Ruth McDonald's blog

Well, I have landed! I...

Well, I have landed! I arrived Monday after taking a red-eye that would have been great except for the screaming kid. It’s an easy trip from Reagan National Airport to my place. I just hop on the metro at the airport, change trains once and get off at Union Station to walk 8 blocks to my doorstep. My roommate was already settled in and raring to go out exploring with me, and some of the other fellows had also arrived, so we have done a few outings as a group to get to know one another.

Tuesday, we went on a beautiful hike at Great Falls, Virginia. It is a national park on the Potomac River, where George Washington had grandiose plans to make the Potomac into the Thames of America. A series of 5 locks were built just at the end of the 1700’s, and for about 25 years, until 1826, boats with goods did travel up and down the Potomac to what was then the frontier. The falls are beautiful and surprising. There is much I plan to explore this year beyond the Capitol.

Wednesday I had made plans to go in to my office and get my badge and meet with my supervisor briefly. It turned in to a full workday and I ended up working Thursday and Friday as well, so I guess I have officially started my fellowship. I am assigned to the Office of International Science and Engineering, which is involved in funding scientific research that involves international collaborations. I am also assigned to the Americas Group, which means I will work specifically with Canada, Central and South America, and the U.S. I actually have several “supervisors.” One for the whole OISE, one for the Americas group and another for another group I am assigned to called Broadening Participation, which will focus in increasing NSF’s inclusion of K-12 student and teacher opportunities in their funded grants.

 I have much to learn, and it is quite different than preparing for 30+ students, but everyone has been very kind and helpful. It is very strange, though, to spend an entire morning researching and the afternoon reading what you’ve gathered. I have been asked to help on a database project on Latin America, and to go to the International Math Congress in Mexico next summer. One of my co-workers also invited me to go with him and my Americas Group supervisor to a meeting at the State Department, and suggested my attire be just a bit more formal than what I had worn to the office.  I’ll let you know if I see anyone famous. I’ll be firming up my other travel plans this week, so then those that are planning to come visit will know when I won’t be here!

The weather has been hot and humid- normal for DC for this time of year, but finally this weekend cooled down to a comfortable 84 with low humidity, and it is supposed to be very nice all through Labor Day weekend. Some of us went to the Capitol National Symphony Concert, which is right on the lawn in front of Congress! It was a beautiful night with the Capitol at our backs and the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial in front.

One of the women who is the NASA Fellow lives in MD and invited all of us over for a Labor Day BBQ today, and on Tuesday we all go to the Triangle Coalition, in the NSTA building, for an all day (10am-8pm) orientation. Then it is to work, and exploring DC and surrounds on the weekends. The very cool thing is that most of the events and museums are all free.

Sorry this is so long. I will try to do more frequent, shorter posts. Hope everyone is well and has a good start to the school year. Keep in touch!

Ruth

Here is a short video...

Here is a short video that the Sandia Lab folks made about the program.

Sandia Lab ACTS 2007

Well, I am almost at...

Well, I am almost at the end of my Aluquerque/ New Mexico Experience. I can hardly believe I have been away for a month. I guess it is a good practice for next year! I have really come to like what I have seen of New Mexico, though the heat is definitiely not my thing.

Grouplab

The experience at Sandia Lab has been amazing, and I have learned so much. It is exciting to think that I get to come back again next summer.

CINT

During our last week, we finished up our work in the arsenic and desalination labs, had several researchers, technologists and engineers come and speak to us, and analyzed our data.

 

 

We went to Los Alamos National Lab last Friday and learned a bit about disposing of radioactive waste.

 

Los Alamos/Pajarito Ski Hill

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the way back, we stopped at Bandalier National Park and wandered around the Pueblo (Anazazi) Indian Cliff Dwellings. 

We drove back to Albuquerque by way of the Valle Caldera, which was gorgeous! I have many more things left to explore the next 2 summers.

We have spent the rest of this week sharing instructional strategies, talking about science assessment, inquiry based learning and planning our professional development for the coming year. We've also worked on power point and poster presentations that we will be presenting to the scientists and researchers and student interns that worked with us this month.

