Final Project

This is a classroom lesson in which students will compare the scientific geological history of two different island formations and then extend the lesson to look at the different indigenous stories of the island's history.

Island Comparisons

Comparing the geological history of the Hawaiian and Kodiak Islands

Background:
Kodiak Island in Alaska is due north of the Hawaiian Islands and they have many similarities. The cultures have grown to be rather similar though also very unique in their traditions and the weather they deal with.

Lesson:
We are going to look at the very different geological processes which formed the Hawaiian and Kodiak Islands which share an ocean and are very similar in size and topography.  The movement of the Pacific Plate has created the different islands in very different ways.

Task:

1. Print out the Island Comparison sheet which is at the bottom of this page.

2. Go through the resources below and fill in the blanks on the Comparison sheet as you learn about the geology of the different islands and gain an understanding of why they are so different.

3. Be prepared to take the assessment at the end of the lesson to demonstrate your learning.  On the quiz you will be asked to quickly describe the development of the two islands, ensuring that you highlight their differences.

Resources:
Before you begin looking through the resources, read over the Island Comparison sheet you printed and have an idea of what you are looking for.

First - learn about the formation of the Hawaiian Islands.  They have a very interesting geological history that combines volcanic activity and tectonic plate movement.  Follow this link to the first video.  Then go to the second video for another take on the same information.

Then, read and look through the pictures about the concept of an Accretion Wedge and how ocean crust can be sent to the surface to create land forms, mountain ranges, and even islands.  This concept is most likely how Kodiak came to be.

- Read through Wikipedia's explanation of an Accretionary Wedge. Remember to takes notes on your Island Comparison sheet.

- Have a look at the image to the right taken from Ole Nielsen's blog on earthquakes.  It gives a great picture of how an Accretionary Wedge can rise above sea level and become an island.

- Now have a look at a neat video about the 1964 Alaskan earthquake to get a better idea of the forces involved in a part of this tectonic plate motion.

Extend:
Now that you have had a chance to look through the science of the island formations and how they differ, let's have a look at the cultural history of the two islands and see if there is a difference.

Watch this video about the Hawaiian Island cultural explanation for the formation of those islands.

Now, work with your table group to develop a plan of how to get our island's cultural history.  Consider how you might use resources such as: elders in the community, our library, or the Alutiiq Museum downtown.  Develop a short plan of attack and a timeframe for your interviews or other research.  Your extend assignment is to have the plan.  We will work together as a class to get the story from the different sources that you think will be informative.

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Click on this image and a full size version will open so you can print it out.

Module IX Response

Explain:

My biggest realization in this module is the amount of evidence that exists in Alaska.  Something about seeing it all together and seeing video record of what is happening makes an incredible impact.

When I look at the graph from the Climate Change video I see two interpretations.  One might walk away saying that we have been in a pretty chilly spell lately and what’s the big deal.  Or one might say that since we have built our society around assumptions about how the climate operates and should operate in the near future, we should probably expect to see changes in how the climate will affect our plans as the climate shifts to its new norm.

Seems interesting though that we are not in the warmest period on the graph so how much will our coastline really change. 

Methane under lakes is another totally cool and scary piece of information that is new to me and may be to my students as well.  Watching those flares coming from the lakes and realizing that there are a lot of lakes is interesting.  I was thinking about the YK Delta and how many lakes there are out there and then one of the videos started talking about Siberia and the problem gets a little perspective.

I wonder about the methane issue - isn’t it happening all over the tundra wherever there is permafrost?  The lakes are just where we can test it easily, right?

Extend:

I will be using all of these resources in my classes.  We will be doing a current events discussion of climate change and working through the idea of positive feedback loops.  When we are connecting with how the loss of ice increases absorption of heat and how the permafrost melting means more heat retention and then look at the projections for impacts of changes in sea level that should be good for a few discussions around the dinner table in my student’s homes. 

Evaluate:  

Another blog full of great resources for evidence of changes that have been a long time in the making.  There is so much here to use and reuse.  Tasking students with getting a handle on what is going on in this one blog would make a meaningful impact on their thinking for some time to come.  This seems like a great opportunity to offer them an active focus for their inner-activist.

What a great class chock full of information and the ability to share it with my students.  I so appreciate being able to take it straight to my classroom rather than just being better informed and trying to figure out how to weave the knowledge into my instruction.


