Tag Archives: technology

NASA in 2012 by Sarah K

http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/YIR12/

1. On August 5, 2012, NASA landed a rover named Curiosity on Mars. The rover cost $2.5 billion dollars and weighs 900 kilograms, or 1 ton. Curiosity is a six wheeled all-terrain vehicle that carries ten research instruments and seventeen separate cameras. This rover is sending back pictures Spaand samples and has been very helpful to scientists.


2. Scientists have discovered evidence of ice on Mercury. According to a spacecraft that has been orbiting Mercury since March 2012, there is frozen water on the poles of Mercury. For a long time, astronomers suspected that the shiny patches on Mercury’s poles were ice. In November, a spacecraft named MESSENGER, which stands for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging, This proves that there is frozen water on Mercury which means it might support life.


3. In July 2012, an estimate of 97% of ice sheet surface melted in Greenland. On average, about half of Greenland’s ice sheet naturally melts every summer. This extreme thawing was probably caused by an unusually strong ridge of warm air, or a heat dome over Greenland.


4. Space shuttle Endeaver retired on September 21, 2012, as it toured California on the back of NASA’s modified 747 carrier aircraft. After flying over Vandenberg Air Force Base on the California coast, they Griffith Observatory, the Hollywood sign, Dodger Stadium, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Malibu and Santa Monica, Disneyland, The Queen Mary and USS Iowa in Long Beach harbor, and several low-level flyovers over Los Angeles International Airport before landing down on the runway.


5. NASA has designed the first spacecraft to fly astronauts beyond Earth’s orbit since the Apollo spacecrafts. Orion will orbit Earth without a crew and return through the atmosphere at speeds way faster than when astronauts last returned from the moon in 1972. The mission is planned for launch in September 2014. It will orbit the Earth twice on a track that will take it more than 3,600 miles above the ground, which is about 15 times higher than the International Space Station.

Hero Story

 My hero is my dad. His full name is Shu Shiuh-Shieu Lin. He was born on May 7th, 1966 to Amy and Young Tso (pronounced “so”) Lin in Kaosiung (pronounce “kao-shung”), Taiwan. He has two older sisters, Janet and Kay. He lived in Taiwan until seventh grade. For seventh grade he moved to California with his family. After he graduated from high school, he went on to be a Cardiovascular and Thoracic (heart and lung) surgeon. He also became a professor of Immunology (branch of medicine and biology concerned with immunity) and Pathology (the science or the study of the origin, nature, and course of diseases). He currently lives in Durham, NC as a surgeon and professor at Duke Hospital. He has two daughters, Sydney (12) and Samantha (7), and one son/ dog, Gomez (2).

    As a child, my dad did not like to study and he was very athletic. He was always playing baseball or hanging out with his friends. His best friend in 5th and 6th grade was Vincient Wang, the leader and founder of their group who was a couple years older than my dad. They called their group fēng gǒu, or crazy dog group in English. His greatest achievement in grade school was in 5th grade when he won an essay writing contest. One of the most disappointing times was when he didn’t get picked for the competitive dodge ball team. My dad and his sisters fought, but not much. When they did, it was usually over food. Once his oldest sister, Janet, sat on my dad’s model airplane that he made.

    My dad is my hero because he is so kind. My dad really likes to play basketball and has friends that he often plays with. When he goes, I go with him to watch. During breaks, he teaches me how to dribble and shoot baskets. We always play until his teammates call him back. After basketball, he always asks, “Do you want to go get some ice cream?”  Of course I say yes every time! Another way my dad shows kindness is in the way he participates and supports me in all of my activities. On Sundays, I participated in Mr. Block’s weekend basketball camp. My dad would come with me and always be one of the parents who helped out. The fact that he was so helpful by being there, always boosted my confidence since I knew he had (and still has) a busy schedule.

    My dad is a hero because he is so helpful in so many ways. Not only does he save and lengthen people’s lives as a doctor, but he also provides for our family. My mom is a nurse at Duke hospital. She once told the story of a man that had just had surgery. He was starting to wake up when my dad, his surgeon, came by to check on him. The man reached up, grabbed my dad’s face and said, “I love you man,” then fell back to sleep. Later when I interviewed my dad he said, “I was just happy he spoke. And that he didn’t have a stroke. I understood his appreciation. People show their appreciation differently.” In my opinion, that man was lucky to have such a trustworthy surgeon.

    To do surgery you need a steady hand and lots of focus. Not only that, but you need to be trustworthy. Your patient needs to be able to trust you. My dad’s patients all trust him to do surgery on them. Another thing you need to be to be a good surgeon is intelligence.

    My dad did not like to study, but he was lucky that he was very good at it anyway. He said, “I was lucky. Also I was very persistent. Don’t be afraid to have to work hard. There is no free lunch, you need to work hard.” After finishing high school, he got into Harvard University. He graduated from Harvard University in 1988. After Harvard, he went to medical school, internship, fellowship, and residency at Duke University.

    My dad has influenced my life by teaching me how to play basketball and chess. Also he has inspired me to keep doing what I like to do by showing determination. I’m lucky to have him as my dad, because he really is a true hero.

What I think about iPads

1. HOW I USED THE IPAD FOR LEARNING.
I used my iPad for most of my homework and it was a lot easier to keep track of one iPad than seven different binders. I think I had better grades in the classes that I could use my iPad in than in classes that I couldn’t.2. WHAT I WOULD WANT MY TEACHERS TO KNOW ABOUT STUDENTS USING AN IPAD.

I think students are going to be careful with iPads and not losing them because they know that iPads cost a lot of money… a lot more than papers and pencils. I don’t think that teachers should control what goes on our iPads, I think we should be able to download the things we want to and just not be able to play with them at school. It makes iPads more useful when you have what you want on them. During the pilot program it was really annoying that I couldn’t put what I wanted on it. I also think that we should get our own iPads and not just ‘rent’ them from DA.

iPad Pilot Program at Durham Academy Middle School

As part of the Durham Academy pilot program with personal devices, our students have spent the last week setting up their iPads for use in the classroom and at home. With the Middle School Technology coordinator, we have met as a class for the past week to accomplish the following goals:

1. Discussing best practices for iPad use. Topics included the physical aspects of care, cleaning, charging, and storage. For the purpose of the pilot, students are not able to add or remove apps on school issued iPads. We also discussed acceptable use of the iPads including: permission of other teachers to use in their classes, how to handle peer interest in the device, distraction vs. learning tool, photography feature (permission to photograph other people and proper use of photos taken), recording feature (permission and appropriate use), following parental rules and guidelines at home, web surfing and appropriate use, and academic tool vs. toy.

2. Set up their First Class Email accounts through the First Class app.

3. Set up a note taking app called Evernote.

4. Subscribed to the Room 211 Language Art Blog using Edublogs through an app called Blogsy. Posted their first blog that is first edited, filtered and published by Mr. Schaefer and Mrs. Williams.

5. Experimented with Office HD to access Google Docs. Began a collaboration document to suggest books and educational apps that should be added in the future.

6. Today students took the iPads home for the first time. More news to follow tomorrow!