MItosis and Meiosis

The activity that I performed for mitosis and meiosis was not quite as fun as the candy activity that the rest of the class did. Although, the activity was still a very good representation of the process of mitosis and meiosis. In my activity I used different colored sheets of paper for my activity. There were different colors of paper each represented by a letting (T,A, G, C). Within the letters the T paired with an A and a G paired with a C. This process was representing cells pairing together and splitting in the process of duplication. 

In this project not only taught me more about mitosis and meiosis but also made it easier for me to remember the information by making it happen myself, on the table in front of me. Mitosis is the simple duplication of a cell and its parts. It duplicates its DNA into two new cells that are called daughter cells that of course, have the same genetic code. The main idea of this is that you have one cell to start they split and you get two that are the same. The process of this happening is brought through the 5 phases called prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase, and interphase.

In meiosis , there are two divisions as where in mitosis  there is one division. Now, in mitosis, four cells are created but they one receive half of the DNA needed by a cell. Meiosis takes place when its time to reproduce an organism. As you some say there is meiosis one and meiosis two, really this is just the phases of prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase and interphase happening twice.

Mitosis and meiosis are the same in the fact that the both go through the process of the five stages and they are different because mitosis goes through the five stages once to create one duplicate and meiosis goes through it twice to create four new ones which contain half the DNA and are not necessarily functioning cells.  

Easily Adapted to Candy Land

In class we broke into our groups and were instructed to create an environment of any kind and name its form of "water", temperature, air type, etc. Next we passed our environments onto the next group where they created organisms to live within our environment and draw them out.
 The environment that my group designed was based off of what you might imagine candy land to be. The water was made out of orange Hawaiian punch, the geosphere would include sprinkle sand, oreo crumbles and rock candy. The hydrosphere is clear air that smells like delicious chocolate with a stable temperature of 68 degrees F year round. The "Hawaiian Ocean" floor consists of nothing but candy canes.
The organisms that the other group designed to live in our environment were a gumdrop tree, a snicker tree and a soup patch kid shrub to serve as producers. Next they created a peep, a ginger bread man, and a chocolate bunny that were primary consumers and lastly was a gingerbread man who was the secondary consumer. These yummy creatures are all adapted well to the environment because they are all yummy treats that involve the same type of needs.
Our partner group also designed a rather creative environment. The environment that they created is what I pictured to be all green and full of life. The environment was rich in oxygen and full of water. It had clear water and a  moderate temperature that was fitting for all life living within. They even added a beautiful touch of multiple waterfalls and mountains. My group had the  job of creating organisms to live within this environment. We first created "raw raw" which grows in the water, "mossimo" which only needs two days of sun and furnsilla. These three plants are our primary producers. Our primary consumers were the bazoo which is basically a mix between a zebra and a moose which fed mostly off of the fernsilla and the mossimo and sam who lives in the clear fresh water and feeds off of the plant raw raw. Serving ad our secondary consumer is a "saber" who eats sam and bazoo. All of these organisms are adapted well the the environment because they live well off of the conditions is presents. An example of this would be saber. Saber has webbed feet to help him through all the water that is surrounding his environment. This helps him easily catch his prey(sam) who lives in the water. He is able to move swiftly and quickly which means the mountains will not stand in his way of getting to bazoo.

Co-evolution

In class we performed an activity involving different types of beans, split peas and birds (which were us, the students in the class). In the beginning of the activity we were separated into three different groups based on whether we received a knife, spoon or a fork. The knife, spoon and fork represented the beak of the bird that we were. a certain amount of each type of bean and pea was counted out and placed into a cup and all birds gathered in the front of the room. When the cup of food was dumped on the floor all of the birds using only their beaks had to pick up as much food as they could and place it in their hand which represented their stomach. When the time was up each group (either spoon, knife, or fork) was to add up the amount of each type of food that they got as a group. According to the results the amount of each type of bean and pea would either increase or decrease and this would also affect the amount of each type of beaked bird and how many of their kind survived. The type of bird that got the most food was able to reproduce and there would be an increasing number of them and the other types decreased in number. Natural selection is the process whereby an organism is better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. As stated above this activity demonstrates natural selection because the more food one group of birds was able to collect the more offspring they were able to collect and the less the group was able to collect the more of them died off. In the activity as the group of spoons grew large the forks were slowly decreasing but safe although they were largely outnumbered by the spoons and the knives got down to just one member. Co-evelution is the evolution of two species in which the evolution  of one affects the evolution of another. This activity demonstrates co-evolution because as one group obtains more food and grows in number another group will struggle to gain more food causing them to decrease in population. I was in the group of forks. My group worked together to maximize our ability to eat beans by using one beak to scoop it into the others beak for faster eating.
I think that this activity was really beneficial and helpful to have a better understanding of the concepts of co-evolution and natural selection. This is something that I feel could be done with many different age groups of children but also appropriate to do in the college setting.
Coevolution Activity F 2015.xlsx

