Reza's Reflection Post Quarter 4

During the two years that I have been part of our science class blogs I feel that I learned a few things about blogging. One thing that I feel that I have improved my skills to make my post more reader friendly. I did this by changing fonts and making the fonts bigger. I have also learned to use hyper links instead of just putting the link. I think that in ways blogging can contribute to learning in a class. One way that blogging does this is that the students can add extra information by putting in videos to their post. They also can help their fellow classmates who were sick or away by telling them the homework. We could also use our class blog to share ideas on how to study for tests and things like that. My overall writing has also been affected by these two years of blogging. I now feel that I should write on a more personal note when I write on the internet. I think that this is necessary because people will read the post if it sounds interesting. I think that by commenting on peoples work every week in week out has helped how I look at other peoples work. I feel that I can look at work from different perspectives. I look at the science of their post. I look at how their pictures, videos, and captions cover what was covered in class. I look at what extra information they have added. Overall I think that the most thing that I have learned from blogging is that you should always write in detail and slowly to make sure that the reader understands what you are trying to say.

The Earth on Thursday, April 14th 2011

Hey Everyone,

(The Earth from Space)
On Thursday I did my presentation on our very own planet, The Earth.

The Earth's name came from the English/German name which means ground.

The Earth's diametre at the equator is 12,756.32 kilometres. The Earth's mass is 5.97 x 10^24 kilograms. The Earth's density is 5.51 grams per cubic centimetre.

The Earth revolves around the Sun. It takes approximately 365 days to revolve around the sun.

The Earth is tipped on an axis. It is tipped on this axis approximately 23.5 degrees from vertical. The Earth rotates once in 24 hours. It does this at a rate of 1609.344 kilometres per hour.

Where we live on the Earth, there are four seasons. They are spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The least warm recorded temperature is -89.4 degrees celsius. The warmest recorded temperature was 56.7 degrees celsius.

The Earth's atmosphere is made many different gases. The Earth is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.003% carbon dioxide (This increases due to pollution), and other gases such as neon, methane, krypton, and hydrogen.

The Earth is the third planet from the Sun. The minimum distance is 146 million kilometres. The maximum is 152 million kilometres. The mean of this amount is exactly one AU.

The Earth was discovered aproximately 3 million years ago by the first human. I think that they just looked down.

The moon is the brightest object in the sky besides the Sun. The moon orbits around the Earth once a month.

(Each of the four lines symbolizes one of the four elements.)

Above you can see the symbol that stands for Earth. You can use this during Ms. D's class instead of writing the word Earth.

The Earth does not and probably never had rings.

Interesting Facts:

• The Earth is the densest major body in our solar system
• The Atmosphere of Earth extends about 10,000 kilometres
• Molten iron core makes a magnetic field
• Actually takes 23 hours and 56 minutes to rotate
• One Earth year is actually 365.2564 days. NOT 365
• The Extra 0.2564 causes leap years to occur

So that was my presentation on Earth. Here is a video that might tell you a bit more about the Earth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V2J0oBj42Y&feature=relmfu

Reza's Reflection Post

I think that this quarter I improved my scribing by adding more detail to my post. I think that I can improve my posts in the future by making sure to add a useful video that is interesting and not too basic.

I think that one benefit of using a class blog is having an extra place to see what's for homework. Another benefit would be that we can know what we studied in class. Those two reasons depend on whether the post includes these things. I did not dislike any part of this project.

Punnett Squares on Thursday, February 3 and Dragon Genetics on Friday, February 4

Hi Everyone

On Thursday and Friday we mainly focused on doing the Punnett Square problems and did a couple of other things.

The first thing we did on Thursday was go through the Punnett Squares Sheet. Which was due for homework. If you lost it and would like to go over it again you can find it here. After that we were given a choice of what we wanted to do. It was either to work on a new sheet which is due tomorrow or it was to do something on a website called Dragon Genetics. In the end the class decided to do the sheet which is called More Punnett Square Problems. And for the rest of the class we did the sheet that is due tomorrow. This also applies to people that did Math Counts. Remember to print it from Moodle if you already lost it. If you are unclear about Punnett Squares this video might help.

