Thunderstorm!

Last night we had a fairly long-lasting Prairie thunderstorm. It was one of those days were you can feel it coming...in my case, quite literally, as I developed a headache as the storm approached.

Conditions were perfect: hot, unstable air, moisture (to form clouds and rain) and lift (a front). I was not terribly excited about the storm, as it was just another Prairie thunderstorm. However, I got excited in a hurry when I saw cumulonimbus mammatus clouds forming. To the best of my knowledge, they're fairly rare, and I haven't seen them here before.

I grabbed my point and shoot camera and snapped a few photos before they disintegrated. It was getting pretty dark, so they can be hard to see, but they would have been spectacular if the sunlight had lasted just a little bit longer...

They are named "mammatus" due to their shape, which is somewhat udder-like. The interesting thing about them is that they are a rare example of clouds forming in stable (sinking) air.

They are poorly understood, but I have heard they are formed like this:
- the temperature of the subsiding air increases as as the air descends (adiabatic warming)

- this temperature increase is offset by the energy required to evaporate the precipitation particles

- if more energy is required for evaporation than is generated by the subsidence, the sinking air will be cooler than its surroundings and will continue to sink downward (as stable air does).

Over time, the cloud droplets do eventually evaporate and the mammatus dissolve, which took about 10 or 15 minutes.

Overall, they were pretty impressive. And then after it got dark, the lightning and thunder started in earnest. I was out on my balcony and I took a few shots (but I missed MANY spectacular pictures of lightning).

This was pretty cool - the whole sky was streaked with lightning, and this just shows the tail end (or my reflexes wouldn't have caught anything!).

Geography Quotes

"They went to sleep under the stars, which the maths teachers would count, the astronomy teachers would measure, and the literature teachers would name. The geography teachers got lost in the woods and fell into bear traps." --T.Pratchett (and courtesy of D.Gabrielson)

"The philosophy of the school was quite simple - the bright boys specialised in Latin, the not so bright in science and the rest managed with geography or the like." -- Aaron Klug (Physicist)

"Mathematics was hard, dull work. Geography pleased me more. For dancing I was quite enthusiastic." John James Audubon

"Anyone who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography" -- Robert Byrne

Ok, so the last one is only peripherally related to geography, but I found it amusing.

Day 4 of the SI

Delicious proved useful when I couldn't remember the name of a book mentioned yesterday, and it was really easy to look up. Score 1 point for learning new things! Yesterday I was most impressed with the fact that I can get the RSS feeds directly from Journal webpages, thus making it easier (and cheaper) to keep on top of relevant articles. I can use this to keep an eye out for articles relevant to my students, and pass them on where useful.

With all of this technology, most of which I want to use RIGHT NOW, I'll have to give careful thought to affordance (action potential) and context. To enhance the student experience, I want tools that make learning more interesting, or easier, but that will work with their existing tools and skills. I know that students experience trepidation when asked to do something entirely new, so I may need to assess these tools from multiple viewpoints. Right now, I think group blogs may meet my goals - they're easy to use, allow multiple authors, facilitate feedback, and are hosted free on multiple sites.

I'm thinking of creating an assignment where my students will create blogs (a group of students work together on one blog), and use them to convey information about a particular research topic. They would use the internet to hunt down information on a topic, and then synthesize that information and link to key resources via their blog. Other students could comment and provide feedback.

Today we discussed Second Life, which looks interesting, but doesn't immediately grab me with the same interest that I have for some other tools.

We had an interesting discussion about the role of the University Institution with technology change. With content increasingly available online, what role will the University have? Why would students come to classes? I think there is a social interaction that students appreciate that (for the most part) we can't duplicate online yet. Certainly providing credentials will continue to be a role, but many students I've spoken with enjoy the face to face interaction with peers and faculty. I have several students that dropped an online version of a geography class, and are currently taking my course to get that interaction and discussion.

And the learning continues...

Question: how much technology do students in a "traditional lecture-style" class want? If they come to class, and read the book, and do their labs, do they want to have extra digital resources like blogs, wikis or podcasts? Or is it just too much information? And if we provide these things, are they in addition to, or in lieu of class time? At what point is it too much work to look at all the "stuff" available?