Pond Water

While looking at just a single drop of pond water through the microscope I was amazed at how much I could see. Just from a normal eyes view you would never think that there were so many organisms and different forms of life growing and living within such a confined space as well as so many other non living items. I was amazed at the amount of things that had always been present out of all the time I have seen pond water and was just oblivious to all that it involved. During my time viewing the droplet of pond water I was able to identify many living things through the microscope while I was also discovering so many things that I wasn't able to identify. Some of the things that I was able to identify were green algae with no flagella which appeared to be spherical and not attached to the surface with no movement. Some of the other things that I was able to identify within my tiny droplet of pond water was a roundworm. This worm was moved is an "s" formation and in a sort of rapid speed, an ostracod, as well as an odd "thing" we were both unable to identify! This has a long skinny leg with cilia coming from both sides of it. The body was round and way more wide than the only one visible leg.(I would love to learn more about this unique creature I was looking at).
The one thing that I viewed that I found especially interesting was the round worm. A roundworms diet includes small animals both dead and alive or on algae, fungi and bacteria. They tend to live in almost every habitat including seas and freshwater, and land. They typically end to live in-between sediments of the surface of water of swim along the bottom. One interesting fact that I found about these mysterious creatures is that all freshwater roundworms secrete sticky mucous from the tip of their hind end which anchors the worm in place whether it be on a rock or indie an intestine. Spooky!

Genetic Disease: Autism

Autism is also sometimes known as autism spectrum disorder. Both of these terms describe a group of complex disorders of brain development. These complex disorders of brain development come in different levels of severity including social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviors.
Some of the symptoms of this disease include difficulties in motor coordination and attention. Also, lower physical health. Although many of the symptoms appear to be negative, an individual with autism spectrum disorder may also appear to excel in visual skills, music, math and art. An individual with autism will typically show symptoms between the ages of 2 and 3 years of age so that tells us that autism appears to have roots in early brain development. When a child is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, the symptoms will improve with age and treatment to where they can live a normal or near normal life.
As stated above autism is on a large spectrum meaning that there is no one type of autism also meaning that there is no one cause of autism. Throughout the past few years they were able to discover rare changes in genes that are associated with autism and some of them are sufficient enough to be the cause of autism alone. Although, scientists have now come to believe that autism is a combination of risk genes as well as environmental factors that have an influence on early brain development. To try and understand more about this confusing genetic relation, scientist started comparing the DNA of autistic children to their parents DNA. According to many studies autism appears to be genetically heterogeneous which means that multiple loci are involved. Several genome studies have shown that at least two  loci on the X chromosome are associated with a predisposition to autism.
Autism spectrum disorder affects one out of every 68 children in the USA and it occurs more often in boys than girls. It is not for sure discovered what gene is affected although some doctors have come to believe that there is a certain cluster of unstable genes that interfere with brain development resulting in autism. It is believed that sometimes the symptoms of a genetic disease are caused by a specific protein being made or not being made within the body. In regards to autism spectrum disorder some scientists have shown how a single protein may trigger autism spectrum disorder by stopping effective communication between brain cells.

