The weather just got really really cold. All the trees that I have been taking pictures of lost their leaves, and its pretty sad. I went to JFK airport on Wednesday and got some footage for our video. It is very funny, and hopefully will be put to good use. I am still taking pictures and posting on ISeeChange. I am also looking at some interesting research so that we can start to write our paper.
Category Archives: Final Projects
Update Week 4
Our trip was great! We got a lot of nice footage in the mountains and had a lot of fun observing sunspots. It was really nice to be able to get out of the city to hike and participate in informal science learning. The Stanford Sun Lab website was a great resource for inexpensive and easy methods to view the sun. I’m bummed we didn’t get to see any sunspots, but I’m sure if I were to do the experiment again on a different day, I might get better results. I also really liked that our observation method was a very simple pinhole camera- as a photographer, it was easy for me to understand how the process worked.
Sun spot update
We’re heading up to Bear Mountain to look at the sun and look for sun spots, safely of course. Daniel has blatantly disobeyed the GPS and went the wrong way, but he loves to sing with the man Nat King Cole.
(Six?) Team Boomer-aang
This week, we were unsure as to whether or not we were going to change our topic. Michelle and I were really captivated by the Imax presentation at the American Museum of Natural History concerning dark energy and dark matter. We frequently discuss those two topics, and we wondered if having the Citizen Science event center on those topics instead of nuclear power would interest more people and therefore fill more seats, but we decided against it. We’d already done quite a bit of research, so there was no need to backpedal.
Since we’re severely lacking guest speakers, we’re going to screen a documentary instead. We’re not sure which documentary we’ll screen – we’ll start watching some soon – but we’ve found a hefty bunch. I’m also going to invite people at my high school this Wednesday to the event. I’ll be printing out fliers there as well. Free ink is quite nice.
Sun Spot Update
Our group has been doing research on sun spots related to their history, hypotheses on their causes and impact over time, and how to study them as citizen scientists. We’ve been reading about them on the PBS Nova website and in scientific articles.
We planned on going to Van Cortland Park to see sun spots on our own on Saturday, November 9th but the sky was quite cloudy and we couldn’t see the sun, so we postponed our trip. We have decided to go to Bear Mountain this coming Sunday, November 24th to look for sun spots at a higher altitude, and to bond with nature. We will also be filming our trip and our experience for our documentary. Unfortunately the picture quality of our documentary will probably not be as good as we expected because Macaulay did not have a better camera available for us to use, which is disappointing but we’ll make the best of it!
Team Boomer-aang: Week 6
We were having a difficult time finding guest speakers for the event. So, upon the suggestion of Professor Adams, we have changed our format.
Instead of guest speakers, we are screening a documentary and then having a discussion afterwards. This weekend I will watch a selection of nuclear power documentaries and pick one to screen. James, Mohamed, and I will lead three groups to discuss pros and cons, and future of nuclear energy.
Update 6
I am still posting on the website iSee Change about the weather I am observing in Brooklyn. I am working to put the video together with Sudipta. I am also reading an article for the paper, summarizing it and writing how the strands apply.
Sample Advocacy Letter
A big component of our digital deliverable is educating the audience as to how they can get involved in advocacy for state recognition. We will encourage them to contact their local legislators, who can make a direct change in passing legislation to put measures in place that will guarantee music therapy a slot as an allied health profession. To facilitate this process we have tried to obtain sample letters that would serve as a template for their future engagement. The one attached below will be handed out at the end of the presentation to encourage further engagement and catalyze their future advocacy roles.
Week 5
Due to inopportune weather last week, we were unable to make the trip to observe the sunspots. However, the good news is that this Sunday we will hopefully go to Van Cortland park to observe the sunspots and shoot our documentary and we are looking forward to it!
Week 5 Team Boomer-aang
This week we were trying to decide on whether or not we should switch topics. The reason for this is because none of the professors were able to respond to our requests to come in to present in our cafe. Consequently, if we changed the topics it may be easier to discuss them. The topics to switch to is from Nuclear Power to Dark Energy. Dark Energy was chosen as a topic because of the information in the seminar trip that sparked our interests. However, we decided that it would be best to just remain on Nuclear Power. I already did some research on NP so it would be counterproductive to start a new topic. Ultimately, we will continue with NP, but we may just present ourselves.
