spring 2010 Millions of unique visitors (people)/month FaceBook 0 9 12 117 MySpace 32 45 33 55 Bebo 17 41 27 3.5 Ning 4 5 5.7 Twitter 2 6 Yahoo 2 7 6 1.5 Tagged 3 6 12 4.5 Other 5 6 7 None 9 13 10 Sample size n 54 74 58 Data in the last colu...

Friends who flew in from Kosrae brought that rarest of treats out here - fresh corn. Never frozen, not even chilled. Just picked. Grown in the fertile valleys of the island of the sleeping lady. The arrival of the corn and with school starting up for the spring term, Shrue put together a family dinner. The kids think corn is a Wisconsin and Illinois plant only, unaware of the tropical south american origins of maize. So they were surprised to learn that the corn was grown in Kosrae. Happy campers all!

This term I had the opportunity to email my physical science students prior to the first class meeting. The class begins on a laboratory day, a Thursday, and I use the session to introduce the concepts of space, time, and matter . This may seem a tad simplistic, but in general the students are rather severely underexposed to the concepts of science. One of my goals is to get them thinking and, I hope, wondering. Secondarily I am beginning to introduce vocabulary, critical in that for almost all of my students English is a second language. The following is not entirely accurate and oversimplifies the underlying reality, if any exists. Word lists can always be extended. That said, mass is a concept some of my students have never encountered, and all of the clock time words in their L1 language are borrowed from L2 languages including English, Japanese, or German. Even the concept of the three dimensionality of space is novel for many of the students - the orthogonal nature of dimensio...

Having spent the Christmas break with us, Elterina and my semi-grandchild return on Monday to Kosrae. A new capability gained while on Pohnpei was his ability to rise up onto all fours and then launch himself in the direction of a desired object. Upon arrival he could only slide backwards on his belly. The new skill is not crawling, but rather an almost frog-like simultaneously pushing off with all four limbs, launching himself off the ground and then landing on his belly. He has yet to hit his chin upon his crash landings, but that is inevitable as he gains coordination in his take-off launch. The new arrival is a three day visitor who came back from Kosrae ahead of her parents. The impending departure and the new arrival was an occasion for a family dinner, although the whole nine person family did not fit around the four person table. No worries, however, as serial eating is the norm out here. After dinner my eldest worked on a shirt decorating project using a kit se...