Mars Exploration

Final Project

2008-09-22T12:38:00.000-07:00

Please click on the link below to view my final project. I created an informative video based on the information I have learned during this inquiry project.

Personal Connection

2008-09-22T12:37:00.001-07:00

Before starting this inquiry project, to be honest, I was a little timid due to the fact I never created a blog. I knew the researching aspect of the project would be my strong point, but I was a little weary on creating a blog. However, I grew familiar with the blogging software and I liked writing about what we're reading in class and connection it to our inquiry project. From the readings, I tried to incorporate different information literacy models into the inquiry process.
At first I liked the I-search process because the model stimulated my thinking about Mars Exploration. However, once I "scratched the surface I found the 8W's to be an important model that helped me dive deeper into my inquiry project. During the inquiry process, I was constantly re-evaluating my information and in a way jumping from webbing to weaving and back again. I felt as long as I was learning new information about my topic and challenging my thinking then it was okay to jump around during the inquiry process. I enjoyed having the opportunity to conduct this inquiry on Mars Exploration and connect it to what I was reading about in class.

Wishing

2008-09-22T12:36:00.003-07:00

I believe my project went well. As far as my strengths; incorporating reading sources and connecting it to what are learning in class was one strength on my project. Strategies from well-known authors such as Callison, McKenzie, Lamb, and Kuhlthau are discussed in my weekly blogs. Another strength would be that the blog is easy to read and has a changing RSS feed from NASA. The RSS feed, on the right-hand side of the blog gets updated daily with information pertaining to Mars Exploration and outer space. The images also add a visual appeal to the blog that I feel is important. It's important to make your blog appealing to the reader and by incorporating images of Mars and the Sojourner Rover the reader will become interested in learning about Mars Exploration.
Some of my weaknesses; I wish I could continue to work on the blog and incorporate information inquiry concepts we are learning and reading in class. This could be perhaps a semester long project and it would give us another opportunity to experiment. I think I might implement this plan so I can see how my understanding of certain concepts have emerged during the course of the semester. I feel like I have something good going on right now and I want to continue to add to the blog and develop it into an excellent resource piece. The semester long blog would also be a nice addition to any resume!
My personal inquiry process gave me the insight into what young adults or children would experience. The information I learned; such as organizing resources, daily entries, and incorporating new media aspects(rss feed, pictures, video) will be shared with my future students. I'm sure they will benefit from the information I teach them about my inquiry process and more importantly they will teach me concepts they feel is or was beneficial to them during the inquiry process. It's important to develop a community of learning in the media center, according to Stripling and Hughes-Hassell, "Communities of inquiry are created when teachers and students build a shared purpose for learning, when they embrace a diversity of perspectives and engage in the process of developing new understandings, when they share responsibility for supporting and challenging each other, and when they connect their learning experiences in school with the outside world and their futures." After reading this statement I thought back to the beginning of the project and remembered thinking how this inquiry project could have a positive impact on the future students I teach. There is no greater reward than working in a team based atmoshphere and working with other individuals who share the same common goal as you do.

Sources:
Stripling, Barbara K. & Hughes-Hassell, Sandra, Curriculum Connections Through The Library. Westport, Connecticut. Libraries Unlimited. 2003

Waving

2008-09-22T12:36:00.001-07:00

I plan on sharing my blog with my fellow peers as well as family. The information I have gained and presented in my final informative product will educate the viewer about Mars Exploration. I do believe people will be interested in reading the blog because I made visually appealing to the reader. Throughout the sharing process, if individuals have suggestions, I will make those changes or additions to the blog in order to make the blog a more "unison" creation that all can enjoy. I will publish my blog and final project to the web.
I will provide an email feature so students, classmates, or visitors can email me their comments about the Mars Exploration blog.

Wrapping

2008-09-21T06:14:00.000-07:00

The information learned during this inquiry project will be made into an informative video. The video will highlight my original questions, and the answer to the original question will be presented below the question. I will also state facts about Mars and or the Mars Exploration Program. The information I have learned the past 3-4 weeks is important because I have work hard to find the information I was looking for. Whenever you work on a project for any certain length of time you become more and more interested in the topic. I found this particular true for my "Mars Exploration Inquiry" blog. I believe by presenting the facts I have learned, about the Mars Exploration program in a cool looking video, I will catch the viewers attention. They will not only learn about the Mars Exploration Program, but will hopefully share what they have learned with their peers.

