Teacher Symposium

So, this last Saturday we were blessed with a special event: A teacher symposium. Science teachers from all over the area (Phoenix, Sahuarita, Tucson, pretty much every city in Southern Arizona). The symposium was for teachers to learn better techniques or interesting ways to get their students interested in science. We also had volunteers from the Bio5 institute assisting and holding some of their own classes as well. Some of the Bio5 volunteers greeted the teachers as they came in...

From Teacher Symposium

From Teacher Symposium

From Teacher Symposium

Some of the Bio5 volunteers taught some basic genetics to the teachers.

From Teacher Symposium

From Teacher Symposium

The first hour of the day went to some tables and displays set up for the teachers as they arrived through the visitor center. Myself and the other undergrads were advertising our recently acquired GEMS kits.

From Teacher Symposium

From Teacher Symposium

Once the majority of the teachers had arrived, the undergrads (including myself) and some of the Bio5 volunteers guided them to their classes. There was a variety of classes with very different focuses. Alas I left the paper stating what all the class names were back in the car we took up, but the ones that stood out I remember.

From Teacher Symposium

From Teacher Symposium

From Teacher Symposium

From Teacher Symposium

From Teacher Symposium

From Teacher Symposium

From Teacher Symposium

Partially because the Biosphere lot is so gigantic, I simply didn't have the energy to rush around to all the classes (they were all over the area), but I managed to get some pretty good shots.

One of my personal favorite classes going on was the insect one, where a lady with a bunch of different insects showed some very cool ways you could intrigue students into studying entomology.

From Teacher Symposium

(for example, here she had teachers observe which food the crickets preferred)

From Teacher Symposium

From Teacher Symposium

From Teacher Symposium

She also introduced the teachers to some giant roaches to get them more comfortable with insects. (Oh and Kristin, apparently I DID get a photo of you holding one. :p)

The following classroom was about modeling climate change. The program used was a bit too complex for junior high/high school students, but illustrated a lot of principles of climate change so the teachers could translate for their students.

From Teacher Symposium

One of the other fun ones I saw, was kinetically illustrating a pie graph to students. The teacher had the other teachers hold a piece of string to make a physical pie graph.

From Teacher Symposium

From Teacher Symposium

Some of the other classes had teachers actually going into the Biosphere to collect data. Whitney got to give an impromptu tour of the inside. :p

From Teacher Symposium

From Teacher Symposium

And while we were inside the rainforest, I finally got a really good photo of the area:

From Teacher Symposium

Slideshow of the photos:

Earth Day!

Last Saturday, the 11th of April, was Earth Day for Biosphere 2. Despite the poor whether conditions (which you'll get to see a bit of, and which me and other suffered through :p), there was an amazing turnout. If my memory serves correctly, we had a headcount of nearly 1300 people in that day, exceeding our greatest expectations. There was even bets going around in the management about the headcount we'd get, and the highest expected was 450 people. Almost tripled that number.

Needless to say, it was one heck of a busy day. We had our open-style tours again, like the music of the sphere day. This probably eased a great deal of load that might've occurred had we done our regular tour style, even though the open-style requires much more labor, it allows a greater number of people to go through.

Regardless, we had a wonderful set up outside, with tents and everything.

From Earth Day

A snack shop was set up on the lawn with plenty of tables for people to eat.

From Earth Day

The tent wasn't complete without music.

From Earth Day

And we had numerous "vendors" who came to talk on Earth day and present some of the things they were working on. We had people from all different professions, ranging from park rangers, to art students, to solar panel systems, to professors, and even to car producers (hybrids and electric cars)! As a side note, I was rather impressed when the guy who had the electric car came through. Except for the wheels on the ground, the car was completely silent.

From Earth Day

From Earth Day

From Earth Day

From Earth Day

From Earth Day

Unfortunately for me, I got stuck with the job of guiding the "vendors" to where they needed to go, in the freezing weather. Thank goodness Val came along halfway through and offered me a jacket which helped immensely. But while I was sitting there along the road, I got some nice visuals of the weather.

