Homework Live

I am experimenting with homework live to post my assignments for those students who are interested. Please stay tuned for more. Updated grades will be available Monday, and remember, students must pass my tests with 70% or more to pass my class. There are three tests. Students can make them up as many times as needed on their time.

Mr. Jetton

Keplers Laws

Today we had lecture and a brief activity to demonstrate Kepler's laws. Johannes kepler came up with three laws to describe planetary motion. These three laws include the law of ellipses, the law of equal area and the law of periods. Student should know these three laws and should be able to explain them on an exam. Tomorrow we will be reviewing for the test on Monday and playing a game of Jeopardy. The test on Monday will cover the formation of the universe, how we view the universe, formation of the solar system, the nebular hypothesis, the sun and Kepler's laws of planetary motion.

Over the weekend, students should study their notes, their handouts and the quiz review sheet from this week. Students will can look at the questions that they missed on their quizzes by logging on to quia.com using their username and password.

Labs with LabQuest

So today we had our introductory lab with the verier labquest technology. These are devices that allow students to collect data without being tied to a computer. Again, it was third hour that almost ruined it for the rest of the classes. Some of the students decided that it would be a good time to leave class and go for an extended walk while the other students were collecting data. This was really frustrating but I partly blame myself for not forseeing the immaturity in some of the students in my third hour class. Fortunately, fourth and fifth hours came to the rescue and really helped me out by collecting some great data. They were polite, intelligent and made the most of the opportunity to collect data with new instrumentation.

The lab quests, however are taking a bit of time getting used to. They sometimes freeze up because it seems like students accidentally change the calibration settings. Students have a hard time remembering to save their data and they begin data collection of a second data set before the first has been saved. One thing of note is that when saved, the labquest also saves data entered into notes, so that worksheets to record where the data was taken from or who took the data are not necessary. I still need to figure out how to get the information to a printer or a computer that they can view it from. The computers in the classroom might do the trick but I am so short on time that I cannot take the time to figure it out.

Quiz Day

Today we took our first quiz on Quia.com. Apart from the great space between students in the library, I think that the program is going to be a great success. Students get instant feedback from their quizzes and they get their scores instantly, which will help them to determine what they need to study. I did run into a problem with using the media center. It becomes too difficult to monitor the class for questions and to make sure everyone is doing their own work. In the future, I would like to take the class to computer labs, but I think that our capacity in the media center computer labs is 31 and I have a class of 32 and a class of 33. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. If anyone is even reading this blog.

After getting the test scores back, it seems as though the students did alright, but there were a few issues. One, I did not explain the concept of a parallax very well, the computers might have thrown them off a bit since it was their first time, and I think students might have rushed through it. We shall see. I am very optimistic about this technology because although it takes some time to get things set up, I do not have to grade much and the students get instant feedback. Anyway, all in all it was relatively successful.

Stars...

Today we talked briefly about stars. We talked about some characteristics of stars, including temperatures of stars, the distance of stars and the composition of stars. We learned why stars are different colors and why stars seem to shift their position from summer to winter. We have a quiz tomorrow that covers everything that we have learned to date. We will also be talking about lab safety and the my rules when we do labs in my classroom.

We have also been having some issues with some of the students in my 3rd hour Earth Science class not coming into the room respectfully, and not respecting the other students right to learn in the class. One student will be having their parent called tomorrow, and starting next week I will begin excluding students that cannot behave in a social setting from class. Unfortunately, I have no other choice. There are too many students that are coming to class to learn to let the behavior of a few students disrupt that. Students have been warned and will be held to the standards of my classroom.

A Rough Day in the Computer Lab

Today we began the lesson with the students copying a diagram like the one shown to the right, this is a picture of the electromagnetic spectrum. We talked about the sources of EM radiation and that even the light that we see is a form of it. From microwaves to radio waves, from Infra red to Gamma Ray, electromagnetic radiation of all sorts is produced by stars, and we have telescopes that can pick up that radiation. This is one way that can look deep into space. Student should remember the phrase "long-left" because the further left on the scale, the longer the wavelength."

After we talked about radiation, I had planned to go to the computer lab and give the students a practice quiz on the computers using my class quiz web site (to go there click here)(Hour 4 click here) Like everything else in life, some times things do not go the way that you want them to. Today was no exception. I had planned to get students into the computer lab to take a practice quiz, and to play a game that I created called rags to riches (i.e. who wants to be a millionaire) to practice the concepts that we learned through our class reading of chapter 26-1. Unfortunately, I picked the one computer lab that does not have adobe flash player installed on the computers, which eliminated the ability to take the practice quiz. It is unfortunate, but the beginning of the year is about finding out what we can and cannot do.

Next time I will sign up for the computer lab that has better computers. However, it seemed as though the students enjoyed the activity, which we were able to do. This was the Who Wants to be a Millionaire that students played to practice some of the concepts regarding Electromagnetic Radiation, telescopes, distances in space and space exploration.

Tomorrow we will discuss what the use of telescopes that pick up that radiation have taught us about the origin of the universe and the solar system.

Great Discussion About the Cost of the Space Program

Today we had a great discussion about the space program and the costs associated with it. We talked about whether or not it is worth the expense to fund a program that costs a lot when there are so many other problem here on Earth that need solving. I heard great arguments on both sides, but it seemed as though the majority of students felt as though the space program costs a lot of money, and we have a lot of problems that need fixing here. I am sure that I set up the discussion in a way that did not favor NASA, but there are a lot of problems that need solving today. Like schools for one.

We then broke the chapter up into small segments and condensed it as a group and came up with a condensed outline that will hopefully help students study. I stressed to the students, and I will continue to stress to them that when taking notes, from a lecture, book or any other source, that they need not write down every single word that is written or spoken, but that they need to quickly process it and write a simplified version so that they get the main points and leave anything else that isn't absolutely necessary. I believe that it becomes important for students to learn how to quickly take notes, and to decrease their study time by writing down and studying only things that they do not know.

Homework is due Thursday.