As stated in the book, Information Power, Building Partnerships for Learning, "Inquiry is an essential component of learning in the information age, and the library media program is the keystone in a school's effort to promote efficient and effective self directed inquiry."

Looking back, on the past 3-4 weeks, I feel more comfortable with the learning process associated with the Inquiry process; I have incorporated and thought about Kuhltha's Seven Step Process, McKenzies's 10 step strategy when searching for digital resources, the Big Six & Super 3, and the Eight W's. They all have their advantages, but I feel by having a solid understanding of each model I will be able to rely this information to my future students as well as my fellow teachers!

Sources:
Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning. Washington, D.C.: American Library Association, 1998.

Weaving

2008-09-20T09:02:00.000-07:00

The information I have learned during the inquiry project was organized in a logical way. I decided the best way to approach my original questions was to write them down. Once I wrote down my questions, the resources I found that contained the answer to the original question was written below the original question. I found this to be extremely helpful because it kept everything organized and most importantly easy to follow and understand. In the past, I have implemented this method on past projects and it has helped me a great deal to keep the information organized.

As future media specialists, its important to collaborate with the other teachers which will ultimately help the students have a positive learning environment. According to Doll, in her book, Collaboration and The School Library Media Specialist, and as advocated by the ALA, "the school library media specialist would assume full responsibility for moving library skills and information literacy instruction away from isolation in the school library media center and into a state of integration throughout the school curriculum."

When collaborating with other teachers its important that everyone understands your research and the findings you have gathered. By presenting the material in a logical way; question - then the resource that answers the question, you are helping the other teachers who are collaborating with you understand the information you have gathered for the inquiry project. With the information you have researched, they can apply other information they have found during the inquiry project. It's a Win-Win situation..!

Sources:
Doll, Carol A. Collaboration and The School Library Media Specialist. Maryland: Lanham, 2005.

State Standards

2008-09-18T10:52:00.000-07:00

After reading Indiana's Academic State Standards for science, and reading the book, Information Power, Building Partnerships for Learning, both sources take into account the importance of the independent learner and teaching your students the principles of information literacy. As stated in the book,
" Standard 4 - - The student who is an independent learner is information literate and pursues information related to personal interests."
By conducting our own unique inquiry, we as a class, are in a way becoming an independent learner and applying principles we have learned in the past as well as what we are currently learning in our class. Lamb's 8W's are coming full circle and I'm now grasping the overall importance of the 8W's and how they are applied to the inquiry process

Standard 4 continues on to state, " the student actively and independently seeks information to enrich understanding of career, community, health, leisure, and other personal situations. The student constructs meaningful personal knowledge based on that information and communicates that knowledge accurately and creatively across the range of information formats."

As far as Indiana's academic state standards, the following standards would be incorporated into a number of lesson plans or inquiry projects dealing with Mars Exploration

For the fourth grade students I would incorporate the following lesson into the media center.
Students would search on the internet and in the library for sources that deal with Mars Exploration. The sources found on the internet or in books would be compared. If two or more sources mentioned the same thing then students could incorporate the source into a final project of their choice. Final projects could arrange from an oral presentation to a power point slide presentation. The students woould devlop their critical response skills(4.2.6) and would develop the skill of researching a number of print and electronic materials.

Critical Response Skills
4.2.6 Support statements with facts found in print and electronic media, identify the sources used, and expect others to do the same.

Scientific Inquiry
5.1.2 Begin to evaluate the validity of claims based on the amount and quality of the evidence cited.

Manipulation and Observation
5.2.4 Keep a notebook to record observations and be able to distinguish inferences from actual observations

During the month long lesson, one of the four learning centers, in the media center, would have the latest pictures of Mars. Some of the images would be of Martian soil, atmosphere, or dust storms that have developed in the Mars atmoshpere. The students will be given their "Mars Magic Journals" to capture their thoughts and what they think is occurring on the Planet of Mars. During the last week of class, I will have a live NASA feed into this learning center that will showcase what is occurring on the Red Planet. The students can compare their notes along with the NASA scientists and see if they were both on the same path. The notebook will provide the students a place to capture their thoughts and the importance of imagination in learning new concepts such as Mars Exploration.

Sources:
Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning. Washington, D.C.: American Library Association, 1998.

