Paris and I have had about a week to create, tweak, and hone our poster for the July 31 meeting.  Ulimately we chose to make the presentation slideshow mimick the poster that our professor thought was best.  Here is the presentation as it exists now.

Helen F. Graham Cancer Center by Eric Crossan

The Helen F. Graham Cancer Center is beautiful. What is more beautiful is seeing doctors and radiologists actively work together to get their patients the very best treatment possible. The RETs and REUs were invited to attend a small, one and a half hour conference where a small portion of the cancer center staff gathered to discuss patient cases–gathering second, third, fourth,…, tenth opinions on the cancer (progression or regression) and treatment methods. Again this was a small portion of the staff and there were still about 30-40 doctors and radiologists sitting in the room. It made me excited about the way medicine is being practiced and I hope that that doesn’t change for the worse with government meddling (something that was actually voiced by a lead doctor during the meeting). The PET scan and CAT scan imaging were amazing. The collaborative efforts between universities and hospitals and other industries stresses the need for students to be able to work well together with anyone and everyone. I hope that this point comes across clearly to my students this year in the classroom.

After several poster drafts and feedback from various people Paris and I have come up with two posters.  The “show” poster and the “classroom” poster.  The show poster looks more like those hanging on the walls in the university halls.  The classroom poster is intended to be more student-friendly with an artistic element and pictures that should add a personal connection between researcher and research.  Both are good posters and I believe the classroom poster has benefited from the critiques on our original.

The past few days, between lab work and meetings, Paris and I have been working on the poster.  Paris came to the table with a poster from a few years ago that he did at Drexel during an experience similar to this one.  We looked at templates on a web site provided by Kathy Werrell and Dr. Ken Barner.  Sometimes my desires for something visually appearing that fits my classroom needs gets the best of me.

The beginnings of our poster.

The artistic attempt

The artistic attempt got critiqued as “flashy,” “disorganized,” lacking “scientific values,” too much of a “party poster.”  Obviously things will need to be changed.  Stay tuned.

This image is found on the Delaware River and Bay Authority web site.

This field trip was breathtaking and mind blowing.  If you ever have the opportunity to go, DO!  The time at the bridge got off to a bumpy start.  We waiting for about an hour for the PowerPoint presentation to work.  Apparently there was some sort of network error that wouldn’t let our instructor’s computer communicate with the overhead projector.  Sigh, technology.  Reminded me of problems with technology in the classroom–if it doesn’t work within five minutes move on to plan number two otherwise you’ve lost your class’ attention for that day.  Luckily we are all adults and waited patiently.  It was worth the wait to see the early pictures of bridge construction and see the feat that they were performing back in the late 40’s through 60’s.  The presentation could not top what we were about to see though–the bridge from middle to bottom to top.

We took a drive across the northbound bridge, made a U-turn, and drove to the middle of the southbound bridge.  We got out and walked to one of the anchors as cars and trucks whizzed past.  The anchors are those giant concrete legs to the Delaware Memorial Bridge that I, naively, always thought were solid.  They are huge and empty with plenty of room to walk around.  And walk around we did.  On the way down to the bottom of the anchor platform was tiresome but relatively easy when compared to the ascent.  On the way down we stop here and there and talked about the engineering that allows the bridge to do what it does.  On the way up there was no stopping.  Just step after step of irregular steps up and down as we worked our way back to the top of the road.

From there we walked to one of the towers and took an elevator, that was probably 2×2 with 3 adults jammed in it, to top.  We weren’t quite at the top so we had to climb two or three ladders to the top.  From there the view was amazing.  Wherelse can you stand where you are not technically in any state but can see four?

Besides washing our hydrogel particles, adding aldehyde functional groups to them, and washing them again, I’ve been working on my Curriculum Enhancement (Wiki Lab Reports).

My big success for the day was adding rich text editing to my wiki. Now if I could just get all the labs I want to do this year up and in the correct order things would be great.

Well, last week the centrifuge door failed to work after two washings with acetone. Today, we began washing our hydrogel again. We finished our third washing with acetone and began washing with water. We pulled the centrifuge tubes and noticed cracking. We are currently in the process of transferring our hydrogel from the cracked tube to a noncracked one. This is going to be the longest washing ever… just glad I don’t have to wash clothing like this at home.

Today, we’re supposed to propose a lesson plan, a methodology, or something that will allow us to realign our teaching methods with those of a STEM classroom.

Here’s what I am planning to do for my labs for the 2009-2010 school year:

Goals:

1. All students will learn how to properly write a formal lab report.
2. All students will complete lab work even if it is virtually done.
3. All students will learn to communicate problem solving skills clearly.

Expectations:

1. Students will complete lab data submission via Google docs form. (Example from 2008-2009)
2. Students will complete (drafting and revision) of assigned section of a wiki formal lab report.
3. Students will be graded on their own work not that of the group.

Measurements:

1. Set up rubric for each section of the lab report using information found on NC State University’s LabWrite web site.
2. Assess the section(s) assigned to the individual students. Will reward students that modify partners work for the better.

Here we are in the lab working.

Paris and I are finally getting to do some lab work… well sort of.  Over the weekend we received an e-mail from Xian, our supervising graduate student, that said we should practice making the hydrogel we watch him make on Friday afternoon and he would catch up with us after lunch.  However, when we arrived at the lab Monday morning–no experiments were being performed.

Over the weekend a pair of graduate students had left a vacuum hose insecurely attached and on.  The result was an ear-piercing screaming sound that could be heard throughout the second floor of DuPont Hall.  This was the straw that broke the camel’s back for safety issues.  The entire lab group was ordered to, essentially, clean-up or get out.

Later in the afternoon we did meet with Xian and got to do a little bit of practice with the hydrogels.  Tuesday we will meet at 10 AM and begin making a number of batches of hydrogel.

Things learned today:

• Safety is paramount.  It was refreshing to see the authorities of the lab stress this point.  Whenever it is stressed in my classroom students heed it for a short while before it must be stressed again.  It appears to be the same at the university level.
• It has been a long time since I’ve used an Eppendorf pipette.  Remember, there are two click points–click to the first to withdraw fluids and click all the way to the second to expel them.  Oops.  This simple fact forgotten led to too much 1-heptanol and hyaluronic acid (HA) solution in starting phases of a would-be hydrogel.