After lunch in Penaplata, we headed south looking for a place to stay. I wanted to go down south as far as possible on the east coast, but, as I said the last time, the road curves inland towards the center of the island. So I decided to head south on the west coast to discover more of the island. The ride along the west coast was a little boring as there were very few towns to pass by. The road is not paved all the way down south. In some places, it is a just a dirt road and can be very bumpy. I saw mostly small houses and fields and some people walking along the road.
When we arrived in Kaputian, it was getting late and we didn’t have dinner yet. We first looked for a place to stay and the locals said that there was a town park that had overnight rentals. So we headed there and found that the the town park had small overnight rentals and one of the rentals was a tree house. As you can see from the video, the tree house is right on the beach and cost 300 pesos. My butt was getting sore from riding on the motor all day and I was looking forward to some quiet time, snorkeling and a good night’s sleep.
During the night, however, I was awakened from the green curtains blowing across the room from the wind. I was in a deep sleep and did not want to wake up. Next came the rain, lightning and a huge bang of thunder and I was wide awake. I took out my mini pen light to look around as it was pitch black. It was a heck of a storm and the tree house was swaying back and forth and the rain was pouring down. I was concerned the tree house might blow over. The normally quiet sea outside my door had turned into a raging sea and I thought the water might flood the beach. The waves were 1-2 feet and I could hear them crashing. The beach and entire area was completely dark except when the lightning struck and I could see the blowing rain and waves through the eerie blue light. I think the storm passed directly over our tree house. Within an hour, the storm had passed and I eventually fell back to sleep.
I got up early in the morning as I could hear what sounded like thousands of birds in the trees. I took my camera and walked down to the water to take a little video and walk along the beach.
As we continued our trip around Samal Island, I was eager to visit the bat caves on the northern part of the island. I read an article about the lady who is taking care of and protecting these animals and it seemed an interesting place for me to visit. The bat caves are north of the ferry terminal. After we got some lunch in Babak, we headed north for the caves. I was riding on the back of my Honda motor with by brother-in-law Alray. It took about a half hour to get there.
I’m still learning how to use iMovie but I think I’ve got the basics down. I also now have all the video on my mini DV cam on an external hard drive. This is a bid advantage because I can scan quickly for the parts of the video I’m interested in. Many parts of the video I am talking to my wife so she can see what it looks like. She was not too keen on riding on the motor and decided to stay home and watch our daughter.
Last summer I took a trip to the east coast of Samal. I was trying to find the road that goes south all along the coast. What I discovered, though, is that the road only goes down part way and then heads inland. There is no road all along the east coast.
We started our road trip in Babak and then went north up to visit the bat caves. After the caves, we continued north up to the new marina and then down the east coast. The road goes along the coast until Canibad. The road drifts inland and after a short time I couldn’t see the water anymore. After heading inland, we got lost for a while because some of the intersections have no signs and the map I had really didn’t help.
After driving around for a while, we asked some of the local people which way back to Penaplata. They gave us directions and we made it to Penapata and then we rode down to Kuputian. We stayed the night there on the beach in a tree house. During the night, there was an amazing wind and rain storm which caused the tree to sway in the wind. The following day, we took a bangka to visit Talikud Island and look around. These are stories for another day.
I’ve been working on transferring video from my mini DVD to a hard drive so it can be edited in iMovie. I use Flickr and they have a 90 second limit on video uploads. I’ve decided to keep my video posts to this time limit as I like Flickr and the short time helps me decide what is important to show.
Update: I’ve switched to Vimeo to see how that works. I tried to update SPCShelter and was unsuccessful. Because of this, I had to revert to a backup from two weeks ago and lost two weeks of data.
I brought the solar panel home for the long weekend to work on. We have four days off for Memorial Day and this would be a good time to make progress. I’m soldering two strips of tabbing wire on each of the cells top, or negative, side.
I’ve completed soldering 24 of the 36 cells yesterday. I’m not quite sure if I’m making great connections or not. Here is an enlargement of one of the soldered connections on the cell. I’m using a lead free flux with the tabbing wire.
The top part of the cell is the negative terminal and the bottom is the positive. I’ll start the positive soldering after all the negative soldering is complete. The flux helps the tabbing wire stay down but it also helps the solder make a good connection.
The plan is to make three rows of twelve cells for a total of 36 cells. This should produce about 18 volts. My question is if this will be too many volts to charge a 12 volt deep cycle battery.
As you can see, I’m using latex gloves because it’s not good to touch the cells with your fingers as the oils from your skin are damaging to the cells. The cells are very fragile and I broke one of them by pressing too hard with the hot iron. I’ve adjusted my technique and I only apply a light pressure. It just takes some time getting used to soldering.
I’m checking my wiring diagram on how to connect all the positives with the negatives going from one column to the next. I need to use the thicker bus wire to make this connection. That will be my next challenge. Part two is here.
