Module IX

Explain:

Talk about going out with a bang!  This module was chock full of information, and I thought it was the best.  For some reason I am particularly captivated by all of the information regarding glaciers, seasonal ice and permafrost.  I kept finding out new interesting tidbits and calling to my husband in the other room, "Hey, did you know that . . . ?"  I think he knows more about ice now than he really cared to know.

The information that is contained in ice cores from Greenland was new to me.  I would never have thought that electrical conductivity could be used to determine past climates.  And the thickness of the ice was striking.  It made me want to go back and reread a book  was given last year - Bill Streever's Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places.  I might have some new thoughts on it after taking this class.

cold-the-book.com

I enjoyed learning about the release of methane from lakes.  This certainly has implications for global warming that I hadn't realized.  I was aware of the process by which the methane is produced, but I didn't know that there could be such a staggering amount of it if warming continues.  I found myself having a fantasy of going to grad school in Fairbanks and researching something related to this.  I swear I replayed one of the YouTube videos five or six times thinking, "This is so wild!  Everyone should see this!"

I also found this neat curriculum spiral on the Alaska Native Knowledge Network curriculum resources.  The resources are categorized into these cultural themes:

A description from the website says, " . . .  to help teachers and students make the connection between the knowledge, skills and ways of knowing used to maintain a livelihood in the villages, and the knowledge, skills and cultural standards for teaching and learning reflected in the school curriculum."  Nifty.

Extend:

I have done an activity similar to the 1000 drops of water one, but not the 1000 snowflakes.  It's a nice twist on the topic that would give the kids a winter perspective.  The interactive "If the Ice Melts" seems like something I would use as well.  What would make it even more useful would be if it could show what would happen to Alaskan coastline, not someplace far away.  I think that would make it more meaningful, for a middle school student anyway.  I felt the same about this graphic from "Information is Beautiful", showing what cities will flood according to how much the sea level rises (only a portion is shown here).

It is very meaningful to me as a well-traveled adult, but I wonder what it means to a kid who hasn’t even been to Seward (from Anchorage), much less New York or Shanghai.  Is there a resource out there that shows similar data for Alaska?  I will show this graphic to my students to gauge their reaction, and search for some more local information as well.

I kind of went off on a tangent thinking about the question which spurred the creation of the above graphic: What does a meter of sea level rise actually mean?  I find this same type of confusion with my students every year when we learn to use microscopes.  What does 10x magnification actually mean?  Or 100x?  Or 1000x?  The organisms we look at are all "small", but even though a dust mite and E. coli are both small to us, the dust mite would be enormous if you were E. coli.  I have found an animation on the Cells Alive website that I use to help a little with this.  It starts with a human hair on the head of a pin, at 2 mm in diameter, and increases in magnification showing a variety of organisms and viruses, ending up with rhinovirus at 20 nanometers in diameter.

Dust mites and a human hair on the head of a pin - cellsalive.com

Evaluate:

I'm looking forward to using resources from this class when I teach an earth science unit next semester.  (Since I teach Integrated Science, we study many science topics over the course of the year - an inch deep and a mile wide.)  I also have been fitting in little bits from this course here and there where they are applicable, or just because I feel like it.  Newtons Laws of Motion?  Let's talk glaciers!

Google Earth is a resource that is relevant for my class throughout the school year.  Continuing on the glacier theme, after refreshing my memory on some of the glacier vocabulary, I was reminded of a place I visited often as a kid and decided to Google Earth it:

The forested area is Kettle Moraine State Forest in Wisconsin.  The lakes are kettles in the moraine, which is quite large.  Just an example of why I like Google Earth . . . it's fun for my students but it's also fun for me too, taking a look at places that were important to me and seeing them in a new way.

Oh, and one final note: Tunnel Man is my new favorite superhero!

Other Blogs I Commented On:

Martha shared 7 essential principles of ocean literacy.
Amy discussed permafrost damage and green energy.
Ernestine's blog linked to a neat activity called "Village of 100".

Module VIII

Explain:

This module exposed me to a wealth of information about sea ice.  The main thing that stuck out to me is that the loss of sea ice is documented over and over all around the arctic.  This is not an Alaskan issue, nor is it an American issue.  The arctic is part of a global climate system, and yet it doesn't seem that many people outside of the arctic consider the magnitude of its importance to them.  The positive feedback loop, the rising sea levels, the fragile food web . . . how much evidence do people need? 

