Week 3

Week 3 is over which means this RET is halfway over. Jessica and I have completed the skeleton of the mouse cage as well as the side panels. Our next step is to figure out the best way to attach the sensors that will be used to gather data about the mouse behavior. This is a tedious task because the side panel boards are not as easy to cut, because even though the supplier claimed the board could be cut with scissors (which it can), it's impossible to make a straight line cut and is hard on the hand.

This week we have also been working on creating a video, which neither of us have ever done before. Jessica and I each have to make our own video, but we have decided to collaborate for each video because we came up with both of the ideas together. The video I am heading up is about the construction of our mouse cage, aka "Mouse Behavior Box" as the researcher calls it. Jessica is taking charge of the video interviewing our PI, postdoc and possibly some random people we find on the street about what research is. We are curious as to what the general population believes regarding what researchers do. Our videos are still a work in progress but will hopefully be up by the end of Week 4.

Delaying getting our video done is going to add a little bit of stress because we have a lesson plan due next Friday, July 29th, as well.I keep changing my mind on what I want to do. This week's Friday pedagogy talk was on project based learning, or PBL, and was the best pedagogy workshop during this RET to date. The already made PBL's shown to us were very well thought out and seem easy to implement. The pre-made PBL's are available at http://www.pblprojects.org/.  I am debating about making a PBL for my lesson because the science content taught in the pre-made PBL's focus primarily on environmental science issues and drawing certain physics ideas out of it would be a stretch.

It's hard to believe I am halfway through already. I imagine with all that is left to do that the coming 3 weeks will fly by even faster than the first! I am somewhat sad that we have so little time left because I am really enjoying working with out postdoc and trying to help him with his research.