|
Name: |
Jamie |
|
Subject:
|
Record time |
Date:
|
April
11, 2005 -- Monday |
| Today
I was in a group that was supposed to be taking notes on argali
behavior. All of the argali we encountered were at a great distance
and seemed to always run away minutes after we came! So, we spent
most of the day searching for any argali we could closely observe
for a long enough time to collect data.
Our searching left us with nothing, and doing a behavior survey
just wasn’t going to work today! In the midst of all of
our searching, we somehow stumbled upon a lamb! We were in perfect
surroundings to capture it, so it was easy to prevent it from
running away. The lamb turned out to be a young female, and the
person who spotted it named it Jamie. The whole entire process
of collecting all the data from her took only 13 minutes. It was
record time and we were so excited to be able to release her back
to her mother.
After we collected all the data from the lamb, we went on searching
for more groups of argali or lambs to capture. Towards the end
of our day we saw, from a distance, two lambs running with their
mothers. They were very far away, but we tried to capture them
anyway. Our capturing was unsuccessful but the chase was still
exciting. Shortly after our botched attempt to get the two lambs,
we got a call in from the radio that just west of us there were
8 lambs!
Unfortunately, we were unable to get over to the location the
lambs were at because dinner was quickly approaching. So, I loaded
into the van and sped back to the camp just in time for dinner.
Dinner was great we had noodles and soup along with delicious
peach nectar. The PI, Dr. Rich Reading was leaving after dinner.
This is very sad because he is such a wonderful principal investigator.
After dinner, we took a group photo and said our goodbyes to Rich
and another scientist, Barry, who was leaving along with him.
The reason they are leaving the project early is because they
are trying to set up another argali camp in western Mongolia.
I am very excited for them, but it was still sad to see them go.
Once they left everyone gathered together in the main ger and
played a game. I spent time in the scientists ger and tasted a
local treat, dried curdles. I am going to bed early tonight because
of the Teach Live call in the morning! So I will talk to you all
bright an early in the morning. Five-thirty a.m. (Mongolia time)
to be exact.
Peace,
Jamie |
|
Name: |
Mrs.
Coleman |
|
Subject:
|
Keeping
up with the team |
Date:
|
April
10, 2005 -- Sunday |
|
The
logs from EB3 come in about every other day. I usually get two
at a time in a zipped file containing folders for each day. The
files are carefully labeled so that I am able to get the information
copied to the web quickly. The process is quite simple, and only
two pictures and one text file (from the first day) had difficulty
opening. Those have been resent and are now posted.
The
next conference call from the team will be made on Monday (tomorrow).
The 4th period class will be the lucky ones to have the opportunity
to talk to the team. If they haven't made their questions they
will do it tomorrow, and we will go over them before the conference
time. Unfortunately, the team will have to get up 30 minutes earlier
to make the call this time due to a schedule change in this week's
classes. None of us really had a choice about this, the 16 hour
time difference makes things very difficult to synchronize the
schedule. It would probably been a little easier for the team
if their host school was on the east coast - that would have given
them a 3 hour advantage and less time between locations. But I
am certainly glad we were able to participate, though the difficulty
in time and temperature has not been on our parts. |
|
Name: |
Mrs. Coleman |
|
Subject:
|
Class
preparations |
Date:
|
April
11, 2005 -- Monday |
|
I received
a phone call from Jim early this morning confirming our scheduled
phone conference at 1:30 today. He seemed a bit worried about a
snow storm that was moving in and wanted me to know that if they
don't call it would be because the Sat phone doesn't work well in
deeply clouded skies.
The
classes spent the morning reviewing the logs from the last few days,
as well as receiving instructions on their responsibility level
for the EB3 project. Ms. VZ showed them some of the photos of the
dead sheep and explained how the researchers could identify the
age as well as the cause of death. Using the photo of the internal
organs, Ms. VZ pointed out each part that was identifiable and compared
it to what they would see in their upcoming frog dissections.
Part
of the grade for this project will be determined on the way students
talk, act and participate during the entire project time. The Rubric
gives students an idea where their grade will come from and what
is expected of them. 4th period students were given specifics on
how the call would work and how they should talk when asking a question.
|
|
Name: |
Mrs.
Coleman |
|
Subject:
|
2nd
Conference call |
Date:
|
April
11, 2005 -- Monday |
|
The
second call came at 1:30 in the afternoon. The weather must have
passed them, since they were able to call. The first time Jamie
called the connection was breaking up; during much of it we could
not even understand her. The call dropped while she was telling
us a summary of the last few days. She called back again twice before
she finally got out of the van (it was very cold again) and just
stood outside in the open air. That made a huge difference in the
quality of our connection and the call never dropped after that.
Once
the students began asking questions it went quickly. We need to
get better at not having 'down time' between the questions, keeping
students in a tight queue would be far more efficient and not make
the EB3 team wait at all. We asked Jamie a lot and she answered
each question with such depth and clarity, the students could get
a good idea of the situation just by hearing her answers.
Auggie
was there again. Friday we had not prepared different questions
for Auggie and found that he did not always know how to answer.
But today students prepared questions just for Auggie,
different from those we asked Jamie. They wanted to hear him talk
in Mongolian (since this is a different group from Friday), and
they wanted to know a lot of personal information about him and
his life in Mongolia.
We
talked about 30 minutes overall, and the call was very successful.
|
|
