Reflection Post 2010

Doing Blogger for three quarters in a row was very helpful. I think that this project help many of the 8th grade students becasue if someone was absent, they could go to Blogger and see what they missed during science. I liked doing Blogger becuase it was very simple and fun to work with. I liked writing posts on Blogger becuase it was very fun and I enjoyed it. The thing that I thought was hard on Blogger was putting pictures becuase sometimes the picture did not appear for me. Also, the thing that was very annoying for me on Blogger was that some of the tools for writing posts were very complicated, but all in all, I enjoyed Blogger. I think that this was a helpful use of technology for our class because any student absent could see what he/she missed during school. I hope that this project will continue next year!

Tuesday April 27, 2010

Today in science class, we had a shortened period becuase of a Croatian field trip. However when we got back, Ms. D continued to show us a powerpoint of the two comets Halley and Hale-Bopp. The powerpoit explained their revolution and when they will reach Earth again. We also were reminded about the five parts of a comet.

The five parts of a comet are:

1.Nucleus-middle part which is composed of gasses, dirt, and ice

2.Dust tail- composes of dust

3. Ion tail- different color, heating up and exciting gasses

4. Coma- the gasses around the nucleus. They cause the shine

5. Hydrogen cloud- the gasses that are released and left behind

Now a little bit about the two comets Hale-Bopp and Halley.

Comet Halley:

-It is the most famous comet in history

-It proved Edmund Halley's math was correct becuase the comet came back to Earth

-It originates from the Oort Cloud

-It is now currently located in the Kuiper Belt

-The revolution is 76 Earth years (it last came in 1986 and it will come back again in 2061)

-It is the same age as the Sun (4.5 billion years old)

Comet Hale-Bopp:

-It was discovered in July 23, 1995

-Two people discovered it independently Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp

-It is 4.5 billion years old

-The diameter of the nucleus is 40-80 kilometers

-Its revolution around the Sun takes 2,392 Earth years

Here is a video of Hale-Bopp in the sky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zen-veDX0zE&feature=related

Here is a video of the revolution pattern of the comet Halley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuZVl4jWrJw

After talking about the comets, we continued our forum and concluded it. We talked about Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune. Not having much time left, we quickly reviewed the names of the celestial bodies and their symbols'. We were told that there is a review session on Wednesday during lunch if you want to come.

REMEMBER, TOMMOROW WE HAVE A CELESTIAL BODIES OPEN NOTE TEST! REMEMBER TO COME PREPARED! The test will be timed so organize your stuff well.

The next scribe is German.

Reflection Post

I think that using blogger for this class was very helpful because it allowed students to catch up on the work that they missed and it was also very helpful to summarize what we did in class. If a student was absent or confused during class, blogger would give enough information to the student that the student would know what was covered during class. The things I disliked about blogger was that whenever you wanted to put a picture, it vanished. Apart from that, I enjoyed blogger a lot.
Blogger was very easy and fun for me. I thought that writing the scribe post was very easy because Blogger is very easy to understand and it is very fun. Blogger was also easy for me because it was not hard to understand how to use it. I do not think that blogger was difficult at all. I understood it fully and it was a very fun website to work with.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Today, Ms. D was gone and we had Mr. Tim as a substitute. We continued talking about astronomy. Mr. Tim told us the correct answers of the pre-quiz that was homework and we had to write down the correct answers in our notebooks. After that, Mr. Tim showed us three Brain Pop videos about the seasons, leap years, and solstices and equinoxes. We also took the quiz after the video and we did pretty well.
Here are the links for the videos:
http://www.brainpop.com/science/motionsforcesandtime/leapyear/
http://www.brainpop.com/science/earthsystem/solsticeandequinox/
http://www.brainpop.com/science/weather/seasons/

We also learned about how seasons change and why does Earth tilt on its axis. Mr. Tim showed us an animation about how Earth revolves around the Sun and he gave us information about solstices, equinoxes, leap years, and at what day does each season begin. Mr. Tim had us draw a diagram about the different angles where the sun hits the Earth and where sunlight is reflected through the atmosphere. We had to write down at what date does each equinox or solstice start. Then, he showed us some YouTube videos about where our place in the universe is and how small we actually are.
Here are the links for the YouTube videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2cmlhfdxuY This is a slightly different video with commentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U
DON'T FORGET! We have a quiz tomorrow about the notes that we took during class today so don't forget to study!

The next scribe will be Alex.F