Week 8

Another busy week with variety. I got back on the beach this week, the first time in a couple of weeks because of being away, the weather and the tides. Sort of felt like going back home after being away on a holiday. There were a few changes baecause of the weather, a lot of seaweed washed up in one place, and some of the sand that was building up was washed out. These aren't scientific observations, just observations. That is one thing I have noticed this week, and probably over the whole time, science tries to be exact as possible. It uses measurement to record changes not just thoughts and opinions.
I spent Tuesday looking through a microscope and learning how to identify what I could see exactly. Erin has some soft sediment samples collected from Tongaporutu and we had to look through these with a microscope to see what lived in each sample. I had to learn what I was looking for, and how to distinguish between different worms, and different arthropods. I took me a while to go through each sample and Erin would find more once I had finished, she has much more experience at this and I am still learning. I am carrying on next week and want to get better at it and see if I can find everything and then correctly identify it.

My time at the beach gave me a chance to practise correctly identifying the different species I saw there. I am finding I can distinguish different whelks, barnacles, limpets, seaweeds, but there others I need more practise with, especially snails and chitons. I have also added a $1 coin to my photos to give a sense of scale to the species I am finding. There are however bigger and smaller examples of each species and I need to make it clear my photos are to act as a guide only. These are chitons, I'm pretty sure they are snakeskin chitons but this is an area I need to improve.

Week 7

I find it hard to believe it has been 7 weeks, the time seems to be racing.
I have spent a lot of time this week learning new skills and developing ideas and plans for the upcoming weeks. I had to learn to use Excel so I can collate data and for one reason or another I kept putting it off. When I met with Elise on Thursday she suggested I map out on paper what I want to see at the end, or how I want to use it. This helped greatly and just having a go meant I could get there. It is interesting to reflect on this, because intially I was thinking this is hard but once I had a go, and asked a couple of pertinent questions I found I could do it. I wonder how often kids are faced with this scenario.
I am getting people coming up to me in the supermarket, on the street, and in other places asking about what I am doing and giving me their own rock pool stories. Most of them I know, but some I haven't. This has all come about because of the article in the Taranaki Daily News a few weeks ago. They all understand what I am doing as well and think that it is a good thing to help science teaching back at school.
The tides and weather have been against me getting down to the beach and this has been a little frustrating. This is also part of what scientists do, it's not all field work, there is reading, data analysis, using the things that have been found out. In this respect I have been putting some of my photos and videos on to the Nga Motu Marine Reserve kete so that others can see what can be found there. Here is a link to have a look.
http://ketenewplymouth.peoplesnetworknz.info/nga_motu_marine_reserve_society/topics/show/89-images

Week 6

Well a completely different week for my learning this week.
As part of the Fellowship I am on when I return to school next year I need to offer professional development about teaching science. This will look at ways we can all become better at teaching science at the school. In order to do this the 13 teachers currently doing the Primary Teachers Science Fellowship were in Dunedin together to attend a leadership course. The course was run by the Otago School of Business Studies and involved a 360 assessment of our leadership style, a Myers Brigg Personality assessment, and lectures on the leadership, values, and visions. It was a fairly intense week and I learnt a lot about myself as well as the other topics I have already mentioned.
The other really good thing about the week was getting together with the other teachers because we had time to get to know each other a lot better as well as talk about the science we are doing, the things we are learning, and the highs and differences we are experiencing. Each of the teachers are involved in different projects, you can read about them on this link.
http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/programmes/funds/teacher-fellowships/profiles/2011/
This shows all the teacher fellows for this year, as well as the awarded fellowships, but it gives an insight into what others are doing. For any other teachers out there there are links from there if you are interested in applying.

One of the highlights of the week was a quick tour of Dunedin. Here is a photo of the teachers form the course at Baldwin st. the steepest street in the world.

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.

Week 4

It has been a busy week up and down the country.

Monday and Tuesday were in Auckland at Point England School for a course on the Nature of Science. It was for all the Primary Science Teacher Fellows and it was good to have some time together to get to know each other. We were involved in discussions, hands on science, looking at resources, all about the nature of science. These are the things we will be taking back to our schools next year and talking about with our colleagues. It was also a good chance to find out what the others were doing with their hosts and to start networking as a group. One of the things we discussed its featured in this video. Have a look to find out what it is.

