Cellular Respiration: 2

This past week I finished researching the subject and have looked at quite a few different illustrations gathering ideas to put together the animation. Some of the illustrations we might even be able to use in the animation, that I believe will help give a big picture of things in a better way than I thought we could do by ourselves. I have also put together a list of the main steps in cellular respiration that are necessary to cover at any level, I tried to keep things simple enough for a large target area to understand the information provided. I haven't and won't be able to meet with the rest of my group until next week, due to work conflicts, but I will be trying to sending an e-mail to them so that they can use the information I have gathered to start working on a story board....which the last I knew will be the basis for the animation.

Service Learning - Day 1

Monday I started my service learning project at the YMCA in Stevens Point. I got to help kids ages 3-12 use weight lifting equipment. I thought this was dangerous, as I had always been taught that lifting before puberty was detrimental to growth and could make people permanently short. Marissa, the person in charge of the Family Prime Time fitness section, showed me that the kids cannot lift more than their own body weight. The machines are designed to convert the weight of the kids to a certain level of resistance so the kids cannot strain of otherwise injure themselves. Some of the kids are pretty new to the machines, so Marissa had to take them through every machine and show them how to do the exercise correctly. This actually took quite a long time. I had to try it, as it looked like it would be really easy. It wasn't. It is actually a good workout. I also learned that the YMCA has a large family event planned for Earth Day and I will be able to work with them during the entire activity, so I am pretty excited. I really enjoyed my couple of hours in the Y and am looking forward to doing it again next week.

Deer Project

As I mentioned in my first post I am working with The Wildlife Society and the deer project in specific. I may have to find other opportunities however, as deer trapping may soon be coming to an end as the weather gets warmer and does begin to drop their fawns. The goal of the deer project is to monitor and learn more about the deer herd that lives in Schmeekle and the nearby areas. This is done in large part through radio collaring. Radio collaring allows for tracking of the deer which can tell a lot about its habits and life style. Right now we are trying to get more radio collars on deer through trapping. There are two types of traps that the deer project uses to try to capture deer. The first is a basic box trap. The trap has doors on both ends and is baited in the middle with corn, when the deer enters so far into the trap it trips a wire that closes both doors. The box traps are left open nearly all week and we check them at 7am and 8pm. The other type of trap is a drop net. This type of trap takes a little more work. It is a large net held up on ten foot poles. Volunteers sit in a nearby blind and when the deer move to the bait in the center of the net it is dropped. The deer must then be tackled, blindfolded and radio collared. So far I have not been present for the collaring of any deer although we had deer near the net one night only to be scented by a doe that had moved down wind of us. Overall, it is a very exciting project and I am hopeful that I will get to tackle and collar a deer.

Cellular Respiration On Track

This week we acquired a new teamster to help out with the service learning project. Steph will now be apart of our Cellular Respiration project and we are happy to have the addition. The past two weeks have been spent doing more specific research on the steps of cellular respiration in hopes of finding difinitive stages that are clear-cut and easy to understand. Stephen and Liz are mapping out how to animate these steps by making each slide a PDF file. Since we now have another group member we will meet next week again to make sure everyone is on track with their assigned work. Our goal is to have the steps planned out by next week as accurately and efficient as we can and continue work on steps to animation. Once we have an outline of exactly what we are showing on the slideshow, we will be able to come up with a script for the educational component of the animation. This is definitely going to be a lot of work but the end product is going to be great!

Cellular Respiration-new group

I just switched groups due to a problem with volunteering at the humane society. I will now be working with Cody, Liz, and Steven. We have not meet yet but plan on meeting this week to catch me up in what they have already started. We will be doing a animation video of cellular respiration. We will be using video and photo shop to create this presentation. The presentation can be used to help many people of all ages to better understand how the process works. We hope this will help teacher so they can use it in there classes to present to the students. I am starting to look up information and diagrams on cellular respiration to help the group. I hope I learn and master how this processes works myself. I also hope I learn some more technology of computers so I can make more videos. This should be very interesting and helpful to many.

Bingo!

For my project I am working with people with Alzheimer's and dementia. Alzheimer's happens in stages, and at this place most of the residents are in the final stages. They can't function on their own and need help with bascially everything: bathing, eating, and dressing. They can still talk, but a lot of the time it doesn't make any sense because they talk about past events and people as if they are happening now. A good way to picture them is think of a toddler in an elderly person's body. It is extremely hard to see people like this, its sad and frustrating at the same time. It's very hard to remember they are still people, and they once had lives just like you and me.

I played bingo with the residents for activity last week. I was nervous because I didn't think they would understand what to do. They did really well though, especially one resident in particular. She can't dress herself, feed herself, or even move herself. But when it came to bingo she was a pro. She put all the chips in the right places without me helping her, and it was great seeing that she still had some cognitive ability.

I also gave the residents a snack, a vanilla wafer bar. Their response to these bars was overwhelming. They all thanked me and some said "Oh I love you!" It was such a little gesture, but I felt like I made their whole day because they were so excited. One resident however looked at me with confusion when I gave her a bar. She asked me, "Waht do I do with this?" I told her to eat it, but she still didn't get it, so I had to motion a gesture as if I were eating, and she understood and ate it. It was hard to see this old woman not understand how to eat, but seeing the other residents so excited about the snack really makes this project enjoyable and meaningful to me.

Dorm Awareness

Research is going really good on our common dorm sicknesses. The amount of information is a little more than expected but we are getting through it ok. The hard part is finding the information that we want to convey to our fellow students that is understandable. We are making good progress and our bathroom pamphlets are almost ready to go up. We are thinking of ways to make it a little more appealing to the eye and also to make it a little more fun to read. I think throwing in some fun facts along with it will help. Other than that everything is going really good and we are working really well together.