Week 5

It is hard to beleive that five weeks have gone by already. I have been learning and involved in so many things.
 At the start of the week I spent some time down at the beach. On Monday Elise accompanied me and we started off practising some quadrats as Erin had shown me. As it was a good low tide we ventured down further on the rocks. We saw sponges, sea stars, a lot of different types of seaweeds, as well as afew kina hiding under ledges. Elise was surprised by the lack of crabs on this particular reef, we found a few hermit crabs and one porcelain or half crab. On Tuesday I also spotted a camouflage crab, I had thought it was seaweed until it scuttled off under a rock. The longer I crouch and look in a rock pool the more there is to be seen. This is something it will be important to instill in classes visiting the rock pools if they want to see lots.

 I have learnt to use some new technologies this week too. I can now link my photos to a GPS. This means that the exact place I took a photo can be recorded and other people can go back to where I have been looking. I also used my new toy this week, a little underwater video camera. I have put a couple of shots together to make this small film that shows life in some rock pools. I am also learning to use Excel, have started using Picasa, as well as the GPS software. It has taken time to learn and practise these and high tides in the middle of the day have given me time for this learning.
 A story about my fellowship also ran in The Taranaki Daily News on Wednesday. Here is a link to it. Taranaki Daily News Story
 The longer I am doing this the more it is combing in my head. The practise I am getting in the field, the new things I am learning, as well as my readings and thoughts on the nature of science are making a clearer picture of not only what one part of science is and also how it will look back in the school.