3 Colleagues:


Matt has some interesting thoughts on how increased CO2 will interact with plants and new plants.  I wonder what will happen with plants around the world that get the extra dose.  Probably not much as the deforestation of the planet has already made tons of extra CO2 available and the oranges don't seem to be much bigger. 


Nick has an interesting statement in his blog about extraterrestrial life.  I am interested in the math that shows that it is near certainty that there is life elsewhere in the universe.  


I want to know more about Bobbi's recycling project out in Old Harbor.  Sounds pretty interesting.  That dump picture she posted brings back memories.

Module VIII Response

Explain:

The visuals about Earth's Albedo and Global Warming, and specifically the section called "Sea Ice" was incredible to see.  That visual made the point more clear than anything I have seen.  The vertical axis is down right scary!

This information makes me want to take my students on a field trip to the Arctic Ocean and have a sit-in.  

Some of the people in these videos sound like the effects of climate change may be bad in the future.  This seems apparent that the effects are awful right now and much worse to come in a short time frame.  Obviously, when our ice goes from almost 7 million square km to around 3.5 million in 27 years, we have an accelerating situation.  I wonder if the ocean conveyor system is already out of whack and we simply have not been able to measure it yet.  

The winter ice doesn't seem to be as drastically reduced, so does that imply that more ice is freezing anew each year and actually concentrating more salt into the falling dense water creating the deep ocean currents moving south from the arctic to feel more pressure?

I already bought a hybrid car and upgraded the energy rating on my house.  Now what do I do?

Extend:

I think I will look to incorporate the idea of positive feedback loops into my class so the students can develop an understanding of the process and just how potent something like this can be.  The idea of a system building up momentum seems to be pretty close.  I'll pay attention for opportunities to plug this in to different areas.  Diabetes is one such system which I could discuss now.  The spikes in your blood sugar making it difficult to metabolize sugar making you blood sugar much harder to regulate.  I'll task my students with keeping alert for similar situations as well.

Evaluate:

These resources are very relevant to the discussions we have about what is happening in today's environment about weather, ocean systems, world systems, and body systems.  We owe our students the opportunity to look at the current events in their climate and give them the opportunity to watch how this all plays out in their life times.

3 Colleagues:

Sandi referred to the Climate Change Controversy, which was a very interesting read, from InformationIsBeautiful.net.  What an interesting web site.  It is really cool how the author puts together the visualizations for different topics.  I enjoyed the visualization for 2012 very much.  Good stuff!

Dave Sather's resource about the size of various microscopic goodies is totally cool.  Cell Size is a great tool that I will be sharing with my students tomorrow.

Janet has some nice extended resources on her 8 response going a bit more into the cryosphere topic.  The National Snow and Ice Center has some very interesting information and it is a good bookmark to have on my Delicious page for the students to refer to.

Module VII Response

1. Explain:

The discussion and videos about how stars create elements was fascinating.  How the basics were made in the star and then when it is enough iron, it changes state, explodes and then all the other elements are made in the explosion of the star going super nova.

The core of the earth is pretty impressive as well.  When you consider the amount of energy that it would take to keep that much heat going for billions of years and how the earth hasn't really changed size for that long yet there is incredible energy not too far down.  How is it all contained?  How is it fed? Why hasn't it cooled off yet?  Things seem to be rather balanced.
I found a great article about current thought on the matter at:

Article from PHYSORG.COM

I wonder about what was there before the big bang happened.  I know the concept of the yo-yo effect and the theory that we are just in an expansion period and at some point the universe will turn to a contraction and it will come crashing down to bang again.  But I wonder about what started it all.  It doesn't seem logical that it has always been this way, with the concept of entropy and all.

2. Extend:

The discussion about ocean acidification is right on spot for me this week.  The 6th grade science classes at my school are engaged in a research project with our local Fisheries Research Lab.  We are looking at changes in pH in the presence of phytoplankton and microscopic animals.  We are measuring pH change under controlled conditions to observe what changes are happening in the water when there is only phytoplankton, only animals, and only sea-water (as a control).

We are setting up the tests each week with a different group of kids.  We test the pH from the week before, when another group set up the experiment, and then we set up another for the following week.  The kids are taking all of the data and setting everything up.  It is an awesome chance for the kids to get into real research in a very relevant topic and to have discussions about how ocean pH affects crab shell formation, among other things.

We are also having the kids blow bubbles in the water and measuring the change in the pH from the injected CO2.

My students creating carbonic acid!

