Presentations....or lack of

Well, we were supposed to head on down to Maumelle today so that we could present our data to the steering committee. But mother nature had other plans. Last night around 8pm an F3/4 tornado passed through right between Maumelle and Conway. It threw a lot of cars off the highway and destroyed some mobile homes. We attempted the drive to Maumelle this morning regardless. However, it was apparent that the presentations were not going to occur when I ended up turning off my car and sat on the interstate for 15 minutes. We will try to reconvene at a later date and present to at least some of the steering committee, but today it was not plausible. Round trip took 2.5hrs. I hope they will get the roads cleared up soon so that we can all get out of Conway, and people can come here for graduation!


I had a wonderful last semester and enjoyed all of you in this class. I hope we can stay in touch via some sort of social media. Enjoy your summer everyone!

Final Blog Post

We were supposed to present our presentations today but due to the tornado that happened last night that did not happen. We tried to present but sat in traffic for 2 hours and only moved 6 miles so we had to cancel. I am sad that we did not get a chance to present but hope that we are able to reschedule and still present our projects. I hope that everyone still gets the chance to present and show their hard work. This semester has flown by I can't believe that it is over. I have learned so much through this project and I am excited for the future. I would like to thank Dr. Entrekin for helping us and all of her advice this semester as well as my group as we have all become good friends through this process. 

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.