Today we discussed augmented, blended, and online learning. I think that augmented learning is most realistic in my classroom (at this time). In my year here I've learned that change comes slowly, so the best way to effect that change NOW is to play with new ideas in my classroom.

I'd like to start creating review Podcasts for my students, or slideshows on difficult concepts. Audacity is possibly the most useful thing I've learned in this class so far. It is simple to use, and seems very impressive.

Google Reader should make some difference in my data acquisition process, and now I'm going to have to comb the internet for RSS feeds!

The discussion on digital literacy was very interesting...what constitutes literacy? Do we only acquire the skills we "need"? I

From Lankshear and Knobel (2005), "Paul Gilster, author of a best selling book called Digital Literacy (1997), defines digital literacy as ‘the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide variety of sources when it is presented via computers’ and, particularly, through the medium of the Internet (in Pool 1997)".

One interesting thought: I have had students who are part of the so-called "net generation", but have relatively limited digital literacy, particularly as the skills relate to educational medium (library searches, academic journals, accessing course learning system, etc). They would probably not call themselves digitally illiterate, and before today, I wouldn't have thought of them that way either...but maybe those skills are a part of being literate in today's educational system.

Summer Institute Begins!

I'm taking a course through the Continuing Education Department, and it started today. The title is "Introduction to Emerging Technologies (Summer Institute, or SI)", and my purpose for taking this course was to learn more ways to integrate technology into my classes.

I'm teaching a summer session course, in addition to taking this course, and while this may seem a bit crazy (today confirmed that it is, in fact, crazy!), I learned some interesting things.

First, the transition from student/learner in a course to instructor of a course in a 10 minute timeframe is very disorienting! I had my head all jammed full of ideas, and was trying to sort the new ones into my current technological paradigm, and then I had to dump that information, and totally switch gears into "teacher mode" for physical geography. It doesn't sound hard, but it required some mental gymnastics.

Back in the SI, I really enjoyed the discussion we had about privacy issues and facebook. One of my ongoing concerns is the sheer volume of personal information my friends (and I) make available online. I have been surprised that some of my friends, who have been quite fanatical about their privacy in the past, have put up facebook pages and started posting information, pictures, and details about their lives.

We all leave digital imprints and create digital identities, but how much information do I want up about me? And when, if ever, do I want my students to see my facebook page? I have some former students on my facebook, but I've made a point to use it rarely. As that changes, I'm not sure I want them all to see my vacation pictures, comments to friends, or that sort of thing.

Another interesting discussion, and something I'd like to follow up on, was the idea that social software reflects the current divisions in our culture. If technology is mirroring, or amplifying, or existing class divisions, then there are rather large social implications. I'd like to explore this further.

Today we used Delicious, a social bookmarking service, and I thought it would be a good tool for students to use to find and bookmark useful websites for a course. In my Physical Geography class I provide a list with the syllabus, but this would be something the students could contribute to, and take some ownership of, during the course. And Delicious may have other uses for an assignment I'm creating...we'll see how that progresses.

My blog and I have been "on a break". I wrote on some other blogs, and my blog mocked me with it's blank pages; there were words exchanged (mostly in my head), and of course who can forget the months of frosty silence?

We've reconciled our differences and I've come back to add something new.

Finally, a real snowfall

Looks like snow is here to stay - we got about 7 inches on Tuesday/Wednesday, and it caused a certain amount of chaos. Cars slid around (terrifying pedestrians), busses became much more popular, and walking involved a certain amount of sliding along. One of my students was late for my lecture on Tuesday and later apologized - she was late because she was hit by a car. Hmmm...I'll accept that as a legitimate excuse all right. Thankfully she was ok.

I was really happy that we finally got snow - I've been Saskatchewanized (to a certain extent) and I've come to expect snow as part of my winter. In fact, to all those BC people that thought I was crazy, and now have salmon swimming by their mailboxes and have to canoe to work, I say: HA!

At least it's a dry cold...