Welcome To The Wizard's World!

---

Cory M. Wisnia, A MendoWorld Science Tech Guy
cwisnia@mcn.org

Mendocino USD * * * http://www.mcn.org/ed/cur/cw/cwhome.html

This site has (or pages within it have) been selected for Global Schoolhouse Net's CalWeb Project, Thinkquest, and PacBell's Blue Webn' Project.

Welcome to "The Sputtering Edge"! This is a site PERMANENTLY under construction! At present, many of these projects are being reshuffled into new folders at the Mendocino Middle School server site, so you may have to reset bookmarks! This reshuffling is due to there being over 350 separate items in one folder until recently--causing some slowness and glitches. Hopefully things will be speeded up soon by this organizing process. Please bear with me!

The Wizard's Mendocino Community Network Server Site, which has the URL: http://www.mcn.org/ed/cur/cw/cwhome.html.

[TeleSci Listserv]	[TeleGenetics Project]	[The Black Plague]	["I Search For Science"]
[Student-created Stacks & Web Pages]	[Living Habitat Project]	[Lessons & Units]	[URLs-WIZARD'S FAVES]
[HaikuS For A Comet!]	[S.C.O.R.E. -Science]	[Mushroom Project]	[HS Math Page]
[Science Poetry Page]	[Kids Corner]	[About This Site]	[Quotes To Share!]

1. TeleScience Listserv:

this is a LISTSERV for science educators, sponsored by Mendocino Unified School District. To join, simply write to

telesci@listserv.mcn.org

and in the SUBJECT field put the single word

subscribe

No need to put anything in the letter body field

You will be sent updates on grants, curriculum, new or interesting science WWW sites, collaborative project updates from all over. Instructions for appropriate use are included in the greeting when you subscribe.

If you would like to subcribe to TeleSci, Click here

[Back To TOP]

2.

TeleGenetics Project:

Using curriculum produced over the years including as a participant in the Project Storyline curriculum project of UC Irvine, this project invites 7th and 8th grade teachers/classes/schools to take part in a series of hands-on data-gathering activities involving Genetics. Currently, 15 schools were involved in this project throughout the US and abroad in fall 1995. You can sign up for next fall by writing us.

[Back To TOP]

3.

The Black Plague:

This is a lesson/simulation which has been presented at several science conferences. I am putting it on-line so that more educators may be able to access and use it. It is appropriate for those studying the Middle Ages as well as those studying epidemics. Although it is a single lesson simulation, it can be part of a larger cross-curricular miniunit.

[Back To TOP]

4. "I Search For Science Project":

This is a project that has been used for the last several years. Students research their own science topics using multiple resources, including the internet. The writeup on the project is available on-line. There is also an anecdotal episode called "Tale From The Electronic Frontier" which describes the project. But the most exciting part is a growing collection of letters and resources which students have received over time on a wide variety of science subjects. Many of these have come from usenet Newsgroups such as sci.med, or sci.bio and many others. We are posting them in the ...Electronic Dialogue Archive...,where they will be posted by subject area. The Web site, if you wish to go there is at: "http://www.mcn.org/ed/earch". Right now we have only a few examples, but we invite others to write to us, and as students work on their projects we are asking permission to post appropriate letters on-line. Other resources have been downloaded from the WWW using Netscape. These have been and are being put into folder so other students can use them for future projects.

[Back To TOP]

5. Student-created Science HyperCard Stacks & Student-created Web Pages:

Over the last few years, students have been creating hypercard stacks which we've begun to put on-line. These are primarily about Human Systems, but in the future will include many other subjects. We have also been helping students to create their own Web pages. These are in construction, and several of them involve doing surveys of areas which are their own interest.

[Back To TOP]

6.

Self-Sufficient Habitat Project:

A Special Project in which students build Habitats which are meant to be self-sufficient in one of three situational choices: 1) Astrospheres-in space 2) Aquaspheres-in or on the ocean, or 3) Terraspheres-on earth or on the surface of the Moon or Mars. These models are designed on a 1 centimeter = 1 foot scale, and are built to house one dozen young adults for up to a year without outside influences, similar to the original Biosphere concept. This site is under very early construction but we do have Quicktake camera images of the students and their recently models at present! We finished off the project with a live video conference with NASA at the Space Mockup Module Center at Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas last May (1996)! We may have some images of that as well soon. Just click on the title above.

[Back To TOP]

7.

A selection of Illustrative Lessons and Units

Developed by The California Science Implementation Network (CSIN), through Project Storyline. These units are available for members of this California-based science reform project through UC Irvine. They are put on-line to illustrate model lessons and units. Some of them are lessons which were written by yours truly, some by others. Among the full units is a multi-lesson astronomy unit which was developed for 6th grade entitled: Astronomy-Our View From Earth. The Unit is be available as a self-extracting binhexed file for Mac, and is over 130 pages long (800K). Currently, you can view the introduction, Storyline and Table of Contents by pointing to the title words in blue above. Another unit is on-line also. It is an Earth Science unit titled "Where Land & Water Meet". It is targeted for 3-4th grade students with lots of hands-on game-like lessons. You will be able to down load the unit as a self-extracting binhexed file for MacIntosh. It is approximately 1.2 MB. At this time you can view the Table of Contents and Storyline. Also included from this over-100-page Unit are two sample single lessons which can be viewed. One is called "Run Salmon Run" which is a game which looks at the environmental factors in the life cycle of the salmon. Also, there is a gin-rummy-like card game called the "Pond Wildlife Survival Game" now available. The simple rules and all of the cards (100!) can be seen as GIF files and downloaded. Feedback on these games is very welcome!