From Earth Day

From Earth Day

A couple of "vendors" that regulars at Biosphere 2 might recognize were also there. The physics factory was present.

From Earth Day

The herpetology club was also there, but unfortunately, due to the extremely cold weather, the snakes were in no mood to be outside, or even moving. They were rather lethargic.

From Earth Day

We even had a person with some really neat birds come along. She probably had more, but I got to see a falcon and an owl.

From Earth Day

From Earth Day

Speaking of birds... I got the rare privilege of seeing a roadrunner running around near the stairway to the Biosphere.

From Earth Day

From Earth Day

Now what was this bad weather I mentioned? Well, besides the freezing cold, we got hailed on. Yep. Hail the size of BB's.

From Earth Day

From Earth Day

From Earth Day

From Earth Day

Needless to say, it was an exciting day (except for the cold), and hopefully we'll get to have more fun like this soon!

Slideshow of the photos:

Breakout

First and foremost, allow me to apologize for my lack of updates recently. School has been tremendously busy with a series of difficult tests, and as such, photography has not really been at the forefront of my mind. I also need to apologize for such few photos on this particular blog. Tomorrow, however, I will update with much more photos of last Saturday's Earth Day Event.

As a gift for my tardiness, I present to you folks a panorama of the Biosphere as seen from the lawn. Don't forget to click the magnifying glass on the page to see the image ingreater detail.

From Breakout

This particular web log, however, was either two or three weeks ago, if memory serves correctly. There were a bunch of graduate students from all the different sciences who came up to Biosphere 2 for a post-graduation discussion and discussion of future sustainability.

From Breakout

From Breakout

The students first listened to the main speaker talk about future sustainability and energy sources. Then the other undergrads and myself guided the students to their respective "breakout" rooms where they would engage in discussions and potential solutions.

From Breakout

From Breakout

For me and my coworkers, this was a rather short day -- All we needed to really do was show the graduates where their breakout rooms were, and they could figure the rest out from there. Since we didn't know what could've gone wrong, we had been scheduled for the entire day, but ended up only staying a couple hours.

However, there was a scrumptious lunch meal waiting for us and the graduate students (I was a little too distracted by the food to take a picture, my apologies). Needless to say, I love my job. :p

I'll update tomorrow with our Earth Day Event.

Snakes in a Biosphere (again!)

Not too long ago, the Tucson Herpetological Society paid a visit to the Biosphere again. We had a wonderful time introducing the visitors to some of the areas local (non-venemous) snakes.

I actually arrived at the Biosphere early (before Catalina and Whitney) with Carmen and Isabella. They were tasked with documenting some of the indicator plant species around the Biosphere in preparation for a convention of plant biologists.

While we were looking around, we also saw some really nice insects around.

From Snakes in a Biosphere

So when Catalina and Whitney arrived, we had to set up downstairs in the habitat. Of course the snakes were excited to get out of the bags...

From Snakes in a Biosphere

Although Taco was being a bit grumpy. So we let him chill inside his container.

From Snakes in a Biosphere

Once we had set up, we were ready to interact with all the visitors!

From Snakes in a Biosphere

From Snakes in a Biosphere

From Snakes in a Biosphere

Some of them were really enthused, others were scared. We tried to encourage people who were afraid of snakes to come up and play with them, since these snakes are really nice. We had Rufus (the gopher snake), Rosy (the rosy boa), the King Snake (sorry, I don't remember his name), the Sonoran Boa (again, forgot his name), and Taco (the garter snake).

From Snakes in a Biosphere

From Snakes in a Biosphere

Even some kids got to play with the snakes. :)

From Snakes in a Biosphere

From Snakes in a Biosphere

And surprise surprise... we actually got Rosy (from the front desk) to hold Rosy, the rosy boa. She's normally somewhat skiddish around snakes, but after a little while, she just had to hold the cute little snake.

From Snakes in a Biosphere

And of course we needed the obligatory crazy snake lady photos of Catalina and Whitney.

From Snakes in a Biosphere

From Snakes in a Biosphere

Slideshow: