Things on my desk

A number of my students have already played this game, so I've decided to join in.

Lets see...

On the right side of my desk are the normal desk accoutrements - letter organizer, inbox, Navy recruiting cup (Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of all who threaten it) with pens and scissors.  There is also an automatic stirring and heating mug, which one of my lab mates at Texas A&M bought me for a "Secret Santa" gift after I kept leaving lukewarm cups of tea lost in the microwave.

To the left of my desk are the 3-hole punch, various cups of lukewarm, several-day old tea (did you know mold will grow in tea?), a bottle of mint Chloroseptic from my desperate battle with the canker sore, and my newly acquired "Project Learning Tree" manual and other science education paraphernalia.  Also to my left is my monitor.

Directly in front of me is a black kitten (6-8 months old) purring madly and trying to dig his way into the 1-gallon aquarium also residing in the back center of my desk.  Said aquarium contains two freshwater mussels, two crayfish, and one giant water beetle.  It also contains one pond snail and a zillion zoo and phytoplankton.  Next to the aquarium is the mason jar, containing yet another pond snail (it did have one of the mussels in it previously) who likes to amuse itself (and me) by doing its "snail buoyancy trick."  Seriously.  It makes a controlled floating ascent to the top of the water and then just as controlled, descends back to the gravel.  Love it.

Behind my monitor is my latest piece de resistance, the decomposition chamber.  Fashioned out of two 2-liter soda bottles according (roughly) to the Bottle Biology website, I have been filling it with random bits of food and other decomposable material from my working meals.  Now I decompose things on purpose on my desk.

I should also mention that not far from my desk is the new mealworm breeding facility.  I find this all very exciting, much to the dismay of my husband.  He is currently still insisting that I label the Magic Bullet container I used to make the spinach-cat food-yeast puree for the mussels since I used aquarium water to help mix it instead of tap water (tap water has chlorine).  He is convinced the dish washer will never eradicate the "fish fecal matter" that surely made it into the cup.

Sigh...

Earthquake in OK

Well at about 10:54ish we had an earthquake here in Norman, OK.  Naturally, the whole house shook - you could hear our stuff rattling.  Our cats were not pleased, they ran about while I made my husband join me in a doorway - he's pretty impressed.  This is only the second earthquake he's experienced. 

This earthquake was the sliding kind - I could feel the house shake north-south maybe 4 or 5 times.  I suppose it was an aftershock from the 4.7 in Prague, OK early this morning.  Friends of mine not too far east of us felt that one around 3ish this morning.

So strange....  I've heard some talk that frakking is causing increased earthquake activity in the midwest.  Silly me, I thought I left earthquakes back in the Pacific Rim (California and Japan).

Aquatic Ecology and High School in 50 minutes

Monday I go to two high school Ecology classrooms to present on freshwater and saltwater ecology.  Once again, I am nearly overwhelmed by the possibilities of what I can do with these students.  There are so many cool things out there - I wish teachers knew how to narrow down their request for my classroom visits!

Anyway, given the strict time limit, I have decided to plan ahead this time.  Here's the modification I think I'm going to make to what I did with the 8th graders.

1) First 10 minutes of class: introduction (who I am, what I do, why I do it) and short discussion on what aquatic habitats entail.  I am hoping for a list of various aspects of habitat including food sources and water forces (flow).

2) Three stations, 5-10 minutes each.  Students make observations and sketches.  Perhaps some guiding questions based on the list we generate during the discussion.
Station 1: flotsam and jetsam from the beach
Station 2: live aquatic inverts (note to self: get aquatic inverts Sunday. Wear old shoes. Better yet, wear boots.)
Station 3: comparison of freshwater and saltwater organisms (maybe - I'm ambivalent on this station at this point...)

Hmmm... 14 students... I'm re-thinking this.  Perhaps instead of moving students, I can have four trays: 2 freshwater and 2 saltwater.  We can then shuffle the trays throughout 4 groups (instead of three stations) so that groups are limited to 3 and 4 students.  I think I'm going to go with this option.  This might also be easier to transport.  I think I'm going to pre-separate the aquatic inverts into shallow plastic containers as well.  Bingo!

3) Discussion and application: Talk about observations (again, focus on feeding and body shape).  Show students OK limpet-like fossil. Ask them where this fossil came from and how they think it ate.  Reveal that the fossil is from OK (shallow sea).

Ba-daaa!!!

I'll let you know if this goes as smoothly as its planned in my mind.