We have data from western science as well as the empirical data of traditional knowledge.  It’s a matter of health and cultural survival.  But people still dismiss it or try to politicize it.  This is ill-informed, shortsighted and disrespectful to cultures that are going to lose their way of life.

I am but a lowly teacher, and yet I fell like I know more about the situation than some people who are actually involved in making policy decisions on this issue.  Argh - I can feel myself getting tense just writing about this.  It makes me remember my time in Barrow a few summers ago as part of the Rose Urban Rural Exchange program. 

I was fortunate to be able to participate in a hunting camp.  We spent the week at the camp learning many skills, such as how to skin a seal and how to find edible plants.  The most valuable part of this experience was being able to learn from the elders that were there.  We watched, we listened, and we learned by doing.  I think that if all the blowhard politicians out there spent a week doing this instead of running off at the mouth, they might learn something and we might be able to make some real progress on the global warming front.

I shall step down from my soapbox now.

Extend:

"If it makes it to the dinner table, you win!"
I can't remember where I first heard this saying.  It was probably from a professor or a colleague.  I try to keep it in mind when I plan my lessons.  It means that if a kid learns something in school and they go home and bring it up during conversation at dinner, it's probably a concept that's going to stick with them.  Having said that, there were several analogies from this week's module that made it not only to my dinner table but also to my classroom.

The first one was the comparison that was made between the arctic’s systems of currents and a human cardiovascular system.  I think that is a great analogy to help kids understand what is going on with the movement and temperature changes.  The colors blue and red that indicated hot and cold are the same colors we use in biology to represent arteries and veins.

library.thinkquest.org

divediscover.whoi.edu

I also liked the analogy of warmer temperatures causing methane and carbon dioxide to be released from arctic permafrost in a “big burp”.  Actually, I called it a big fart when I talked about it.  (I mean, come on, you've instantly got a middle schooler's attention when you say the word fart.)  It is methane, after all.  Soon after, we also discussed drunken forests.  Flatulent planets, tipsy trees . . . just another day in science class.

Evaluate:   

I found that most of this module could be of use in my classroom.  However, I probably wouldn't use the interactive animations from Teacher's Domain.  Honestly, I didn't find them to be all that "interactive".  To me, interactive means you're moving something, or changing variables, or maybe playing a game or creating something.  In this resource you're clicking on tabs, or reading type on a screen while looking at images or diagrams, but that's about it.  I don't see much difference between these resources and a video.  Watching time lapse satellite photographs is very similar to watching a film.  But again, the rest of the resources were quite applicable.

Other Blogs I Commented On:

Marilyn shared an article from Science News about finding a record of ancient climates by drilling out  cores of sediments from a Siberian lake. 
Tyler suggested an addition to the ice melt lab where you also use wax and watch it change from one phase of matter to another.
Cheryl had an informative link to information about water pollution from animal feedlots.
 

Module VII

Explain:

This module gave me some perspective on how climate change affects people in rural Alaska and how they might interact with western scientists studying climate change.  Elders can teach teens traditional knowledge about plants, and western scientists can teach them how to monitor the health of the plant populations.  However, it's not like the elders haven't already been monitoring populations.  They've just been doing it differently.  They've been in a given area much longer than the researchers so they have information about climate patterns over many seasons.  As a teenager in one of the TD videos said, the arctic is their home, not just a site for field studies.

Something else from this module that intrigued me was the information about the big bang.  I had no idea that we could detect remnant microwaves from this event.  The fact that we have this piece of visible evidence for something that happened so long ago is pretty amazing.

I was curious to learn what other cultures might believe about how the universe was created, so I looked up some creation stories from different countries.  My favorite was one from China where a being called P'an Ku hatches from a cosmic egg and different parts of his body form different parts of our universe.  For example, his limbs become the mountains, and his two eyes become the sun and the moon.  And guess what part of his body becomes mankind?  His parasites!

Painting of P'an Ku from Google Images

Extend:

This week I used one of the resources from the module right away.  Since we are studying the periodic table, I showed the TD videos about the origins of the elements.  It was a little over the heads of some of my 7th graders, but many of them thought it was pretty neat to think about how they "came from a star".

Soon I plan on also using the video showing how a person's infrared image disappears when a tube of CO2 is put between him and the camera.  That was a great visual to show how CO2 absorbs heat.  I think I will fit this in when we talk about the electromagnetic spectrum.

Evaluate:

"What you burn in your car today shows up in Antarctica by next year."  What if we took this statement from from the module and replaced the word Antarctica with the word Alaska?  Would it still be accurate?  I think so.  All of the climate change information is so very relevant to us in Alaska.  Alaskans will be disproportionately affected by climate change in the future, especially those in rural Alaska. 

I was excited that La’ona DeWilde is using her mapping knowledge in her job to develop citizen scientists in the villages.  She seems like a great role model.  Now there will be databases for things like water quality monitoring where there previously was no data.  This is what we need more of everywhere, not just villages, and with kids as well as adults.  When kids participate in projects such as this, they see themselves as scientists and help break down the stereotype of a scientist being an old crazy-haired white guy in a lab coat holding a test tube.  By the way, if you live in southcentral and interior Alaska you can get involved in a citizen scientist program involving the wood frog.

Wood frog from ADFG website

Other Blogs I Commented On:

Dave shared an experiment he is doing with his 6th graders involving pH, phytoplankton, and microscopic animals in ocean water.
Doug shared the observations of elders in Tuluksak who commented on the rising winter temperatures over the years.
Kathy suggested the book The Whale and the Supercomputer, which seems like it will be a great read.  I just picked it up.

Module VI

Explain:

Ahh, memories . . . this week's module brought me back to my freshman year in college some twenty years ago.  I entered college as an atomopheric science (meteorology) major.  After a year and a half I realized that most meteorologists sit in front of computers and maps all day, and I would much rather be outside experiencing the weather than inside predicting it.  Long story short, I changed my major to biology and here I am. 

Anyway, many of the concepts like air pressure, jet stream, and atmospheric structure were things that I had learned and could actually remember from college - wow!  However, the relationship between atmospheric conditions and pollution was eye opening.  I had never heard of arctic haze before.  I didn't realize that pollution will sit during sunless winter months in the arctic because sunlight is the main driver of chemistry in the atmosphere.  I found further information on arctic haze from Siberian smoke in an article by Ned Rozell, my favorite Alaskan science writer.

I was saddened to learn in the TD videos that Alaska Natives as well as subsistence hunters in other countries are being told not to eat certain mammals or fish because of high levels of contaminants.  They're just supposed to stop what they’ve been doing for thousands of years because of what people in industrial population centers thousands of miles away have done?  I was not aware that the pollutants could travel so far.

Extend:

The YouTube video where ice was made after boiling water in a vacuum dome was neat.  I'm certain I'll show that one to my students.  At the end, the narrator said this process is often used in the pharmaceutical and food packing industries, but he didn’t elaborate.  I googled around a little, looking to connect it to prescriptions the kids take or food they eat, as a way to make the science relevant to them.

I ended up sort of off on a tangent, learning about vacuum distillation and its use in the refining of crude oil.  It's a little complex for 7th grade, but it's good to know, especially with the importance of the oil industry here in Alaska.

Evaluate:

Usually when I evaluate the week's module I feel I am doing so from a professional standpoint, wearing my "teacher hat".  This week I found myself reflecting on the module more personally rather than professionally.  I couldn't help but keep thinking back to the town where I grew up in Wisconsin.

Google Earth view of the Fox River from the College Ave. bridge

My hometown of Kimberly was originally built as a company town for a paper mill (Kimberly-Clark).  The banks of the river it sits next to, the Fox River, are dotted with many other mill towns.  When I was a kid, no one swam, fished, or boated in the river, and I never really questioned why.  The river was just this thing I saw when we drove over it on the bridge.  I had no connection to it.

As I got older, I learned that no one went in the river or ate fish from it because of the PCB pollution from the paper mills.  Eventually it was designated as an EPA Superfund site.  Dredging has been going on for years in the river to remove hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of contaminated sediment.

I feel emotional about this issue, but I'm not sharing this simply as a tale of woe.  The mills are still in operation and have cleaned up their act somewhat.  I realize that people need paper and that the economy in those towns is somewhat dependent on the mills.  However, I do think this story is relevant for people who live along rivers in Alaska.