Project Blog

After writing our full proposal it really made me reflect on how i think that this project of ours is going to go. I believe that after a certain amount of the chemicals are added into our test tubes of organisms that the chemicals will indeed kill them. One thing that I found to be extremely interesting and unique about this project is that we are mocking something that we feel these dinoflagelettes will experience in their natural habitat, the ocean and the runoff into the ocean.
I feel that our challenges within the experiment are going to include keeping our data based solely off of just the chemicals. We need to be extremely cautious about the way that we treat them with all other features before and during the project. Some things that we are going to need to monitor so closely that are going to serve as a challenge would include, regulating the temperature within the box, assuring that the light they are under is switched on/off at an exact 12 hour schedule as well as doing our best to keep them as undisturbed as possible and giving each of them an equal amount of interaction.
One thing that concerns me is the possibility of the experiment turning in the direction of the dinoflagelettes dying at the first initiation of the chemicals that we put into the test tubes. If this is the case we would know that they can only survive in pure salt water. Although we do know that they will not be able to survive in this form of water to a certain extent I would like to be able to test how MUCH chemicals they can handle to survive.

This is a photo of our bioluminescent dinoflagelettes glowing before they have been exposed to any form of chemicals. 

Chain Factory

The activity we performed as a class initially came off as confusing to me. In the beginning each member of the class was handed a card with a number on it and a sheet that had the corresponding role on the paper. After a short explanation and direction we were set off in the room to do a trial run(I wasn't quite sure what to expect or what I was doing). As each member of the class got used to their "job" the process began to  move faster and faster. By the end of all the chaos in the room we were allowed time to sit down and reflect on what we had just done.
Some observations that I made within the room as this was going on was the person in the room with the role of the "generator" and the person called the "keeper of the plans" were not doing any busy work throughout all the chaos and a few other other people were just standing around watching most of the time as well while the messengers and the assemblers and many others were scrambling around the room. So in other words, they roles each person had differed greatly. While i discussed with my group what we just did we found out that we were acting out the components of a cell and each person in the class was a different representation of a part of the cell. For example, the office was the nucleus and chain we were creating was protein made up of amino acids which was represented by the cubes. In my case I was a assembler which was a ribosome given direction by my messenger which represented a messenger RNA.
I thought that this way of learning such a complex system in this type of way was incredibly helpful. I have attempted to learn this system manny times before and have never made it more than a memorization for my upcoming exam. After this I can honestly feel like I understand it. I think that I feel  much more confident in this because I was able to be in the process myself and have to catch on to what they others were doing around me an then relate it to the actual functions of a cell.

Think Like A Mountain

I felt that this essay had an amazing way of presenting the point that it was getting across. I was confused by the concept of it so I had to read it a couple times to truly understand what they meant by "thinking like a mountain". The beginning of this writing is a creative way of saying how the call of a wolf comes off in a different perspective to all different kinds of people but the mountain is the one who truly sees it how it is. The call of a wolf appeals to dear, to hunters, to cowmen and more all with the  mind set of their own benefit and not how the wolf is benefitting them. This made me feel like my eyes were being opened to a more broad mindset about things. It was presenting me with a new way of thinking "like a mountain" that could be applied to more situations than just this one. As stated above, I was confused by what I was feeling about this article but the more that I read and understood it I would say that the essay just went along with my feelings. The reading did not make me  uncomfortable but it did make me uncomfortable to know that other individuals are blinded by their own needs and important topics they won't take the time to understand.
I really enjoyed the concept of "thinking like a mountain" and it truly makes sense to me. If you think about a topic that has nothing to do with you or give you and personal gain you are going to think of what you think is the most rational in the long run as well as the time being. Although, when dealing with something that could give you personal gain at the time, you aren't going to be thinking about what ways if could change you and others in 10 years from that moment.
When thinking about where I live I would think that the concepts listed in this essay should apply. In my personal opinion it is better to lose out on what you may be desiring for a short time than to have it be permanent in the long run.

Chernoff Faces

The activity that the class participated in called Chernoff faces really taught me a lot about the classification of living things. One main thing that specifically stands out to me is the fact that there were many many individuals in the room and not two of the sane were together the whole time. There are so many varying factors to any individual living thing making it almost  impossible to find a certain amount of categories that could truly fit and be accommodating to all of them.
I think that the chernoff faces activity is a wonderful way to present the difficulty of classification of living things and completely categorize living things into one category alone.

