Teacher Blogs Too!

The great thing about a democratic classroom is that I get to talk to you rather than lecture you.  Now that you guys have gotten started on the blog yourselves, I feel safe to step in, provide an example of blogging, but not be the only influence upon your own blog. 

My first stumble this week was about the Kakapo parrots, a parrot that is a lot like the kea parrot, if I remember correctly from my ornithology class with our own Dr. Skeate.  At least these birds are from the same country as keas (New Zealand) and are also flightless as well.  Keas are like raccoons of the bird world.  I heard a story about one of these parrots getting into someone's backpack, eating a candy bar and dying.  Since the parrots are rare, this was not good news for the owner of the backpack!  If I wanted to find out more about Kakapos, the site has a "news and links" section; if I wanted to use the information in a paper, though, I would site the webpage because they are claiming the information as their own. 

I stumbled upon Life Explained next.  Any feminist would have a research paper of more than twenty pages created upon this webpage alone.  My own contention with the humor of "man=simple" and "woman=complex" is that our culture imposes this attitude upon us.  Perhaps this is how it looks on the outside, but I know that the inside of both machines are just as complex as the other. 

My third stumble unearthed Planets, no pun intended.  This kind of webpage always excites me because it involves interactive learning.  The main point of the site was to demonstrate that the rotations of planets looks very different to us on earth than it does on the solar system model that places the sun at the center.  From our earth-centric point-of-view, the path of the planets takes on a spirograph motion, with spirals of motion called Retrograde Motion.  I also learned that the distance between the sun and the earth is called an Astronomical Unit.  I find that I'm always more likely to remember information that is presented to me in an interactive way like this.  What I wish to know now is what spirographic pattern do the other planets make around us?  I would like a poster of the patterns they all create.  I'm pretty sure this would be cited as an original source because the person who created the site must have created the interactive tutorial as well.