As the TD videos have shown, many Alaska Natives are intricately connected to their rivers.  But that connection will be weakened if food from those rivers is no longer safe to eat.  There is already concern over how much fish should be consumed by Alaskans due to levels of mercury.  There is even a fish consumption calculator for women and children, along with a lot of other useful information, on the State of Alaska Epidemiology webpage  (look for this icon):

I know that Alaskan rivers don't have the concentration of industry along them that rivers in the Midwest do.  Thank goodness.  But as we learned in this module, pollutants can travel a long way through the atmosphere.  I would hate for there to be Alaskan kids someday who no longer had a connection to a river that was right in their own backyard, like I did.  And as the saying goes, we all live downstream.

Other Blogs I Commented On:

Martha had a commentary on village garbage dumps like the one in Barrow and the pollution they
 contribute.

Marilyn's blog had an informative diagram of a beluga whale that showed what pollutants it carried in its tissues and where they were concentrated.

Tracy shared a visual for understanding the chinook wind as well as how the chinook has affected her farm in North Pole.

Module V

Explain:

Sylvia Earle gave the quote, “We know more about Mars than we know about the oceans.”  That's pretty much how I felt when going through this week's module.  The previous modules have had cultural information that was new to me, but the science in them was mostly review.  This one, however, covered ocean topics that I knew very little about and I found myself fascinated.  Ocean conveyor belts?  Thermohaline circulation?  I had never heard of these, and I listened intently to the audio clip on Teachers' Domain from NPR.

Oceans are the earth’s big heat bucket – they are absorbing 80-90% of the heat returned by global warming.  Wow.  I haven't spent much time in or around the ocean, so I often forget its importance as related to global climate change.

After reading the link on ocean gyres, I saw the "see also" link to something called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  Huh?

Apparently there are plastics, chemicals, and other debris that have been trapped in the North Pacific Gyre and they encompass an area estimated to be at least the size of the state of Texas.  I found more information on a NOAA website that answers many questions about marine debris.  This was all new to me and brought up questions in my mind about plastics, recycling, and the effects of pollution on marine species.

On the topic of marine species, this module also reminded me that Alaska Natives can provide information about numbers of ocean species because they have observed the patterns their whole lives.  They can help Western science and scientists, who may have only observed an area or a population for a much shorter period of time.  Western science needs their knowledge.

Extend:

I appreciated the "blabs" that were incorporated into this week's module.  The colored ice cube experiment would work great in my middle school science classroom.  With every year that I teach, I am trying to add more and more inquiry-based activities into what I do.  As we try to increase our students' STEM knowledge, inquiry is a must.

The air-filled vs. water-filled balloon demo would be an excellent visual for teaching heat capacity.  I also was intrigued by "Science on a Sphere" from NOAA.   The new Imaginarium in the Anchorage Museum has something similar to this, as seen in the picture below.  If you have a chance you should check it out.

Evaluate:

Being so busy with work and family doesn’t give me much time to read science-related books or magazines to learn something new.  But I really do enjoy it, and I enjoyed getting a chance to learn what was in this module.  It made me reflect on being a student rather than a teacher.  The excitement that I feel when I learn something new and cool is what I want my students to feel as well.  I know they’re not going to be all “ooh, aah!” every single day in class.  However, it’s a reminder to me to try and keep up my energy and enthusiasm for science as a teacher even as school district decisions try to drag me down.  I think science is awesome and I want my students to think so too.  The audio, video, and images on Teachers Domain and YouTube from this module can help keep some of them engaged in a way that a textbook cannot.

Other blogs I commented on:

Dan stresses the importance of using visual aids.

Cheryl's post includes a link to ALISON, the Alaska Lake Ice and Snow Observatory Network.  Neat!

Doug has a cool video from YouTube of divers going through a halocline.

Module IV

Explain:
This module has made me think about the ocean in a new way.  Specifically, I am more aware of the connection between people and the ocean.  I learned that the name "Unangan" means "seaside people" . . . their very name has their landscape incorporated into it.  There is such a strong relationship with the water.  Its is used for sustenance, for craft materials, for travel.  It can give, and when there is an event like a tsunami, it can take away.  But it is constant.  As someone in one of the TD videos summed it up, "she’s our mother, she’s our comforter”.