Presque Isle Community Ecology

Parasitism is where one organism benefits and one is harmed but does not die. An example would be a leech, flea or tick.
Commensalism is when one organism benefits and the other is neither harmed not helped. An example would be a bird nesting in a tree.
Mutualism is when both of the organisms benefit. An example would be cattle and grasses.
Intraspecific competition is individuals within a species frequently find there are insufficient resources for everyone to have all he/she needs. An example would be deer in the UP competing for wintering grounds and for food during winter and droughts.
Interspecific competition is when two organisms share a similar niche there will be competition between them. An example of this would be when a species competes for habitat, food or other resources.
Microhabitat: The conditions and organisms in the immediate vicinity of a plant or animal.
The Niche of a camel: A camels habitat includes dry grasslands and deserts. This grazing mammal favors grasses, leaves and shrubs, but it can also stomach thorns and dry vegetation that other herbivores cannot digest. This enables them to survive in areas of sparse vegetation.

Observing "the natch"

My group had a very FUN and educational time while studying our habitat within the small string circle that we placed on a almost random stop on the ground. As we were sent off to find the spot we were going to place our sting we were looking for something more than just a place on ground. After much thought and consideration we decided on the edge of an old rotten out tree trunk. Initially when we put the string down our surface observations were not as exciting as we expected them to be. We saw a lot of dirt, old dead leaves, a little but of moss and a few twigs. Disappointed in our choice of view for the next 45 minutes we began to dig deeper. By the end of our dig, as you said we would be, we were all attached. Deep down under the cover out the old withered up leaves we came across a bright yellow and orange mushroom blooming from the dirt. We saw even more moss but brighter with little tiny plants sprouting from the middle of it that got us interested to learn more about it. Another thing that I found to be the most interesting of all was a large spider that came up from deep down under the dirt. As we moved the large spider around to keep him inside our circle and learn more about him he surprised us with his reaction to his surroundings. The spider shrunk into a ball and tucked all of his legs so close to his body that they were no longer visible. Beside my dislike for spiders, I became very curious. As the spider was all curled up into his ball of "protection" we had flipped him onto his back to discover two very bright round circles on his belly. Overall I thought that the project was very interesting and it truly made me realize how much is going on in just every small foot in nature, even if it is not visible from the surface. 

After our time observing within our sting we began our walk back to find the rest of the class when we came across a deer on the trail. The deer was very thin but very friendly and not frightened by us three excited humans. We trailed behind the deer observing her slow cautious motions. She wandered slowly eating food off of the ground and sticks where she could find it and at times came so close to us we were amazed by her. The deer led us off trail through the woods and of course, we followed. Eventually, we came across what we thought to be a cool fort that someone had once built and decided we just could not turn it down. As the four of us crawled into the fort and sat on the tree stump benches we found that hidden under a piece of bark was a notebook filled with hundreds of journal entries by various people and various topics. I thought that it was amazing to see how people who were comp lee strangers confided in one another and shared their own individual touching stores. Of course, we added to the notebook. 

I really enjoyed this experiment and got a lot of information out of it in so many different forms. I also thought that at the end of the class period it ended up being a great bonding experience for my group and I. 

Bog Walk

I found the entire bog walk to be particularly interesting. Although some parts were more attention drawing than others I really enjoyed the overall experience because I had never gone on a bog walk before. One thing that immediately stood out to me was that besides the paths put in the entire thing was minimally disturbed by man and and full nature experience. I loved the smell as you got further and further down the trail and how the trail became more beaten and overgrown. I also found that if you looked and listened closely there was so much life other than plants surrounding us the whole time. I took note that I had cam across many bumblebees, spiders, flies and one fawn slowly walking through the grass. I thought that it was amazing to be able to see all of these creatures and so many forms of life in their natural habitat. Another thing that really stood out to me was all of the yellow and purple flowers growing almost everywhere you looked. I thought it was really interesting how something so beautiful could play such a strong roll on the environment around it both positive and negatively.

