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! 

Week of 04/07

Nobody went out in the field this week, and everybody has finished collecting their samples (or they should be...). We focused on our final report first draft and finishing up any statistics and graphs that did not get finished or perfected last week.

I helped Alyson run some of her stats in JMP and make some graphs because she was sick last week when I spent a lot of time working on mine in the lab with Dr. Entrekin and Ali. Our group worked on our report draft using google docs and it was fantastic. We can comment for each other and when we do work we don't do something that somebody else has already done because we can see the updated version on Google docs. There were some controversies over a few parts of our draft but it all worked out. I know that both Alyson and I have our Trimble points on an Arc map. two of my points are missing, and one of them is way off north where I definitely did not go to sample. At first I thought it was accurate, but I would have had to have walked through the water to get to the location that is recorded. I'm not sure why it is so inaccurate because it has tree information that I recorded in it. We will still need to go back in and add Ali's sample points and correct mine. I also have a duplicate point.

Alyson and I worked in the GIS lab to make locator maps and maps showing our points so that we would be able to put our own work into the report and not have to use a map that somebody else made.

I think our first draft of our report is farily good. There are still things that I want to add for the discussion, and I think our discussion at this point is a little weak. We also need a paragraph or something to conclude the entire document. At this point it kind of just stops.

I volunteered this morning for Girls of Power in STEM (GPS) from 7:30 to about 9:45. I helped with registration of the teams, team leaders, and students. It was exciting and I think I would have enjoyed fully participating for the entire time. Unfortunately I have other things I had to do today so I was unable to stay longer than just for registration. I got a T-shirt and a goody bag out of it though! I think the GPS program is a really good idea and I hope the students get a lot out of it for the remaining time they have left.

Alyson and I worked on the beginnings of our presentation, which we are also doing through Google because it worked so well last time. Ali had a prior commitment in NLR this morning and couldn't join us. We will be working on the presentation and polishing our report for the final version throughout the week.

Late Review of Night Sampling

It only just occurred to me that I hadn't posted about the night spider data collection that took place nearly a week ago. Though many had been asked to go, and several gave a "strong maybe" response, in the end, only 4 of us showed up. Myself, my lab partner Gray, and the Entrekins. Despite lower than expected participation, the search went wonderfully. Professor Entrekin taught us a method for scanning an area for spiders using flashlights reflecting off of spider eyes. While at first I had trouble seeing things, I quickly found it was a matter of location. In the tall grass areas, there was too much interference. In the short grass area, there didn't appear to be much to see. But in the leaf litter under the trees, the effects of this method became clear. The further you walked into the trees, the more little sparkles you saw reflecting back at you. It became a little startling just how many spiders had been under my feet that whole time. Later, Gray and I took a moment in the control site to just stand in silence with the lights turned off. Once your eyes adjust to the low levels of light, the bayou becomes quite a beautiful and peaceful place. Before I left, I encountered a large frog (where was he when I was looking for frogs?!?), and heard something rustling in the leaves near the edge of the control site. I assume it was a herd of deer, but my spotlight had died, and I had no way to pursue them. All in all, it was quite an enjoyable experience.

Tooling for citizen science

While you guys were at UCA slogging through your data, I was in Springfield Mass attending a conference. I learned some things that I wanted to share with you all. I know that some of  you are familiar with some of these resources, but probably not all of them. They can be used in multiple different ways and are a good way to keep your foot in ecology if you move out of the field when you graduate. Hope you find this helpful. ~Sally


*Applications for Iphone and Android smartphones*
*Ebird*‑id and document birds found in the field
*iNaturalist*‑enter notes and images that are shared with others and
automatically puts gps point
*BAMONA* (Butterflies and Moths of North America)

*Natures Notebook*
*itree*‑assessing and managing community forests
*mytreetracker*

*Big data collected and transmitted in real time*. Students can use
these
data for labs. Some colleges have written proposals to fund the
development
of a course centered around the Serengeti dataset.

https://www.zooniverse.org/
http://www.snapshotserengeti.org/