My Poster Presentation

It's a very good equivalent of what students have to do when they do presentations. I have so many good ideas that I'd implement if I were in the classroom next year, but since I won't be, I hope I can share all I have learned with the 7th grade teachers before I leave for DC in August. I hope more teachers in LCSD will take advantage of one of the DOE ACTS programs and apply for one of them next year.

I will be coming back to Portland Saturday night, then coming back to Yachats with my dad in tow on Sunday. After being home for a week, Don & I are going on a 2 week Alaska cruise (not Megan's ship.) Then I will be in Lincoln County until August 29th, when I head for DC. I will start a new Blog in September so you can follow my DC adventures!

Ruth

 

Guess I am overdue for...

Arsenic Removal

Guess I am overdue for an update. Sorry I haven't posted lately. Last weekend I went with a colleague to Santa Fe. We went to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and meandered through the shops and some other museums. Then, I got sick, and Monday checked out Albuquerque's Urgent care, where I found out I had a sinus and ear infection. I took a day off from the lab on Tuesday and slept all day, and finally am just feeling myself again today. This week I worked in the Arsenic removal Lab, where we conducted  different experiments, which involved taking samples every 30 minutes and running them through a very fancy and expensive trace metal detection machine.

Some colleagues in lab

Tomorrow we will spend the morning looking at all our results from both labs. Now we will spend the rest of the time working on our Professional Development Plans and Education Modules. The time has gone fairly slowly, but now I have just one week left. I do miss the cool Oregon Coast! Sun is great, heat is not! We are going to Los Alamos Lab tomorrow for a tour (that's where the Manhattan Project took place!)

Oh, here is a picture of the outside of the CINT Building (Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, where we work in the afternoons after we are done in the Sandia Labs on Kirtland Air Force Base.

CINT BUILDING

So, I also forgot that the weekend before last, we went to Taos. I think I already blogged about going to the Pueblo and the Rio Grande Bridge, but here are the photos I finally had developed from my throw away camera (the techie left her digital camera home!)

THESE ARE PHOTOS FROM TAOS, THE RIO GRANDE BRIDGE AND THE TAOS PUEBLO, WHICH DATES BACK TO THE 1450'S.

Here are some photos of our fiied trip to Jemez Springs. where we did some water sampling of the hot springs flowing out of the moutain.                                           

Jemez River

                                                     

Jemez Springs (Hot Springs Pool)

Sampling Hot Springs in Jemez

I will be home Sunday, July 1st in the afternoon. I still have the big job of moving out of my classroom, but I am hoping that the 2 7th grade teachers will want to keep and use much of my stuff so I don't have to move so much! Hope all the readers are well and having a good summer!

Ruth

Working in a "real" lab...

Working in a "real" lab is quite an experience. Much of what we have been doing is what some might think of as grunt work, and middle school students would surely think boring, but it is a good lesson for me to see how much of lab science time is devoted to accuracy and precision in measuring and preparing samples, labeling samples for testing, and organizing them so that the new technologies can process them. Somehow we need to convey these things to students; there is a lot of prep work before you get to the test or experiment and change something from blue to pink!

This week my team of 5 is working in the Geochemistry lab on the Desalination project. We have been testing sample waters that have been "fouled" with Silica, iron, Algenate, humic acid and testing the pH, turbidity, conductivity, alkilinity, ATC, carbon, and for other elements. We are using digital titrators, mass spectrometers, atomic spectrometers and other lab equipment I can't even pronounce! It is all very interesting and the people running the labs are teaching us so much, and they are patient with us, too.

All of our tests and data will be used to help the desalination project folks decide which water samples will be best to conduct further tests with on reverse osmosis membranes. Got that? Here are some photos of our group onour field trip last week, and of some of the equipment and sample prep from the desal lab.

I have one more day in this lab; next week my team switches with the other and we work in the arsenic removal lab. Did you know that even Oregon has some places where naturally occurring arsenic in the drinking water supply is an issue?

The weather here has been cooler than normal for this time of year; in fact it has rained the last couple of days. But, now it is beginning to heat up.

Hope all is well with all of you reading this blog. If you don't want to post, feel free to email me directly.