What's Alive

I loved the "whats alive" activity and how easily it is done compared to how much it can teach about the definition of life and life itself. In the beginning of the activity we were able to discuss within our groups what we think is alive and what we think is dead. We were also told to go outside and pick up a few things that we thought to be living. As we were making our list based on whats alive and whats dead, we chose the items that we thought to be obviously dead to place on this part of the list. Some of the things that we chose were the toothpick, the cotton ball, the rock, the popcorn kernel, etc. We then chose the remaining items to be placed under the category of whats alive. Some of the things that we chose for this group was the bean, and our two bugs and our plant that we picked up from outdoors.
After a couple weeks in the plastic baggie with a wet paper towel we were able to identify what really was alive compared to what was already dead. When we revealed our results we were mostly right but also wrong on a couple of our predictions. One thing that surprised us was that the corn kernel had begun to grow. This was one thing that we predicted to be no longer living, since we eat it as a snack! Another thing that my group was shocked about was that our two bugs were still living in this plastic bag for so long. The small worm type creature had made a habitat out of the dirt that was collected on the bottom of our now dead plant that we picked.
I feel that this project taught a lot about the value of life and how things can be so deceiving when you think you know an objects state. I was so surprised to see our two little bugs still crawling around after they were left in such  confined space with so little. This is something that I especially took note of and related it to us and the life we live. In todays world people go around thinking that we need so much to survive but this comes to show that really, we do not need that much at all.
I found this to be a truly neat project that could  be enjoyable for so many different age groups. A note has been taken to someday do this in my own class room!

THE INQUIRY WHEEL

After learning about the inquiry wheel and more details about my project I now perceive my project to be more productive and efficient in terms of following the inquiry wheel rather than in terms of the typical "scientific method" approach. I believe that trial and error is the best way to find out the best results. The way that I predict our project to go would be to start with the many questions that we already have about our project. We are going to be studying bioluminescent dinoflagellates and how they react differently in terms of toxins in their environment. We will need to observe others as well as talk with others to help complete our  extensive research to find out what the ideal conditions are for these organisms to live. We will need to know what container to use, the temperature, the lighting etc. These will be all of our questions asked while observing, communication with outer resources, forming more questions and investigating everything that we already know. This process will lead us to our hypothesis on weather or not we think that they chemicals of our choice will significantly effect the bioluminescent dinoflagellates. After we make our hypothesis we will then be ready to carry out our study. We will then examine and reflect on our findings. Based on our results we will either be led back to more questions and a new hypothesis or we will be ready to present our findings to others.
 I strongly believe that the inquiry wheel is going to be very beneficial to our project and I look forward to get started and put it into action.

DHMO

The whole meaning of this activity really surprised me on the results of it in the end as well as how much it truly taught me. This activity taught me that even though you are being told a valid amount of information on a specific topic you may just be being told what they presenter wants you to hear. I learned that first hand that I was not told enough about this topic when I found out that I voted to ban water from the students at NMU. This not only taught me how easily individuals including myself can be fooled by a surface amount of information but it also taught me a lesson that I need to look more into multiple sides of a situation before I take a vote or make a choice that could affect so many people. Although this was just an in class activity this could relate to real life situations such as the K-8 science standards that we have been discussing or even the presidential election.

I learned about myself personally that I may not have been careful enough and got into the routine of just trusting what anyone tells me. This activity will and has definitely changed my behavior and my thought precess for the future. In the future I am going to try to be more aware of  the entire situation and not just the surface information presented me to. A little research can go a long way!

I found a situation such as this picture or illusion to be a similar situation. At first glance you may say the elephant has four legs. Others may say that at first glance the elephant has eight legs. Although someone could easily tell you the amount of legs the elephant has you will never truly know until you  look into the sources of both parities. 

Mystery Container

I found the mystery container activity to be such great lesson and something a definitely see myself using in my future classroom. I feel that this activity is one that really gets the minds going and could educate so many different age groups. I learned that no matter how many questions you ask in science you can still never be 100% of your results. Within my group we had begun eliminating one object at a time based on the weights of them within the container as we weighed them to compare to the unknown object. We came to the conclusion that there was a magnet in our container and tested this hypothesis by letting the magnet hold up the paper clip from the outside of the container. Although we were sure there was a magnet in our container we faced the question if there was ONLY a magnet in the container. This question arose when we discovered that the two weights did not match up. In the end it was a simple scale error but this just came to show that even though your results presented them one time there is still a very good chance that the next time they may be different and you can never be 100% sure in science. 