The picture below shows two different alleles matched up using a Punnett Square. The t means the height. An uppercase T means taller. A lower case means shorter. You can see that the parent on the left is taller because he has a dominant uppercase T and a recessive lowercase t. The top parent has two recessive alleles which means that he/she is shorter.

On Friday's class we went to the computer lab and did the activity that we chose not to do. We did the Dragon Genetics. That can be found here. The assignment we did on Friday was a website in which we chose the correct traits for a dragon given the alleles of the parents. After we did this we were free to do whichever topic we wanted from the we

bsite. This included things like incomplete dominance and co-dominance and how does DNA work.

Below: Gregor Mendel - Austrian Scientist and Monk (Creator of the Punnett Square)

Thanks for reading!

I almost forgot. The Next Scribe is Dan.

Reza's Reflection Post

I thought that this quarter of blogging was good. I think I did pretty well in the sense that my comments were detailed and did have compliments, criticisms, and lots of science. This is what other people thought of my scribe post:

Good pictures

· Good links

· Use of hyperlinks in professional way

· Should have sub-scripted the 2 in CO2

· Make picture of graph smaller

· Should make link to Moodle Science not just Moodle

· Should have more use of color in post

· Should rearrange pictures

· Needs more scientific vocabulary

· Good video

· Video helped explain topic

· Good job putting up homework

· Good job putting up supporting details

· Graph was good for clarification

· Should not use the date of post in labels

· Link to khanaacademy was good choice

· First half was better

· Good font size

· Readable

· Forgot to put the title

· Interesting

· Should put more links for topic

as I think that I will improve my scribe post for the third quarter by putting more colors into my scribe post. I will also be putting more detail into the science of my post. I would like to put in more scientific vocabulary into my post. I will make sure to include subscript and superscript when necessary. My graph will also be explained more in depth than it was. I think that the benefits of having this blog is that the students who are sick and miss a science class can look on the blog and find out what happened in class. It also helps explain what the assigned homework was. I feel that people can learn more from the videos the scribes link to. During this blog I enjoyed making comments to other peoples posts and seeing what they did with

h their posts. I did not enjoy commenting on the 7th grade blog because I felt that it was quite hard to find whether the science was good or bad.

Class on Tuesday November 30, 2010

Hi everyone,

During science class on Tuesday we did many things. But first of all remember there is homework that is due on Thursday December 2, 2010 in science class. The homework that is due is the Team Plant Lab. If you lost the sheet go to Moodle under 8 Science 10-11

Make sure that you have the following things in your NOTEBOOK for the Team Plant Lab:

Graph - Make sure its on grid or graph paper (not line paper)

IVs

DVs

UVs & CVs - As many of these as possible

Hypothesis

Paragraph - can be typed or handwritten but must be in your notebook. In here make sure you mention if your hypothesis was supported or negated. Mention at least three errors and why they happened.

State whether everyone put in the same amount of work and effort into the lab (This is separate from the paragraph)

There is also homework due on Friday December 3, 2010. Make sure to do the blog comment by Friday at 4 PM. If you commented twice on this blog you should make sure to also comment on the 7th Grade Blog.

In class we took notes on photosynthesis and started a lab.

Make sure you know these things about photosynthesis:

Photosynthesis is the process of cells taking NRG from the sun to produce food. This takes place in the chloroplasts. CO2 is needed for photosynthesis to happen.

1st stage - Plant captures NRG from sunlight

2nd stage - uses NRG to make food for plant

Some definitions that we learned in class:

Carnivore - eats meat only

Herbivore - eats plants only

Omnivore - eats plants & animals

Scavenger - eats dead stuff

Decomposer - break dead stuff down

Stomata - Opening (pore) on the underside of a plant leaf.

For the leaf stomata lab we started in class we were in groups of two:

Fabi and Davide

Iva and Reza

Terez and Ciprian (Cip)

Viktor and Antonia

Vance and Sophie

Bryce and Giovanna (Gio)

Noam and Valentin (Val)

Calvin and Daniel (Dan)

The main thing you should remember about class on Tuesday is Photosynthesis. Make sure to know about it. If you want to learn more about photosynthesis watch this video.

That was what we covered in Science on November 30, 2010 and the next scribe is...

Daniel (Dan)