MrAShin's Adventures: August 2014

The topics and relevance of both earth and space science in today’s world is so vast that it cannotbe covered by the grade 12 textbook. It is up to us to learn beyond the textbook and dig up the past, stay up to date with the present, and to predict and adjust for the future.

Blogging, like anything on Internet, can be time wasting, useless, and can have a negative effect on society. However, with responsible use and with the right goals in mind, blogging and anything on the internet can be powerful tools for learning

Each week, you will be responsible for researching and blogging about a topic to take our learning beyond the textbook. All you must do is find a video, topic, picture, quote, or discussion in class that you find interesting. Then, research further and then blog about it. It will serve as an ideaboard for future projects or research papers, as well as serve as a summative journal reflection piece (layer B) as you progress through the course. Please see rubric.

However, your audience will not only be me. An important aspect of blogging is the community and its feedback. We will be providing feedback to each other consistently to improve our blogging skills.

When our writing has improved enough, we will ask other teachers, professors, Masters/Ph D students, and even your parents to comment on your posts. I have an agreement by the first year UT astronomy professor, Professor Mike Reid and a graduate student, to read and comment on a post of your choice later in the year.

You are certainly free to post course related content as much or as little as you want. After all, your blog posts are just a reflection of the learning that you want to get through this course.

However, after talking to a couple different professors, they need your writing to improve. As a result, I will be looking to mark an in-depth blogpost on a biweekly basis according to the attached rubric.

Here are some spectacular blogs to read the latest on earth and space science from:

Space

https://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/

http://thespacewriter.com/wp/

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html

http://hobbyspace.com/Blog/

http://nineplanets.org/news/

http://www.nasawatch.com/

Earth

http://all-geo.org/

http://woostergeologists.scotblogs.wooster.edu/tag/basalt/

http://jerseyboyshuntdinosaurs.blogspot.hk/2014/08/interview-with-artist-luis-v-rey.html