This ties into the inquiry wheel because the process to find out what was in this container followed that process. We formed a hypothesis, tested it, proved it wrong and then began again and again. 

https://prezi.com/do6gzxyefeh9/the-inquiry-wheel/?auth_key=9ca52218e075b4c4def7a1fac83a5fabe24786c4

New Michigan K-12 Science Standards

I found the conference based on the discussion of the new Michigan K-12 science standards to be very interesting to me as well as loads and loads of new information for me to take in. Although I learned a lot while attending this conference as well as participating in the discussion within the class, being my first semester within the education major, I still find a slightly difficult to make up my mind and draw connections about these standards.

From what I obtained from the conference I really like the new ideas being presented for the future standards. I like the idea of having  a certain amount of science begin a requirement within the schools. One thing that I found not only very shocking but disappointing was that some schools only cover the topic of science for only 30 minutes and some don't even leave the book. Which leads to the next thing that I support. I support the fact that all science classes should be interactive and hands on. The should be interesting and fun and enjoyable to learn about to the children. I don't like to think that some children grow updating science because their teacher wasn't able to show them how cool and fun it really can be.

I feel that I need to further educate myself of the science standards before I would be able to make an educated and honest vote but from what I have obtained up to this point I am a strong supporter of the new Michigan K-12 Science Standards.

8th Grade Life Science Test

When I was told that my classmates and I were going to be taking a test based off of 8th grade life science I wasn't really sure what to think. As much as I love science I already knew that I was going to be a little rusty on the terms that I learned eight years prior to this test. All I could think was thankfully, this wasn't going to destroy my grade. Looking back now, I learned many things from taking this test. Not only was my memory refreshed on many terms and facts about science that was buried way down deep in the bottom of my brain but I also learned a lot about teachers in our discussion afterwards. As the class all gave their opinions based on the test they differed a lot based on how easy or hard they thought the test was depending on the methods of teaching that their teacher had when they were that young.

This is where I feel that I learned a lot about myself and it really made me think a lot about the kind of teacher that I want to be in the near future and the way that I want to run my classroom. Personally, I found the test to be rather difficult in some areas more than others. I learned that those that experienced science class at a young aged based off of reading and book work did not recall as much as the students that had a hands on science class where the children thought of it as "fun". 

Two things that I learned about myself was that I was not lucky enough to experience the hands on class and was more based on a book and it really helped me focus on the type of teacher that I want to be. 

One thing that surprised me was that so many students learned science in different ways. Also, I was surprised on my own personal knowledge. Although I found the test to be semi difficult I was surpassed at how many rusty topics I was able to recall after a a few minutes of thought. 

I enjoyed taking this exam and found that the test and the discussion following was very beneficial in many ways.

“The earth has music for those who listen.” ― George Santayana

Growing up exploring and learning new things about nature was always one of my favorite things to do. Being active outside and having older people in my life to inspire me to do hands on learning activities is something that I am so grateful for now when I look back on it.

As I began working my summer job as a director of a at risk children's summer camp I quickly discovered that these children(ages 5-12) really knew nothing about nature at all and I had a strong desire to change that. Starting right that day we did experiments with the leaves, we made habitats for worms and talked about what an ideal habitat is for other living creatures. The children became more and more knowledgable about nature everyday.  I took them hunting for different kinds of bugs and then identified as many as we could before safely releasing them. The children told me ways that they thought we could keep our environment clean from pollution. We had a week all about space and most of them were able to see their very first shooting star and learned all about constellations. 

By the end of my short time with these children I was amazed by the small facts that they remembered about nature, that I taught them. Not only was I happy that I was able to introduce the children to this topic but I was happy to be that "older" person to inspire them just as my sister was to me. So now, every time I see a shooting star I count that as my own little celebration between nature and myself.

All About ME

Hello! My name is Allison Rouleau, but you can call me Alli. This is my blog for my MSED251 course.  I grew up in a small town in the lower peninsula called Alpena MI. Growing up I lived in happy little house with my mom, dad and my older sister Heather. From the time that I was three years old until the day I graduated high school I was in dance class attending tap, jazz, ballet, modern and point. Throughout my junior high and high school years I ran on both the track and cross country team at Alpena High School. From the time I was young working with children is something that has always been a passion of mine. I have volunteered in many different organizations run for children and recently spend my summers as a director of a children's summer camp specifically run for special education and at risk children. This job is what helped me make my decision to happily declare my major as elementary special education. Although I am fairly new to the program I am beyond excited for my future to come!