Wiggling

2008-09-17T18:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I now have a wealth of information dealing with Mars Exploration and I have to develop some type of organization scheme in order to comprehend the information better. As a student, I would be going crazy right about now, but I believe an excellent idea to incorporate into the research project would be some type of online chart or organizational software program. Last week, I downloaded Google Notebook to organize all of the information I have gathered thus far in the project. I found this resource to be user friendly and helped me organize my resources and thoughts about the resources. I have also created a flow chart that contains my original questions along with the resources listed below the questions. From the sources listed below, I found them to be accurate and I have read the same views expressed by more then two websites. This is important because it's imperative to have information that is correct and information that doesn't offer a bias. However, bias is good in some circumstances, but I want information that is correct because I'm learning about something I find interesting. Later on, I can create my own bias about NASA or Mars Exploration. These are important concepts, that as a student he/she must understand and concepts as a teacher you must explain to your students. As for myself, having the opportunity to create this blog and inquiry project is giving me first-hand experience that will be beneficial to my students. Perhaps more importantly the blog will help me in a way relate to my students and show them what I experienced during the learning process of this inquiry project!
According to Rosenfeld and Loertscher's book, Toward a 21st Century School Library Media Program, "the Internet provides students greater decision-making power to accept, reject, modify, and create new forms of information, without the search skills and critical evaluation skills to determine relevancy and reliability, students will not be prepared to undertake the rigorous research requirements of college." This is an important fact to consider and think about when I do decide to implement the inquiry project into my classroom. I believe it's important to educate the students about proper research skills so they will have a solid foundation to build upon.

Sources:
Rosenfeld, Esther & Loertscher, David V. Toward a 21st-Century School Library Media Program. The Scarecrow Press Inc., Lanham, Maryland. 2007.

Webbing

2008-09-16T04:53:00.000-07:00

Below is a wonderful lesson plan that gives the students the "choice" to pick the scientist they would like to portray in the project. This is a important concept because students need to have the opportunity to make their own educational decisions. The I-Search Process, discussed in Callison's Blue Book, would go hand-in-hand with this lesson plan. The students, once they have picked their scientist can form groups of similar or different scientists and discuss what they know or find of interest, in dealing with Mars. During the lesson, they will view pictures of the Mars landing site and develop a set of experiments to conduct. Phase II of the I-Search Process has each team classify what they want to know or what they know from looking at the pictures. Phase III, or step 3, the students will "tell a story" about what they want to know and or form a hypothesis. Phase IV - VII , the students continue to conduct their research by webbing and addressing other aspects that they feel is important. The final step will have the students create a presentation about what information they have learned from conducting this project. This could be a form of PowerPoint, paper, or verbal presentation shared with the other students of their school.

According to Marilyn Joyce and Julie Tallman, " I-Search is an approach to research that uses the power of student interests,builds on personal understanding of the research process, and encourages stronger student writing."

http://marsrover.nasa.gov/classroom/roverquest/lesson02.html

Resources
Callison, Daniel and Leslie Preddy. (2006). The Blue Book on Information Age Inquiry, Instruction and Literacy. Libraries Unlimited.

Favorite_Websites & Textbooks

2008-09-09T06:33:00.000-07:00

Below is a list of websites that have been useful during the research process. Along with my ask-an-expert resource, I have been delighted that a number of my original questions have been answered. However, those answers have peaked an interest in other areas, such as:
~What is the Rover made of?
~Long term goals of the program?
~Have aliens been seen during the exploration phase of the Mars rover?
~How do you become in charge or the driver of the Mars Rover.

Websites and books below have helped me a great deal during this project.
http://marsweb.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/index1.html
1 ~ Mars Rover discoveries during the expedition. Provides excellent overall information about Mars Exploration.

http://www.marsnews.com/missions/pathfinder/
2 ~ Information on the Mars Rover and computer data on the amount information the Rover can send back. Images of its surroundings after it first landed on the Martian soil.

http://www.astrobio.net/news/article282.html
3 ~ Excellent interview with the Project Manager; discusses what was learned from Mars Exploration.

Lafontaine, Bruce. Mars Exploration: Fact and Fantasy. New York: Dover Publications, 2002.
4 ~ Textbook that states interesting and usual facts about Mars.

http://cmex.ihmc.us/SiteCat/sitecat2/Pathfind.htm
5 ~ Information on the project and battery life of the Mars Rover. Information on the size, length and weight are also presented in the website.

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/phoander.htm
6 ~ Information on the scientists behind the project and discoveries that they learned during the Mars Rover Project.

http://8.12.42.31/1997/jul/03/news/mn-9320
7 ~ The gadgets behind the Mars Rover; camera, robotic arm etc.

http://starryskies.com/space_exploration/Pathfinder_html/pathfinder_background.html
8 ~ Information on the landing site and what the site was chosen for the first exploration of the Martian surface.