Extend:
This week's module planted a lot of little seeds in my mind as to what I might be able to develop and use in my classroom.  Volcanoes are a big draw for getting kids into earth science – they are captivated by all the fire and destruction and drama.  I think I could use the Nova resource that profiled the most deadly volcanoes over the centuries.  The kids could compare those volcanoes to recent ones we've had in Alaska, like Redoubt and Augustine.  (I have used PBS resources like Nova resources before, and they're really good . . . there are some clips from a program on the Salem witch trials that I use when we study fungi!)

Where I grew up, we never had volcanoes, earthquakes, or tsunamis.  I did, however, experience one tornado.  I hope to share that story with my kids someday when they are older.  It might be interesting to see if my students can find a family member or neighbor who has a personal experience with one of these natural disasters.  It would be nice to add in some human interest to make this particular science topic more personal for the students. 

Evaluate:
I'm really enjoying learning more about Google Earth.  Previous to this class, I had only used it for looking at different neighborhoods when my husband and I were house hunting.  It has so many capabilities that I never realized, and I'm sure I will use the ruler tool and real time earthquake plug-in when we study earth science.  That said, I do find some images confusing sometimes . . . see the image below of Lituya Bay, for example:

It looks as if there is a composite of three different satellite photographs that show part clouds, part sun, and part different lighting.  While I can interpret what is going on in the picture, I wonder if this would be an impediment to 7th graders trying to understand what they’re seeing.  Maybe someone else who has experience using Google Earth with middle schoolers can share whether or not their students have had difficulty with this?


Other blogs I commented on:

Ernestine has a link to a website that lists movies (good and bad!) with volcanoes.  These can be a fun way to point out bad science.
Matt shares some knowledge about Mt. Edgecumbe and the distinction between bog and muskeg.
Konrad has some interesting ideas for a volcano project that students could do. 

Module III

Explain:

Reading and watching the videos for this module made me think about how different cultures "study" their environment.  To me, as someone who majored in biology at a traditional university on the east coast, studying means following the scientific method and using the appropriate tools.  However, I learned that it could mean something different for someone like an Alaska Native.  Their study might involve personal experience, trial and error, and knowledge from time and elders.  I loved Richard Glenn's quote about how there is not a conflict between these two different ways.  Rather, they are two flashlights shining down the same path.  This is a quote that many western scientists would do well to remember when they conduct research in such a way that gives an impression of "our way is the better way".

Extend:

I'm thinking that I could used some of the teacher's domain videos when we do a unit on biomes.  Normally in my class we have talked about all of the living things in a particular biome except for humans.  We discuss the effect of people on the land, but don't really discuss the people themselves.  It would be interesting if we were studying the tundra biome, for instance, and I could try and include a section about who lives in the tundra in Alaska.  I could also possibly share these resources with the social studies teacher on my team and she could expand on it a bit more in her class.

Aerial photo of tundra from biology-blog.com

Evaluate:

I appreciated the insight that this week's module gave me regarding connections to the land.  Whalers have a connection to the sea and sea ice.  Salmon fishers have a connection to the river.  But western scientists are sometimes disconnected from the land they study.  Richard Glenn talked about scientists who could recognize multilayer ice on a satellite, and yet they didn’t know it when they were standing on it.  It’s disappointing that we can become so disconnected from the things that we purport to be such experts on.  Technology definitely serves an important purpose, but we can't forget to leave our computers and get outside too.

A link discussing the increased use of technology by rural Alaskan kids and how to combat the fact that some of them are becoming less connected to their local environment is at  http://www.fws.gov/arsnew/regmap.cfm?arskey=20592.  It is related to the No Child Left Inside program.

Other blogs I commented on:

Kevin made a point to incorporate science into his lessons when he was a business teacher.
Doug observed that we often see ourselves as masters of the environment, even though this view can be detrimental to us and our environment.
Alison stressed the importance of taking kids outside to experience their environment.

Module II

Before doing the reading and viewing for this week’s assignment, I had some knowledge about the similarities and differences between my culture and various Alaska Native cultures.  However, I had never thought much about these similarities and differences with respect to science specifically.  I had always just thought about them in a general way as they affect people’s lives.  I have gained insight on what I think it means for living and non-living things to be connected.  I hope I can pass on the importance of these connections to my students.

