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For my final project, I decided to learn as much as I could about bioluminescence in Sea Creatures. As I was doing my research, I came across a post about my topic on a blog. I had information that interested me, so I included some of their facts in my website. I also had some other information that I thought the author may like to know about bioluminescence, and I even asked some question that came across my mind while reading his post. Unfortunatley, I was not able to take a screen shot of my comment because it has to be approved by the author before it will show up on the blog post. Luckily, I saved my comment in a word document before submitting. So, here is the link to the blog post and the comment that I submitted.

http://fishschooled.blogspot.com/2010/06/burglar-alarm-hypothesis-role-of.html#comment-form

“Over the past six weeks or so, I have been researching bioluminescence for a school project and I came across this website. I thought you did a great job explaining about how dinoflagellates are used for the ‘burglar-alarm system.’ You may already know, but the same ‘burglar-alarm system’ is used by sea animals that can emit bioluminescence without consuming dinoflagellates. The emitting of light is caused by a chemical reaction which is then converted into light energy. This makes it possible to divert attention to an animal’s (who can creates light) predator, in effect causing another animal to hunt it leaving the original prey safe. In comparison, it has the same ending effects as when predators consume dinoflagellates but it repels predators in two different ways. But I do have a question; what happens to dinoflagellates after they are consumed by an animal, and that animal is consumed by a predator? Is it a chain reaction making each predator emit light leaving it vulnerable to another predator?

I would also like to recommend a TED talk that a woman named Edith Widder gave. She shows evidence that she recorded on camera of the ‘burglar-alarm system’ in effect. Here’s the link: www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/edith_widder_glowing_life_in_an_underwater_world.html.” 

I chose to contribute to this particular blog post because I had gained some useful information from it and I felt that I had some interesting information to give back. That blog post kept me thinking and I wanted to continue the conversation to see what else I could learn, and maybe what else I could teach.

I thought that contributing this was very easy. Mostly because we had practiced in class what it takes to become a good commenter, and how to create conversations. It was easy to write more than a one or two sentence response because that’s what I was used to and I really enjoy learning about bioluminescence. If you can easily talk to someone about a topic you’re researching, then you know you picked one that means something to you. I wasn’t at all timid because there were some things that I just needed to know more about, which made it easier to ask some questions that I had. To prepare for contributing, I needed to make sure I knew as much as I could in the time that I had and that my facts were correct.  When you feel like you know a fair amount about your topic, it’s not so bad talking to others about what you’ve found and what you think.

Topic Selection for Final Project

Fist, I picked the TED talk theme called Ocean Stories. The topic that I've decided to focus on is bioluminescence in deep sea creatures. Bioluminescence is the production of light by an organism, most fish use it to hunt, keep from being hunted or attract a mate. I'm interested in this topic because it amazes me that fish can spontaneously create light. I also think more people would be interested to learn about it because it's not well known yet and seems to be a phenomena. I think it will be a challenging thing to learn about, because it is a specified topic and not very many people research it. The two talks that got me interested in the topic were both given by Edith Widder. The talks are called Glowing Life in an Underwater World and The Weird, Wonderful World of Bioluminescence. After the talks I had several questions about bioluminescence that I hope to answer over the course of this project.

• What causes bioluminescence? 
• Where and why do sea creatures use it? 
• What percent of ocean animals make light? 
• What kinds of creatures use it? 
• When comparing internal and external  bioluminescence, which is more effective and why? 
• What effect does bioluminescence from one sea creature have on other sea creature that cannot create light?

Internet; Pro's and Con's

I’ve always been amazed by the amount of information we can access on the internet. My first TED talk I’d like to share is by Tim Berners-Lee; he talks about the amount of people using the internet and constantly updating it to have more current information. The point of the talk is to show the advantages of having an internet that everyone can contribute to. The second TED talk I’d like to share this week is given by Eli Pariser. His talk explains how the internet limits us through online filters. My learning goal is to find out how drastic the filters are and how you can push past them. Be thinking about how different your life wouldbe without the internet. 

It amazed me at how large of a response the internet had when it first came out. I have been used to having it around my whole life and it hadn’t occurred to me that it hasn’t always been here. Like when Tim showed the map of people who update road maps on the internet. It seems like a simple thing but was actually very amazing to most people when the internet became common; being able to change how map looks in seconds is a pretty powerful thing.

The thing that most intrigued me about the two talks is the fact that when you type something into Google, not one person will have identical search results. They’re swayed by where you are, what you click on the most, what you click on first, your type of computer and more. It’s shocking to find that sometimes people don’t learn new things simply because they can’t find something new on the internet easily. Search results are favored towards your current interests which creates a problem when it comes to acting on new interests.

The specialized results reminded me of a debate that some of my classmates were having after watching another talk called “Where’s the Learn This Button?” We kept arguing that specialized learning is good when you already know what you want to do and you’re old enough to put that goal into effect. We also came across the idea that specialized learning is not so good when you’re young. If you try to specialize early, you may end up feeling obligated to do the same career your entire life, even if you don’t enjoy it. It would be better if Google had less online filters, that way people can get a variety of information and can decide what they want to do after seeing more than one thing or even have enough information to change jobs later in life if they ever desired.