3. Evaluate:

Our ability to impact our climate is a tough concept for our kids to connect with but they hear it often so we need to ground their understanding in the observable data.  Looking at the long-term impacts of these little changes and at the concept of a positive feedback loop will hopefully give them a basic understanding of some of these forces and bring the science to their minds rather than the politics.


3 Colleagues:

Matt's post was very interesting.  The video about Cannikin was a potent reminder of the power that we have to destroy.  Green Peace and their success with stopping the firecracker boys is a great reminder about the power we have to avoid destruction.

Alicia's post about the Mystery in Alaska was great as the video mentions and deals with Kodiak issues.  Our fishing fleet is so interesting and complex.
Talking with students about it is very interesting as so many of them are directly involved in the different fisheries.

Sabrina, talking about her grandfather's smokehouse that could handle 1000 fish was really cool.  What a neat thing to do for your community to build a place to process that much food.  And thinking about going down to the dock and seeing crabs climb the pilings is awesome.  I don't know anyone who catches king crab around here.  I know it is done but no one I know does it.  What a tragic example of mis-management as I am sure that the money made in the over-fishing has since been spent and those crabbers who made it big at the time have now fallen on harder times.

Module VI Response

Explain:

The resource Compare and Contrast Warm and Cold Air Fronts was a great way to visualize how a warm and cold front move and how they develop clouds.  I have noticed how the cloud formations can be made up of various types of clouds or just one type but never wondered how or why.  This is a great tool and like Clay says, its right there in Teacher Direct.

Giving Rise to The Jet Stream is the coolest resource and best explanation of the jet streams and subsequently how complex wind systems really are.

I am still puzzled as to how the ice forms in the vacuum and where the heat goes.   I am assuming, after much more surfing, that the heat is taken away with the evaporated vapor when the water boils.  The movie Mosquito Coast has a machine for making ice using propane and my friend has a propane refrigerator.  These use a totally different process and I don't really get how they work either.  This discussion at eHow.com did not help me much.  These are both pretty interesting processes though.

As I was looking at the NOAA page of the current cloud view of Alaska, I had Google Earth open with the weather layer on.  They updated close to each other with very different information.  Does anyone know why they are different?  One would think that they would be using similar data, or at least both be reliable.

Google Earth clouds at the same time as below 

NOAA clouds

Extend:

These videos are pretty cool for sharing this understanding.  What a great set of resources for presenting such a tough concept.  Visualizing the idea of wind and wind currents is next to impossible without video.

I am about ready to sign up to learn how to skydive with a snowboard on.  That video about the fluid atmosphere was great!

Evaluate:

Google Earth is a terrific piece of software.  I would love to put it on the iPads in my school but the current version of the app sounds like a dud.  I'll have to keep checking.  I wonder if these incredible layers are available in the app.  This will be a great tool.

When talking about the water cycle, I try to make the point that there is no new water out there.  We talk about where water has been before and how likely it is that the water they drink has already been drank by several different animals in the past.  We talk about were our clouds come from and were the water we are drinking was last urinated.  These resources will help me present the idea that our water is from far off bodies of water.


3 Colleagues:

Tommy posted a pretty cool Nova video but I had trouble getting it to work.  I hope it works on my classroom computer because it is a nice summary.  I like to wrap up units with videos like this because I am presenting it from another source to review just prior to the test.

Marilyn posted an interesting video about population history and how concentrations of people have changed over the last 2,000 years.  There are so many good discussions to be had with a video like this, such as how the environmental concern of the day can change dramatically and the various reasons for the population explosion.  I spent some time with French exchange students during college and I remember one remarking that there was so much open space in our country, so what are people talking about overpopulation for.

Tracy put up some nice info about weather patterns that affect her in North Pole.  And I agree with her assessment that the toxins in polar animals are a total bummer.

Module V Response

Essential Question: How are climate, cultures and oceans all connected? 

3 Questions

• 1. Explain: What new learning or reflections have you taken from this module?

Certainly the concept that the Coriolis Force doesn’t impact how water spins down a drain was quite interesting.  I have taught this incorrectly many times.  I talked about it at lunch and another science teacher who tested it in South America and she was not quick to give up the idea either.  She thought it controlled the spinning just like I had and her tests bore it out so we had a good chance to explore it completely.