 This is me using the Digital Titrator..

 

These are some of the 200 water samples we had to label and prepare.

 

 

 This is the Atomic spectrometer.($50,000)

 

 

 Digital Titrator.

 

 

 

Measuring 1 gram PRECISELY and ACCURATELY!

 

 

 

Adding acid to samples.

 

 

 

Stirring the samples.

 

 

 

 

Indicators added before analysis.

Field trip Fridays! We spent...

Field trip Fridays! We spent the day on Friday "in the field." We toured the Albuquerque wastewater treatment plant, which was actually very interesting and involved quite a bit of chemistry and biology. Water, or lack of, is a huge issue here, and having clean drinking water is an even bigger one. Sandia Lab is involved in research to help remove pollutants and salt from drinking water supplies.In the afternoon, we went to the Bosque Environmental Monitoring program and collected water sample data from the Rio Grande for the University of New Mexico.

DSCF2207

DSCF2203

Spending the day out in the New Mexican sun was tough! Saturday we took it easy and sat out by the pool while we did our reading homework for next week. Tomorrow we are going to drive up to Taos, and may make a stop in Madrid, where the movie Wild Hogs was filmed. I will keep the updates coming, but I am not too sure how exciting they'll be once we start collecting data in the lab.Hope everyone reading this is having a good end of the schoolyear.

Ruth

Here is a view of Albuquerque from near our townhouse.

DSCF2224

Eye opening day! This morning...

Eye opening day! This morning we continued our safety and hazard training, however it was in the actual laboratories we will be working in next week. The labs are on Kirtland Airforce Base, but are owned and operated bySandia National Labm which is sponsored by the Department of Energy, but is really a Lokheed Martin Company. Follow that?

I have never seen  labs like these. Lots of high tech, and I am sure millions, or even billions of dollars of it. Compared to what we use in our school, the only things I recognized were graduated cylinders, test tubes and and goggles! Not really, but there are tools and machines that have been engineered and developed just to perform experiements, calibrations and calculations that are needed.

Next week, I will be working in the Arsenic detection lab each morning with 4 other teachers and the researcher that is running the study. We will be running water samples that have been taken from various areas of New Mexico containing Arsenic through several different media to see which ones best filter out the arsenic. Some places in Oregon have arsenic in the water supply. The tedchniques we;ll learn will hopefully be able to be adapted for use with students, so they can learn how to separate out bad substances from water, leaving us with drinkable water.

The 3rd week, I will be in the Desalination Lab, where we'll be using semi-permeable filters and reverse osmosis to take out salt from water leaving drinkable water. Both of the scientists working with us are so cool.

last night we went to dinner at The COuonty Line BBQ, and it was overwhelimg...portions I mean. Saw Shrek3 tonite, and tomorrow we are going on a field trip to 2 locales to study water distribution and treatment systems. The weather is very pleasant, not too cold or hot, but a bit windy.

More next week!

Ruth

Well, today was a long one...

Well, today was a long but interesting day. This morning we learned about how arsenic, which is naturally occurring in many areas of the southwest in volcanic soil,  is removed from our drinking water supply, and why it is such a human health hazard. The people who presented have been working on a $13 Billion dollar research project for the past 3 years. Tomorrow, we get to go in to the the labs and start learning how to use the high tech, state of the art equipment, and by the time we leave, we will submit a plan for how to spend our $2000 on equipmenrt for our lab that is related to the areas I am studying here this summer. We also learned a little bit about desalination and why taking salt out of saltwater is so expensive. The scientists here at Sandia are going to be going to Libya to work with this issue in the Middle East, so I guess there is world travel involved in being a scientist! Water is a big issue here in New Mexico and at Sandia Lab. I have heard several comments from researchers here that the next world conflict will be over water, NOT oil.

One thing that has really hit me is that there are so many technical things involved in science research today; things I  had know idea about and couldn't even begin to explain and share with students. Hopefully, I will be better able to explain and spark interest in these new scientific and research endeavors that students may want to prepare for in the future.

