Hope you are enjoying this beautiful weekend. Maybe it’s finally spring??

Please follow the same directions as you did when you added the RSS feed and add e-mail subscription.

I have arranged for people to read your blogs–just interested adults in the community–and they might want to subscribe so that they know when you update your blog.

Check for comments–Mr. Landow and I will be commenting as well as your blog-readers. Your classmates will also be commenting on your work. What a conversation we’ll have

Ideas for the “adopt-a-blog” mentors responding to student blogs

Background: For many entries, students are writing in response to articles or other research materials that they encounter. Each entry should be in two parts–a summary of the material in their own words, and a response to that material. Ideally, the responses will be reflective in nature–asking questions, making connections, finding contradictions from earlier research, and looking at the material with an evaluative eye toward their documentary film segment.

Other entries will be reflections about the process itself. We pose questions to the students about what they have learned and how they feel about what they are doing.

Adopt-A-Blog Mentor response ideas

• ask follow-up questions
• add to the knowledge base with your own information or reference referrals
• comment on the article (most of them linked to the articles on their blogs) or summary of article
• show connections that you see
• comment on the parts you found most interesting
• comment on what you think would make a good addition to the documentary film
• address frustrations and accomplishments they note in their reflections

If you have other ideas, please post them below and I’ll incorporate them into my next post.

Thanks so much for participating–it is wonderful for the kids to have an audience wider than just their teacher.

Here is a sample summary/response for a Climate Connections story from NPR.

It’s All About Carbon: a 5 part video/cartoon

Summary

Part 1: Global Warming, It’s all About Carbon

This first segment was mostly an introduction to the series and didn’t get much into global warming. It did focus on the importance of CARBON in the whole matter.

Interesting facts about carbon:

1. after we take out water from our bodies, we are 2/3 carbon
2. carbon attaches to other things easily
3. carbon has 4 points of attachment
4. carbon takes on many forms: spheres, lines, jungle gyms

Part 2: Making Carbon Bonds This segment talks mostly about how carbon attracts and attaches easily and about how strong those bonds are.

Interesting facts about carbon bonds

1. carbon bonds are so strong that even after something dies, the carbon is still connected
2. ancient jellyfish called zoa something (need to look that up) died, sank to the bottom of the sea, and then under pressure became oil (fossil fuel)
3. “oil, then, is ancient life that is liquified”
4. making a bond takes energy, breaking it releases it

Part 3: Breaking Carbon Bonds

This segment talks about how breaking carbon bonds produces energy

Interesting facts about breaking carbon bonds

1. heat excites the molecules and makes them break apart
2. they from new bonds that are more stable and efficient, so there is some energy left over, just floating around
3. digestion also breaks down bonds, releases energy in the form of calories, fuels the body
4. same for engines–spark heats the gasoline, breaks bonds, releases energy for movement
5. the richer humans become, the more carbon they use

Other elements produce energy (uranium, dangerous; hydrogen, expensive) but carbon is still the most common and cheapest form of energy

Part 4: Carbon in Love

When energy is released, it is in the form of carbon dioxide (digestion to breathing; fire to heat; engines to tailpipe exhaust)

When carbon bonds break a carbon atom looks for a new atom–it love oxygen, especially 2 and that molecule CO2 is very hard to break.

Interesting facts about CO2

1. trees and sea absorb CO2
2. too much in the air for trees to absorb creates “greenhouse effect” b/c it is floating out in the air
3. when sun bounces heat off of earth up to sky, CO2 doesn’t break (too strong of bond), it just heats up–leads to global warming

Part 5: What Can We Do?

Carbon is going to behave like carbon (and probably people are going to behave like people) so. . .

Possibilities

1. use alternative energy: solar, wind,
2. capture CO2 and store it in the ground
3. vacuum CO2 out of the sky (carbon sequestration)
4. people change behavior (use less carbon)

Response
So, I chose this cartoon because I love Robert Krulwich–I think he is witty and makes science compelling for the non-scientist without dumbing it down. These short videos were a good reminder for me of my 10th grade chemistry class–covalent bonds have not been on my mind much since then–and how breaking bonds produces energy. It also reminded me about the common element in all living things–made me start thinking about the one-ness of it all–perhaps a bit too philosophical for this project.

The last section really raised questions for me:

1. Can we change our behavior, or are we, like carbon always going to behave in the same manner?
2. I didn’t know about the vacuuming CO2 prospect–what would the downside to such an invention be? Where would the CO2 go once it is in the vacuum–the dust in my vacuum at home has to be dumped out eventually.
3. What are the ramifications of putting CO2 in the ground? What if it leaked?
4. Could we get rid of too much CO2?

I think the class can really learn from the style of this video–there were videos, cartoons, sound effects, and fast-paced, humorous narration. I don’t know how funny this documentary we are making can be, but the information was memorable because of the delivery. I hadn’t thought about adding drawings to the documentary–I’ll bet we have some artists in class who might be into making cartoons, if not animated drawings. Something to think about.