The idea of the ocean’s conveyor belt is new to me.  I knew about ocean currents but the impact of the fresh water influx is very interesting.  I struggle with the differing “facts” that I hear about the causes and impacts of global warming.  I am sure that I could put many more hours into research and still not be informed since it seems that the experts are not all in agreement about the specifics of how the scenario will play out.  

• 2. Extend: How might you use this week’ information and resources in your lessons?

I am excited about the directions that I can send kids when it is time to do a project.  Even if that project is about something different, the connections between these forces and world-wide impacts of warming are a great lesson in how all things are connected.  I often want the kids to get at the bigger picture and struggle with that.  My students tend to focus on the task or topic at hand and miss the relevance to other issues.  With these resources addressing connectedness, maybe my students will be able to see themselves in this picture and learn a bit more about their citizenship on planet earth.

• 3. Evaluate: How useful, insightful or relevant are this module’s information and resources?

The videos about earth’s seasons (What Causes Earth’s Seasons and Seasons on Earth) are wonderful resources to have at my fingertips.  Teacher Direct is awesome.  Being able to download many of them makes it so much for useful.  I can build a library of videos and sort them into folders for subjects and subfolders for sections of my curriculum.  So much more useful in class than streaming, even though streaming is so much better than nothing.

3 Colleagues

Alison posted a great image about the conveyor belt.  I like how it is very clear.  A great follow up to the conveyer belt video the students to reference.

Tyler's discussion and link to the Beachcomber's Alert article were great.  I would have thought the currents that support the garbage patch would have drawn all of the toys into its mass long ago.  It is pretty neat that they are still finding these toys.  I'll keep my eyes open on Kodiak for them.

Matt's discussion about water's properties and how it absorbs heat is wonderful.  The resource behind his image for water's absorption of heat is a terrific representation of the process.

Module IV

Explain:

It was fascinating to compare the formation of the Aleutian with the Hawaiian chain of islands both above and below the water.  Thinking about the cultures and islands, they really are very similar. Kodiak is green and remote and due north of Maui.  Kodiak’s police chief and fire chief are both from Hawaii.  We are called the Emerald Isle because we are so pretty and green.  We have lots of waterfalls.  But, alas, we are not volcanic.  I suppose that if there were too many more similarities, Kodiakans would no longer get the PFD.

I never understood the formation of Hawaii.  I knew they grew from volcanoes but  I assumed they were are separate volcanoes.  The crust moving over the hot spot and spreading out the chain makes great sense.  More sense that a hot spot finding new paths and dotting the ocean with new islands.  

Using Google Earth to measure those distance was very interesting.  I looked around for other similar island chains and discovered Fiji from a new perspective.  It looks like they are in the center of a swirling plate.  I wonder if they are over a hot spot as well.  All of those old volcanoes are so interesting.  The subduction zones around the islands makes it look like it is spinning, not moving.  

Then I looked at the Canary Islands off the coast of Morocco and I wonder if they were built the same way as Hawaii.  

All this talk of tropical islands makes me want to check Alaska’s web specials for a flight.

Extend:

Kodiak has an interesting geographic history.  I have heard that it was formed by rising crust.  I need to access some local knowledge about this topic.  I will find a geologist in town and find out.  I have fruitlessly searched the web so I must be doing something wrong.  

Evaluate:

My students want to know about their surroundings and what they see and hear about.  So many are connected with this island in so many different ways.  Remote living, fish camps, fishing around for bottom fish, and hunting.  There are so many reasons to understand our geography.  If I am able to get a guest speaker to come in and talk a bit about the island’s formation after we have looked at the resources posted on the course site, the students will have a much better feel for what we are working with here.  I wonder if it might grow into a need for a field trip to Maui.

3 Colleagues’ Blogs:

Janet Reed,

Those pictures are great.  Some of the strange things we get to see and do here are worth some of the little inconveniences.  

Your paragraph about Chenega brings back a conversation from the past.  When we lived on the Yukon, we knew a woman who had grown up in a village that was washed away one year when the river shifted.  There were no plans at the time to rebuild.  When the earth moves, some move with it and others hang on.    

Cheryl Williams,

That photo of the road says a thousand words.  I have seen road closures in California from hill slides caused by earthquakes but nothing like that.  Not a good day to be mountain biking.

Amy Peeke,

I spent a lot of time measuring things with Google Earth too.  That is the coolest tool.  

The shifting crust over the hot spot that made the Hawaiian range is pretty impressive to understand.  It draws a picture on the ocean floor that tells the story beautifully.

David