In the evening, we went to Old Town Albuquerque, which was founded in 1706. Adobe buildings and a central square reminded me of many places in California. We had some "New Mexican" food for dinner...boy, the salsa is spicy! One of the other local teachers told me today that Albuquerque is now the fastest growing city in the country, surpassing Las Vegas, NV. I can believe it. There is construction and housing developments everywhere. Not a bit like Waldport or Yachats!

I wanted to take some other photos of the labs, but that is not allowed. I am not allowed to take a photo of my security badge, or even a photo of myself WEARING my badge. The  coordinator of the program is going to take some "approved" photos of us working in the the labs, so hopefully by next week I can post some that give you a better idea of what it is really like here, as it is hard to describe.

I guess I passed my 1st 3 tests, but the BIG one is tomorrow, so I had better go study. As you all finish up school there, I will have another 2 weeks of it here! Oh well, we do get to go on 3 field trips, including Los Alamos Nuclear Lab, The Atomic Museum, and a Native American Pueblo where they are researching arsenic in the water supply. I think I can take photos of the field trips...

Ruth

The Albuquerque Adventure...

Misl-laser_nc

Hello to everyone back at Crestview Heights and in Lincoln County. This blog is to keep anyone who is interested updated on my adventures at the SANDIA NATIONAL LAB Department of Energy "Academies Creating Teacher Scientists" program. I arrived Saturday, June 2nd in Albuquerque, New Mexico to 92 degree, sunny weather. The landscape here is quite different than it is on the Oregon Coast. The elevation is at approximately 5,400 feet, and it is high desert. I have already seen tons of cottontails and prairie dogs, in fact, it is hard not to run over them on the road, there are so many scurrying around.

Got settled in to my swank accomodations and found the nearest market to stock up on groceries. Sunday I picked up my "roomate," an 8th grade science teacher from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We each have our own bedroom and bathroom, and we are in a very nice development just at the base of the Sandia Mountains with it's own fitness center and 2 pools.

This morning, Monday, June 4th, we arrived a little before 8am to the CINT (Center for Integrated NanoTechnologies)  building, just outside the gates of Kirtland Air Force Base. We had to be driven in to the base to get our badges made, and now we have to scan our badges each time we enter the building. I can't begin to describe to you all the science research equipment and technology they have here, mostly because much of it I have no idea what it is! I will be learning to use the equipment and working with 2 scientists/researchers, along with the other 9 5th-8th grade teachers that are here.

We are not allowed to take cameras, cell phones with cameras, palm pilots that take photos, CD-R's, flash drives and more into the facility. Lots of security here!

I have my own office! Wow! It is about 8' x 8' and comes with my own phone and brand new laptop to use for the month. 

IMGP0160

I hope the students reading this will feel sorry for me....I had to take 3 tests today! One was a pre-test on my science content knowledge, one was a Professional Practices test that asked me questions about best practices for science teaching, and the last, OMG!, was all about lab safety, hazardous materials, chemical spills, OSHA rules, and all the the dangerous substances that are used in the research conducted here. I have to get at least an 80% or I must retake it. Tomorrow we have one more lab test to take, and I must receive 100% on the test or keep retaking it till I get 100%. What do the students think of that idea? No failure, but you don't go on until you earn the required score...

I haven't had much chance to explore this city yet, but I plan to do that on the weekends. The Petroglyph National Monument is here, as is the Atomic Museum, and a beautiful Old Town from 1700. I will send photos of my tourism activities, and since we aren't allowed cameras at the Lab, our manager is going to take some pictures that we can all send to our interested blog readers.

I am really excited about this program, and I hope to learn much that I can bring back to the students, school and district. Also, fellow teachers who may be reading this: I hope more LCSD folks will consider applying for next year! Not only is it a great professional development opportunity, you get a stipend, paid airfare and housing, and $2000 for science equipment for your classroom or school, AND $2000 for atrending and presenting at a National Science Conference.  I will send the link about the program so you can contemplate it over the summer!

I hope everyone is having a great end of schoolyear...the schools here got out May 24th, which is why this program started so early, but they also go back to school August 9th!

Students: I would love your questions or comments to be posted, but keep it appropriate or you won't see it here!

Ruth/Mrs. Mcdonald