Jenno’s Ool

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Jen and Nic

What can I say? I like my snake! Nic's one of the larger critters in the collection and just enjoys hanging out ...

I think he sat there on my nose for a good 5 minutes or so....

Posted by Jennifer at 9:51 PM | Comments (2)  

CSI In Class

It's a constant challenge to keep the attention and interest of the kids in class. It's been said time and again that, if you can keep the topics "real", you've got a better chance of hooking them into the lesson. CSI seems to be the most cross-curricular show on the networks at the moment and can be a good segway into different topics. So far I've used CSI in my ITT (Intro to Technology), Ecology, and Physical Science classes. The kids tend to get really animated when they think their teacher's going off topic, such as talking about a tv show, but don't seem to mind when the connection is made back to the course.

In the ITT class for example, we were talking about how molds and castings were made. The kids seemed to be having a hard time grasping the idea until I related it to what they saw on CSI (Warrick casting impressions of footprints) ... then the lights went on. They were even keen to try doing some castings themselves! In Ecology, we had been talking about decomposers; some of the kids were "grossed out" and wondered aloud what would want to eat dead stuff and how things decomposed. We talked about Grissom's bugs -- the light went on again.

It's so nice to see the lights go on like that; it's one of the main reasons I went into teaching in the first place.

Posted by Jennifer at 5:40 PM | Comments (0)  

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

More Peeps

Now, instead of buying Peeps to experiment on, you can make your own. (via Matt)

Posted by Jennifer at 11:18 PM | Comments (0)  

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Herp Update

All of our snakes are now out of hibernation. Lillith, because of her wonderful disposition coming out of hibernation, was the last to be taken out. Happily, there were no incidents of any kind and we should be seeing some frisky snakes in a few weeks.

Nic is now home from school: The temps in the classrooms were going to be dropping to 18°C over the spring break and even though Nic had a heating pad, I was on the fence about whether I should leave him in the lab or not. The deciding factor came when one of my former students was visiting and wanted to see him: after I pulled him out of the tank, I noticed slight bubbling around the mouth and some weezy breathing. These are signs of a slight respiratory infection and the last thing he needed was lower temperatures. He's now keeping quite warm in the snake room here. I'm not sure if he'll be going back to school after the break or not, I may give him a rest and take in our female bullsnake instead. Just for variety.

Posted by Jennifer at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)  

Audrey III?

Any fans of "Little Shop of Horrors" know who "Audrey II" is. When I saw this flycatcher, that was exactly who I was reminded of. (via BoingBoing)

Posted by Jennifer at 12:41 AM | Comments (0)