[Back To TOP]

8. The Wizard's Latest Faves

An evolving, somewhat organized list of the latest interesting Science Education WWW URLs I've come across in the last few weeks or month. This is a very incomplete listing.

[Back To TOP]

9.

Homage to a beautiful Comet!

Under construction, this is a site which includes poems written by students both at our school and beyond about the comet Hyakutake. It also has several images that are very beautiful, taken by the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

[Back To TOP]

10. SCORE-Science

A site which science educators from the SCORE Project may use to evaluate science-related web sites. The "Schools of California On-line Resources for Educators" (SCORE) Science Project is one of several in the state of California. SCORE Science is sponsored by the Humboldt COE. Participants surf the web to find new and interesting/exemplary science web sites for students and educators K-14. If you would like to fill out the form and send it to us, we will check out the site. Eventually these notes will go onto our main Home Page in Eureka, with reviews of all web sites encountered and reviewed. This is a temporary site for the form. To go directly to the S.C.O.R.E. Science site, click here to The SCORE-Science Home Page. <-----This site is for BOTH students and teachers!

[Back To TOP]

11.

...A Student Mushroom ID Project

A site which includes student quickcam images of various fungi found around our coastal area. Mendocino is a unique area for fungi. A vast number of species may be found in this area, due to climate (not too warm, not to cold, pretty damp, pretty shaded redwood/fir forests along the foggy coast). For that reason Mycologists (those who study mushrooms at a certain level of fanaticism and expertise) come from all over the world to the Mendocino Coast during the month of November and December, to trudges through the forests in search of that perfect Matsutake, Chanterelle or Bolete. Our students study the fungi Kingdom and learn to be able to recognize and categorize many diverse species. A number of our better restaurants use wild mushrooms as a matter of course in their daily specials.

12.

A High School Math Challenge Page

This is a temporary location for a new Mendocino High School Math Project, in which special problems, open-ended Problems of the Week (POWS) and other "Interactive Math Project" (IMP) type problems and work will be displayed, including challenges for students/teachers from other schools. There are now two new challenge problems, one about Building a Fence, and another about Tiling a Bathroom. These are real-life integrated problems which are very open-ended and having more than one solution. You can also send in your own problems to be posted! This newest page is a result of the Wizard being asked and volunteering to teach High School Math for the second half of that year! We'll see what comes of it!

[Back To TOP]

13. The Student Science Poetry Center Home Page

A site where students can write in and publish their own poetry having to do with science related topics, from nature observations to environmental topics to astronomy and earth science. This is a very new site! Hopefully more info on this in the spring of 97!

14.

Kids Corner

A place kids may wish to go to find neat sites for on-line interactive science!

[Back To TOP]

15.

About This Site

This site is being developed to store Science and Math curriculum developed here at Mendocino Middle School and Mendocino High School. I am Cory Wisnia, aka "The Wizard", and I've been an 8th grade Science educator at our Middle School, as well as a former, currently ad hoc Staff Developer and Tech Advisor for the California Science Implementation Network (CSIN). I've been teaching for about 24 years, from grades 2-11th, and have been involved with technology and science education on a statewide basis for many years. Over the last 8 years I've traveled around the state doing staff development in both fields, including teaching the use of the internet, practical web design, developing integrated sci/math/tech curriculum, etc. Beginning this January , after returning from a half-year sabbatical (yeah!), I've been teaching high school math at Mendocino High School, including IMP (Interactive Math Program) and Algebra II classes. I am available to give inervice trainings to large or small groups, and can be reached through e-mail or by phone: 707-937-0113 for such purposes. Lately I've been working with Humboldt COE on their SCORE-Science pages.

At this site, a number of subjects are posted for downloading, including lessons from an on-line Genetics Project currently being done, a simulation on the Black Plague appropriate for 6-8th grade (either for learning about epidemics or as a history/social studies-related activity), several elementary science lessons and units, and more. Also letters/correspondence which students have found while researching various science topics can be found, by going to the "I Search For Science" links. These correspondences will be placed in envelopes by subject matter and are of a wide range of subjects. Other projects, such as the Science Poetry page, a hands-on Genetics project and a LISTSERV for science educators are described above.

Many of the projects described and posted are open to collaborative involvement by other teachers. They are also posted to give ideas to others in terms of how to implement distance learning projects in our classrooms. Have fun! As Al Rogers says: Don't just surf---MAKE WAVES!

[Back To TOP]

16. Sidebar: Three Quotes To Share

Our goal is to educate student for their future and not our past---David Thornburg

Any sufficiently advanced Technology is indistinguisable from magic---Arthur C. Clarke

In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves prefectly preapred for a world which no longer exists---- Eric Hoffer

Also from David Thornburg: the youth of this coming generation of students may be know as:......."Generation.com"....as they will be the first generation of a true global "Communication Age"

[Back To TOP]

You are visitor since February 24 1997

You can send comments to:cwisnia@mcn.org

back to MMS home page

To The Mendocino Community Network Home Page