Vilonia

In class on Wednesday we ran through the presentations one last time and wrapped everything up. We present our projects on Monday. On Friday even though it was dead day I met with Dr. Entrekin to get some last minute suggestions and make sure that everything looked okay. She gave me some great advice and the poster for Monday! A few weeks ago I was approached by someone I worked with and they asked me I would be interested in talking to their 5^th graders. I thought that it would be a wonderful opportunity so I asked Dr. Entrekin if it would be okay. Once we got the go ahead I extended the offer to my fellow class mates and got some interest. So on Friday Ali, Kell and I went and talked to them. We asked them what they knew about wetlands, had them watch a Bill Nye video, did a short activity and then ran through our presentations which was great practice for Monday. It was a really great experience and I think the kids really enjoyed it! Now just to finish everything up and present on Monday. 

Vilonia MS

Friday morning Alyson, Kell, and I went to VMS to practice our research presentations a little more. I really enjoyed how intrigued all the kids were in what we were doing. They really seemed to like the Bill Nye video on wetlands, and I feel like that was a great way to give them some background knowledge before we just dove into our projects. The kids had a lot of questions for us after we were done, mostly scientific and a little about college life in general. We emphasized a lot that science isn't about getting the hypothesis RIGHT but getting your data as uniform and void of bias as possible. The teachers seemed to enjoy our presentation as well. We originally were only going to present to two classes, but due to a staff meeting taking too long, we took all four classes at once. They were very well behaved and I kind of understand why teachers find joy in teaching. Seeing all these kids so interested in our projects was heartwarming. Not to mention good practice for when we present to the steering committee!

Week of 04/21

Everything is coming together! This week we went back over our powerpoints in class and got our edits from Dr. Entrekin regarding both our slides and our presentation as a whole. We also printed off the big poster that Alyson and I designed (but mostly Alyson). It looks pretty good!

Ali, Alyson and I are meeting this afternoon to go over our presentation again and do a practice run-through. We all need to focus on not saying "incredible" or "huge" and instead replace those qualitative words with some quantitative words.

I'm working on our final report this weekend along with working on my finals and papers and everything for all of my other classes. It's crazy that the semester is almost over.

Vilonia Outreach

After meeting with Maumelle Middle School students several times throughout the semester, I jumped at the chance to go and present to Vilonia's 5th graders. Being from Vilonia, having gone there K-12, I felt it was a good way to give a little back. And I am certainly glad I did. Aside from seeing a few familiar faces, I was very proud of how well the kids were behaved, how interested they seemed in the project, how hard they tried to answer our questions and the variety of questions they asked us afterwards. Having worked with 5th graders in Vilonia before, I knew what to expect and was not disappointed. I feel like our simplified presentations went over pretty well, and both sides took a lot away from this. If only the audience on Monday would be that easy. I don't think I can open my presentation with "Who likes frogs?" I mean I can, but I'll probably get some blank stares and some points off my score. I'm not too worried though. When I sleep and review a bit, I'm pretty good at public speaking. Normally.

Last day working with Maumelle Middle School

Today Kell and I went to Maumelle Middle school and they gave us mock presentations. Overall I have to say that they went really well. They know their material, but they had not broken up the slides so they were just winging it. Kell and I helped them to organize their presentation in a way that they all will talk about the same amount. Now they just need to spend time really getting to know their slides and what they really mean. The girls did a really good job interpreting their graphs and explaining the concepts that we had taught them on a prior visit. We also gave them ideas to make the presentation more theirs. I feel like they have a wonderful base presentation they just need to learn to love it and explain why they are really doing it.

This week in practicum we have been working on making our presentations better and learning to love our data. I think it is going well tomorrow we are going to give another mock presentation and then determine how we want to conclude our project.

On Friday Ali, Kell and I are going to visit a school in Vilonia and teach them about wetlands. Hopefully that goes well and the kids are able to learn something from our presentations. 

Week of 04/14

This week we got our report drafts back and realized that everybody has a lot of work to do on their introductions, abstracts, and especially discussions. My group had difficulty getting a good discussion or analysis of our data because some of the stats for some response variables had not been run correctly or completely and so we had to wait for that information before we could start a discussion. I tried to find some good research articles for all of us to use and posted them in our group's folder on Blackboard. Unfortunately, only about half of the few that I posted will be worth much. It is difficult to find literature that looks at hydrology, vegetation, and aquatic macroinvertebrates. I found a lot of articles (or at least it felt like I did) on birds and vegetation in wetlands and connecting those two together. It was frustrating, but also interesting to see the direct connections between the projects of all of us in the class. This was later reinforced on Friday when we worked on our diagram.

Class Wednesday was very productive. Although I had heard some of the information before, it was really good for me to hear it again and have it reinforced and I also learned a few new things about abstracts. Our final report has a lot of work left on it before we will be in good shape. Dr. Entrekin mentioned several times the importance of the topic sentence and I couldn't agree more. After working with Dr. Larson on my thesis, I really had that ingrained in me. If I learned anything from that thesis, it was how to write a topic sentence. It's how I write everything now. I start with the topic sentences of paragraphs where I want to discuss various aspects of a topic. After I have my topic sentences, I find my collected literature and put the sources under the topic sentences and then go back to those sources and fill in the paragraphs. Finding sources is the most time-consuming part of that process and the most difficult part is writing the topic sentence. It's definitely a valuable tool.

Wednesday and Thursday we worked more on our presentation using Google drive again. Alyson worked with me in the GIS lab to put it together and Ali worked from home on it. I think overall it wasn't a bad first draft, but we realized that we definitely have some parts to work on (discussion!). Presenting and critiquing our own and each other's presentations on Friday was also highly productive. I know I definitely have direction on where to go not only on our presentation, but on the paper to improve it. Alyson worked on the presentation some last night. I aim to work on the paper this weekend and next week and then add Monday/Tuesday add in my slides so that I have time to practice them and edit them before we present again on Wednesday. Overall, it was another highly productive week!

Wrapping Things Up

This semester has flown by. I have learned so much this semester not only about macroinvertebrates but about myself. This week started by going and helping the MMS work on their presentations. I think that Kell and I were able to help them understand how to better make a presentation and actually understand their data. We will go on Tuesday and watch them give a mock presentation to help them to get ready to present in front of Scott. On class on Wednesday we got the comments from our first drafts back. We also did an in class exercise to try and improve our discussions. Today in class we did practice presentations in order to get ready for the big day. I think it was helpful and as a class we were able to work on how to present our presentations in a cohesive way. I think that it will all turn out great and we have some good ideas to really get our points across!