The main thing I learned was the general idea about how western science isolates and indigenous science integrates.  In western science, we single out a topic to learn more about it on its own.  The more you further your education at a university, for example, the more you specialize.  By the time you are pursuing a PhD in science, you are probably studying something so specific that not very many other people outside your discipline may even understand what it is.   On the other hand, Alaska Native science studies something as it relates to the whole.  Natives don’t seem to separate one topic from another. 

In the video about the spirit of subsistence living, it was mentioned that Alaska Native science does not necessarily seek to explain nature, but rather gathers knowledge about how to coexist with nature. I found myself thinking that personally I do both of these things.  I have always felt a connection to the natural environment of wherever I have lived and have a sense that I am not the most important species on the planet.  However, I have always asked “why” about things for as long as I can remember.  I get great satisfaction from learning how things work, both in the natural world and elsewhere.  It reminded me of the quote by John Muir (http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/) that says, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”


As far as using this week's resources goes, I was thinking it would be a good idea to introduce certain earth science topics by having the kids look at maps from Google Earth.  I try to make a lot of my lessons specific to Alaska, if possible.  For example, if we were studying volcanoes, we would talk about Alaska volcanoes.  But it would be neat to have them look at volcanic areas in places where their families are from or places that they are interested in.  Filipino students, for example, might be interested in seeing Google Earth images of Mt. Pinatubo.  Or a kid who has always wanted to visit Hawaii could look up one of the volcanoes there. Then kids could share what they found.  They could see where else in the world there are volcanoes, and they could learn something about the places where their classmates are from.  This would build connections between students and also build connections to other landscapes besides Alaska.

I did disagree with one thing that I read in the assignment.  The comparison was made that indigenous knowledge is learning by doing and experiencing, and western science is learning by formal education.  Any good science teacher practices hands-on learning as much as possible.  In my classroom we are doing and experiencing almost daily.  This is how many kids learn best.  So I am not sure what exactly was being referred to, but I don’t think the phrase "formal education" is an accurate portrayal of best practices in current science education . . . unless I misunderstood?


Blogs I visited and commented on:

http://amysexplorealaskablog.blogspot.com/
http://explorealaskawithalison.blogspot.com/
http://wwwkrisexploresalaskacom.blogspot.com/

A SPECIAL PLACE . . .

This is a picture taken in the High Uintas Wilderness Area in Utah.  I worked here as a wilderness ranger during the summer before my senior year in college.  Since that was almost 20 years ago, I don't have any digital photos, so I found this one on Panoramio.com.  The reason this place is special to me is that it was the first time I realized that I was drawn to mountains and that I needed to make my home near them.

I grew up in Wisconsin, which is quite a flat place.  As a kid, I always enjoyed being outside but did not have a chance to venture into very many wild places.  Then I went to college in upstate New York and was introduced to backpacking by some friends.  It opened my eyes to how I could get out and explore with everything I needed strapped on my back.  When I learned I could work for the Forest Service during the summer going backpacking and getting paid for it, I jumped at the chance.  The money wasn't much, but the work environment was phenomenal compared to the previous summer's job of waitressing.  When I returned to college after that summer in the mountains, I changed my major from meteorology to biology, got a job in an outdoor school in California after graduation, and have lived somewhere near mountains ever since.  That summer in the Uintas immersed me in the mountains and gave me an appreciation of an incredible alpine ecosystem.



LANDSCAPE OF MY BIRTHPLACE . . .

I was born in a landscape that was both leveled off and punctuated by glaciers, as you can see in the Google Earth image above.  Northeastern Wisconsin is fairly flat terrain interspersed with water sources of various sizes.  The only water in my immediate area (my backyard) was a small unnamed creek, which is pronounced "crick" where I'm from.  But I could travel less than an hour in any direction and come to either Lake Winnebago, the bay of Green Bay, the Fox River, or Lake Michigan. At the time I didn't appreciate it, but after having lived in the dry Central Valley of California I know how precious water can be.

I have never used Google Earth with my students.  I imagine it would be very useful for a variety of earth science topics.  Perhaps we could use it to examine volcanic landscapes, or to see aerial views of fault lines.  I hope that as I explore it more I will come up with some ideas and also learn from reading the blogs of other students in this course.