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/science/space-sci/exploration/mission-mars-sci.html
9 ~ Excellent video on how they are researching to send a manned mission to Mars. Other videos that deal with the Red Planet.

http://news.oreilly.com/2008/07/the-software-behind-the-mars-p.html
10 ~ Beneficial information on how the project was started and what materials were used to create the Rovers.

Watching

2008-09-03T20:07:00.000-07:00

Well for the past few days I've been watching the NASA and National Geographic channel. During my "TV time" I watched a number of programs that dealt with space exploration. Not all the programs dealt with Mars Exploration, but gave me great insight into the NASA exploration and why they are interested in sending manned and unmanned missions to Mars. The information I learned during the "watching" phase will be applied to my future phases; webbing, wiggling, weaving, wrapping as well as how this is tied to state standards.

It seems as if I'm overwhelmed with a wealth of information about Mars exploration. However, I'm looking forward to analyzing the data I have gained and sharing what I have learned in my upcoming posts!

Below is a link to informative video's presented and created by National Geographic
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/science/space-sci/solar-system/mission-mars-sci.html

Great Resource_NASA retired librarian

2008-08-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

Hello - well after sending out a number of emails to librarians whom worked for NASA, or I thought worked for NASA, I finally got a response....! This was kind of like a scavenger hunt, trying to find their emails was one problem and then getting them to contact me was another. However, my contact had been working at the NASA Kennedy Space Center Library for the past 20 years and since has retired. I am looking forward to learning more about his experiences as well as his insight about Mars Exploration. He might not have the first-hand experience I'm looking for, but having the background knowledge of Mars exploration and what resources are available for the research teams and staff will be beneficial to my project and blog...

Wondering_ _ ?'s

2008-08-27T19:50:00.000-07:00

~ Why is Mars called the "Red Planet"?
~ How long is a Martian year?
~ Why is NASA interested in sending spacecrafts to Mars?
~ How much does it cost to send a spacecraft to Mars?
~ What was the first spacecraft to land on Mars?
~ Does Mars have any moons?
~ What is the average temperature on Mars?
~ What do the NASA scientist do with the information they gain from the pathfinder and sojourner Mars exploration discoveries.
~ When is the first maned mission to Mars?
~ Are any other countries sending spacecrafts to Mars?
~ Who came up with the names of the Sojourner spacecraft?
~ Do scientist think life exists on Mars?
~ Can life be supported on Mars?

Why Mars Exploration as my Topic...?

2008-08-25T17:13:00.000-07:00

Why Mars Exploration..?

2008-08-25T16:38:00.000-07:00

Ever since I was a young boy I always wanted to go to outer space. Working for the NASA library would be the next best thing and perhaps fulfill my dream of helping our future generation of astronauts reach outer space. By creating this blog, I will learn about new missions, in particular their future travels to Mars.

In the coming weeks, I look forward to learning more about this topic and conducting my own exploration by implementing what we are reading in our class. I believe the most important aspect of this project will be to incorporate technology into the inquiry project. This is important because according to Betty J. Morris's Book, Administering the School Library Media Center, "In terms of impact and importance, the educational applications of technology and, in particular, the use of the Internet for research and instructional purposes is the most significant application in the school setting." Not only do the students learn important research skills, but the learn how to evaluate websites and other online sources.

Sources:
Morris, Betty J. Administering the School Library Media Center. Connecticut: Westport 2004.

Mars Exploration

2008-08-24T17:15:00.000-07:00

Hello, my name is Benjamin Wyatt and welcome to my Mars Exploration Blog. Over the next few weeks I'll be making blog posts to this blog about Mars exploration. This is my first ever blog so I'm looking forward to learning about creating a blog as well as learning about Mars Exploration.

With the emergence of technology in our schools the students are becoming much more technology literate. According to Callison, "the new learning environments possible through the integration of technology into the school and media center curriculum as: multi sensory, multi path in their progression, multimedia, collaborative, proactive, and authentic and real world in context."

By having the opportunity to conduct an inquiry into a topic that interests us, and documenting our discoveries in a form of a blog we will have the opportunity to, "walk in our students shoes," which ultimately will help them have a positive learning experience when we implement this type of project into our curriculum!

Sources:
Callison, Damiel, & Abilock, Debbie. (2002, February). Key words in instruction: Technology. School Library Media Activities Monthly, 18(6), 36-40.