On Wednesday I was interviewed by two journalism students in New Plymouth. One for Access Radio and a sound bite has played in a news item. I was also interviewed for The Taranaki Daily News. However because Taranaki won the Ranfurly Shield that night my story was bumped and is being held over for another day. I got back to the beach as well and I found myself running down to get there. I had my quadrat and went out onto the reef and practised identifying species and taking a quadrat sample. I had to go and pose for the photographer as well. That night I drove to Wellington

Thursday I went to the Island Bay Marine Reserve. I met up with Jules the educator there. I spent the morning with a group from Mohaka school looking on the reef and then in the aquarium they have. It really is a fantastic set up they have, especially the "gentle touch" tank (where this sea star photo was taken). That afternoon we had a tour through the Victoria University Design School (our daughter is aiming to go next year) and got to see a 3-D printer in action, as well as a lot of other things.

Friday was Victoria Open Day so spent the day looking around hostels and the main campus.

I have found that I keep coming back to the nature of science ideas we talked about at the start of the week.

Week 3

A week that has included snow for the first time in New Plymouth in living memory, and high tides in the middle of the day has meant less trips to the Marine Reserve. In fact it has meant only one visit, and that was Monday afternoon (the day it did actually snow). Erin and I went tdown to the Back Beach end of the Tapuae Marine Reserve and she taught me how to conduct a transect, and a quadrat.
It might sound like a case of going down tho the beach, measuring off 50m and then dropping down your quadrat and looking in it. However each step poses any number of questions. Like why are we starting here? How and will you remember this starting point? Which direction should the transect run? Which side of the transect will your quadrats be? All of these questions, and there were plenty of others like them, need to be answered from a scientific perspective and relate back to the questions and reasons for doing the study in the first place.
Then it was time for the quadrats themselves. This posed a new range of questions, but more importantly,  more learning. With Erin's guidance I learnt how to measure and count things within a quadrat. I certainly needed her help in some species identification and scientific names. It was good to start this process because it will be my way of collecting data.

I have also met with Elise and looked at GIS maps, and have started to learn how use these. friday was taken up with meetings with John form The Royal Society of New Zealand. Talking to him has been really good to help me think about not just my programme, but also to remind me to think on the nature of science, and to consider life back at school and how to help raise the level of science teaching back at school. The questions Erin asks me help me with this process too.

Week 2

The learning continues.

I have spent large parts of the week reading, researching and thinking about how to word a research proposal. Anyone can go to the rock pools and look, count,to  and identify creatures but by writing a reasearch proposal I have to really focus on why I am going to do this. What is it I want to find out? I have to write my methodolgy so that anyone else could go and do exactly the same thing. I keep telling Erin to be tough on me so that I can word it correctly. The whole process has really helped me focus on what it is I will be researching when I am in the Marine Reserve. It has made me start to think like a scientist (no I am not claiming to be one). It also makes me think about teaching and sometimes we do things for the sake of doing them without giving them a real purpose. This process is teaching me the importance of that step.

Mid day low tides have meant easier times to be in Tapuae Marine Reserve practising identifying species and getting to know the area. This week I have tried to focus on the differnt types of limpets. The more I observe the more questions keep coming into my head. Why is this type of seaweed found more on this reef and not others? Why is this seaweed out of the water black in the sun, greeny brown on cloudy days, and brown in the water? I think I know some of these answers but need to formulate them in more scientific terms in my head.

I have also now walked the whole of the Marine Reserve, not in one go, but over two days. From each end I have walked to the same point. I have taken more notice of the different types of reef along the Marine Reserve, from rocky shelves, to large boulder, to smaller boulder, and sandy beach areas. I am more familiar where I will find certain species, where I am more likely to see kingfishers, or where there is lots of Neptunes necklace for example. Walking the beach is also good thinking time for when I sit back down in front of my laptop to write. It helps refocus and invigorate me.