If you have achieved the learning goal, you should be able to answer these questions. What is an online filter? How does one person's differ from another's and why? How drastic are different people's online filters? What are some ways you can avoid filters and obtain new information?

Learning Adventure Update

Last time, I said finding time was my biggest setback. That proved true for my research too. Since it was the part of my project that wasn't directly related to my intrinsic motivations. One thing that helped me be successful is that I already had what I wanted to research planned out. This helped me when it came time to do the research, since I already had an outline; I just needed to gain the specific information I was looking for.

I still find my idea of success to fit for my project. Success will come when I can honestly say that my love for photography helped me learn something new that I'd never known before. I tried to integrate my intrinsic and extrinsic motivators to keep the project engaging. Throughout the two weeks I feel like I successfully accomplished my goal. I learned about how Chihuly got started and some background knowledge on some of his pieces I've seen in Washington.

Learning Adventure Progress

For the past week, I have working to complete my learning adventure about photography and research about Dale Chihuly artwork. So far there have been positives and negatives while going through my adventure.
The part that has worked well was getting the initial photos take at the Chihuly bridge of class in Tacoma. That is the main intrinsic motivation in my project, which is why I got it done earlier and made room for it. The negative is the research. It's been very hard to find time to do any research. Since it was connected to my intrinsic motivations I've been looking forward to it but my homework load for school has prevented me in furthering progress in my learning adventure. Since I have a three day weekend, I'm planning on setting aside time to increase my knowledge on Chihuly, but most of all how to tie together intrinsic and extrinsic motivations.

Learning Adventure Path to Success

For my learning adventure, I'm going to Dale Chihuly's bridge of glass and the Museum of Glass to take pictures of his work. Then I'll pick my five favorite pieces to research. For me, success will come when I can honestly explain how my love of photography has helped me learn something new that I never would have known. Through this adventure I want to be able to say that taking pictures is more that seeing beautiful things, but also learning the history behind them and knowing how they came to be.

To achieve my learning goal, I need to learn about the 5 art pieces created by Dale Chihuly of my choosing. First, I'll need to have some background information about Chihuly. For example, when he became an artist, his intrinsic/extrinsic motivations and the challenges he had to overcome to achieve his dreams.

For what I want to learn, I need some resources. I plan to use the pictures I take to decide witch Dale Chihuly pictures I want to research. I'll find my information on the Dale Chihuly website, and see if there is information by the museum of glass or Chihuly's glass bridge (where I'll be taking the larger portion of my pictures), and from books in the library about Chihuly's work and the art of glass blowing.

If I run into challenges, I plan on getting help from my dad or asking my teacher how I could better achieve my goal. My dad is greatly interested in Chihuly's work, knows where to find valuable information about his work and even met him earlier this year. Like I said before, Dale's website is the best place to find information along with the book written about him.

Learning Adventure Proposal-Revised

You know that feeling you get when you’re teacher brings up the word project? When you sulk in your chairs and give out a loan groan? Well, my teacher is trying to change that. Our project is basically, to create a project. We have to create a learning task for ourselves that will be highly engaging and motivating. There are two types of goals that we use in our everyday lives, performance goals and learning goals. A performance goal is normally considered “playing it safe.” With a performance goal you’re only using extrinsic motivations, and usually look for some kind of reward. With a learning goal you’re trying to increase your competence or in other words, trying to improve your knowledge.

With this project we’re imbedding learning goals in our plan, and we are given complete autonomy. We get to pick what we do, how we do it, when we do it and who we do it with. For my project, I’m proposing a sort of research project mixed with intrinsic motivations. Pick who you want to work with, then go to a museum, gallery, national park or something similar to visit. Then narrow your topic to a specific thing or person to take pictures of and research. If you don’t like research projects make sure you pick something you’re interested in and you don't know much about yet. For my project I want to re-visit the museum of glass, where there are incredible glass sculptures created by Dale Chihuly. Then photograph the pieces that interest me the most and learn more about them by researching him on the internet, watching documentaries or any other way you’d like.  

This project will be challenging because of the amount of time it takes, and the small amount of information given on the subject. I'll have to find new tool that will help me obtain onformation other than the internet. Examples, movies or books. Also, I haven't had much time to take my pictures outside of school because of homework load. My main learning goal is to stretch my knowledge beyond my hobby of photography. This time I want to find out the history behind the things I love to take pictures of.

You can also include autonomy by how you present your new found knowledge to your class. You can write a speech, create a power point, or film a short movie. I've decided to create a photo powerpoint of the Dale Chihuly pieces I find most interesting or unique and explain some background information to the class. Last time I went to the museum of glass, I took a couple pictures but would like to have much more that I could use as visual aids for my project.You’ll have two weeks to complete your final product.  

My project is all about autonomy because you get to decided how many people are in your group, what kind of place you want to go to, what you want to research and how you will narrow down your topic, combining your hobbies while giving an insightful presentation, and when you work over a two week period of time. It also deals with learning goals more that performance goals because the object isn’t just to get a good grade. It’s about finding something you’re passionate about, learning more about it and sharing your knowledge with others.