Bald EagleHaliaeetus leucocephalus Status: The Interior Department removed the bald eagle from the endangered species list on June 28, 2007. The bald eagle will still be protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. By Melanie Lintner |
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Daily
Reflections
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Personal Teaching Connection
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We started the day with
a reading from Lennie. She
read a poem about the prairie. She found it in a book that she
had purchased from the bookstore in the Portland Museum of Art.
Next, we went through a mapping activity of the Fading Footprints web
site. We then moved on to our workshop on the summit
species page model. We started creating our own pages with
information about the bird that we were studying. I am studying
the bald eagle. On the way back from lunch, Lennie and I walked along the path. We enjoyed the wonderful view. I took some pictures along the way. After lunch, David Sparks showed us several animals that he had with him. He had some dead brown bats. All of the other animals were alive. He had a flying squirrel, a box turtle, a chi  nchilla,
a fallow
deer, a skunk, an owl, and a boa constrictor. I was surprised at
how soft the chinchilla fur was. Some were brave and allowed
David to put the boa around their neck. I was not one of
them. Our next activity was our art lesson. Ellen showed us the method to use to reproduce a picture of our birds. We made a grid on the original picture and on the blank piece of paper. We used strips of paper to measure the points where the pictures crossed lines on the grid. We had to draw free-hand. The next step was to put our picture face down on a light table. We traced around our drawing, but the tracing had to be larger than our drawing. We then used a pencil to shade in on the back side of the drawing, creating our own carbon paper. We were then to tape our drawing to a piece of water color paper and use a pen to trace over our drawing. It would be transferred to the paper below because of the carbon paper that we had created. I was not able to do the last step because Ellen thought that it would be best to enlarge my drawing using a copy machine. That way my drawing would cover more of the 8 1/2 X 11 paper. I ended up having an hour and 45 minutes of free time. It was cold and rainy outside, so I decided not to go for a walk. Lennie and I ended up discussing how much students have changed over the years. After dinner, we met downstairs to discuss sharing our photos using Picasa. We then had time to work on our web pages. It has been a busy, but enjoyable day. |
My personal connection
is as to how I can work with the
teachers to help the students to create their own pages. I will
encourage the 7-12 teachers to have students create pages based on
their expedition for the year. I will also work with the
elementary teachers who are willing to tackle this type of project. |
We started the morning
with a reading from Tom from the
preface of Sibley's book on bird species. We
went to the Goose Rocks beach and met with Joy and Jordan with
the U. S. Fish & Wildlife. They discussed the nesting of the
piping plover and least
tern
nesti ng. We
recorded activity of the piping plover. We came
back to the McKernan Center for lunch. After lunch, we read an article, "Anatomy of an Expedition", that was written by David Grant. We discussed the ELOB framework. Next, we had our first watercolor lesson from Ellen. It certainly wasn't as easy as she made it look. Lennie and I went for a walk, in hopes of seeing the museum, but it was closed for the day. We enjoyed the walk anyway. We had Thai for supper. That was a new experience for me. It wasn't bad at all. After supper, we each discussed how we were feeling about our project. We then worked on our web pages. Most people worked until 9:45, but some stayed after that. |
I feel like I have a
better grasp on the total
process. I feel more comfortable about what I will be able to
contribute to my group's efforts for our expedition. |
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We got up early this
morning for a 6:30 breakfast.
After breakfast, we went to Scarborough Marsh for a canoe ride.
We saw the Common Tern, Double-crested Cormorant, Glossy Ibis, Great
Blue Heron, Great Egret, Herring Gull, Marsh Wren, Red-winged
Blackbird, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Snowy Egret, Tree Swallow,
Willet. I canoed with Tim and
Ashli. We worked on iMovie when we returned from the marsh. I enjoyed the editing aspect of iMovie, once I got over the fear of messing it up. We ate lunch and then had another art lesson. We painted the background of our pictures. I wasn't exactly pleased with mine. I'm really nervous about making my bald eagle look 3-dimensional. Our next activity was to finalize our species page. We are also going through a check point and dropping our files onto the server. |
I plan to relate my
experiences of the week to Steve
Goodlet. He would enjoy this expedition immensely. I can
see how this can be adapted to other disciplines and to our community. |
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We awoke to a beautiful
day in Maine. Our morning
reading was by David and from the ELOB book. Ellen followed that
with a quote. This morning we focused on structural, documentary,
and topic pages. We divided into teams for the topic pages.
I am working with Courtney and Nicole on the technology topic
page. We came up with the main ideas for the page before lunch. We had lunch at the cafeteria today. We ate outside since it was a beautiful day. We headed back for our art session. I was really stressed about painting the bald eagle, but surprised myself. It took me several hours to complete it, but I finally did. Courtney typed the information for the technology page while Nicole and I finished our paintings. At supper we celebrated Leah's birthday. The staff brought out a cheesecake with candles on it. The cheesecake was delicious. Courtney, Nicole and I met to review our technology page. We made some revisions, but feel good about the overall content of the page. Kira, Courtney and I decided that it was time for a walk. We walked down the path to the entrance of the beach that is by the cafeteria. We took off our shoes and walked along the beach. The water was cold, so we stayed in the sand. We walked as far as we could, and then exited the beach. We walked a little farther until the path ended. We were up on a hill with a terrific view of the other lighthouse. Most of the groups are stressed about their topic pages. We feel like we are finished with the technology page. I'm getting nervous now, thinking that maybe we haven't included everything that we might need. |
It is important to assess the students on several different activities
as the expedition is progressing. It is imperative to have things
planned for the students who finish early, and offer alternative
instruction and assistance for those students who need help to complete
the product. |
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We woke up to another
beautiful day in Maine. After
breakfast we worked on our topic pages. We made some revisions to
the technology pages. The entire group critiqued one another's
topic page. We then went back to revising the pages using the
suggestions from the others. Nicole wanted to complete the page,
so she skipped lunch. We completed most of the page before we started our technology piece of the expedition. David discussed image compression and the embedding of videos. I have never embedded video before. I am looking forward to trying this. We then discussed the other pages that needed to be designed to complete the product. Some of us volunteered to do those pages. Nicole and I volunteered to do the crew page. She had an idea of what she wanted to do for it. We plan to put in individual pictures and the group shot. Ashli took the individual pictures for us. David imported and resized them for us. We were getting down to crunch time on completing the crew page, and we still needed to type in email addresses and schools. Tom volunteered to type the names below the pictures and type in email addresses. |
I hope to have more time this year to devote to the individual
teachers. Some of them need a great deal of encouragement to step
out of their comfort zone and integrate more technology into their
classroom. I know that Lennie is now ready to do this. She
has accomplished so much this week. I want to make the time to incorporate some of the technologies of the summit that I have never used before. I have used a video camera before, but I had never filmed for a documentary. I enjoyed editing the video clips in iMovie. I had never used Picasa before, but I now have it installed on my personal laptop. |