My attempt to build a solar panel is moving along slowly. I have a few of my 7th grade students helping me during our lunch half hour. The box is now almost complete. I attached two 1″ x 2″ on the back to help straighten out the plywood. The plywood was a little warped and I thought best to make it as flat as possible.
The trim wood was attached using 3/4 ” x 3/4 ” using screws from the back. We drilled small holes to make sure we didn’t split the wood. I think I had about five different kids each having a turn with the drill. We then painted it white with two coats of paint. I have a 2 foot x 4 foot piece of plexiglass ready to put on top. I’ll drill small holes around the perimeter to hold it down. I’ll also put some clear outdoor calk around to make it waterproof.
I ordered the solar cells from ebay for $ 129.00. This included some solder, flux and tabbing wire. Everything came in a box, and nothing was broken. I lined up three rows of 12 cells for a total of 36 cells. This should give about 18 volts, more than enough to charge a 12 volt battery. I hope this is not too much to charge the battery, but I’ll look into this and find more information about charging.
The next step is to solder all the cells in series. I’ll start this soon. I have a few 8th grade students that want to help but I may do most of it at home. The only tool that I need to buy is a pencil style soldering iron. I’ll get this at the store today so I can start to solder this week. I hope to have this completed in two weeks.
My Bisaya lesson last week went well. My teacher is Bebe and she lives in Davao, Philippines. I learned in this lesson that Bisaya has a way to verbalize a noun. Mag computer ako, which translates to I will use the computer. Another example is: Kevin will cook adobo–Mag-adobe si Kevin. The main part of the lesson was to show that nag, mag, and pag are used to show action over a longer period of time. They use the same structure as the Mo-factor which makes it easier to do. While this lesson was not so difficult, the vocabulary was a bit of a challenge as there were many new words. I’ve got most of them down, but it’s getting harder to keep reviewing all the older words. [click to continue…]
I have started to build a solar panel to use for a class project here, and eventually in the Philippines. I searched the web and found that it’s possible to build a lower cost 60 watt PV panel, possible less than $200.00. One of my goals in building this panel is to learn more about this technology and to refine my skills. I also have a few of my middle school students that are eager to help and this will be a good learning experience for everyone involved.
I would also like to incorporate the solar panel into my large Mars Habitat project at the end of the school year. Maybe we will be able to generate enough power to run one of the fans. I’m not sure where all this will go, but I think it will be a fun project.
I already bought a piece of wood 3/8 inch thick, 2 feet by 4 feet plywood at the local store. This size wood is precut and easy to bring back to school. The only problem is that it’s a little warped. I’m not sure if this is critical or not. I plan to trim the perimeter with 1″ trim wood to add strength. Today I started to paint it and I’ll finish painting it tomorrow. So far, the cost of the wood, trim wood, paint and brush cost $38.00. Tomorrow I want to finish painting both sides and add the perimeter trim to strengthen the panel.
I bought the EyeClops video microscope last week and it arrived yesterday. I took it to school and my students had it up and running in no time. I was interested to see the quality of the images and video and to see if this would be something I could use in the classroom. The first thing to do is insert 5 AA batteries. It comes with a USB flash drive that records the media. I also tried a 2 gigabyte flash drive and it worked nicely. During the day I learned to move from pictures to video and how to focus. There are three magnifications: 100x 200x, and 400x. It’s difficult to focus when using the 400x but I learned to hold it down and go from lower power to higher.
The flash drive will only hold a few megabytes of data so have another flash drive handy. Here area few pictures I took today, my first day with the EyeClops. I hope to explore more this week and have an updated post by this weekend.
Here is a piece of bread at 100x. All of these pictures were imported into iPhoto and given a quick edit using the enhance magic wand.
The second picture is an onion skin at 200x.
The third picture is the same onion skin at 100x. The fourth picture is a closeup of a pineapple at 100x. The last is a small video of a state map.
After I took these pictures, it was easy to hook the EyeClops into the VCR using the S-video and project it onto the Smartboard for the whole class to see. I bought mine for $24.99 at Amazon and it is worth the price, even if you just play around with it. We had a fun day in science class today.
Any teacher will tell you that teaching is a demanding job and that it’s easy to get burned out. The key is to recognize the warning signs and to take action. Elaine Plybon over at Cruel Shoes has a good post dealing with this topic. This post caught my attention because I was just thinking about this and teachers now need to reflect and plan for the final stretch.
“How do we be sure we are not quietly heading toward burnout and completely inappropriate behaviors? Reflection.”
Yes, reflection. Reflect often and not only on what did I do and how could I do it better, but on how could I have done that will less stress. I always try to figure a way to do an activity with less stress. Usually, this is done by being very organized and visualizing in my mind what I will do before I start the class.
Elaine gives threes steps to help prevent burnout: take a break, change your thinking, and to never stop reflecting. These steps are a good way to help reduce the stress and to become a better teacher. Reflecting and thinking of what to do differently will help any teacher to reverse the trickle of negative behaviors.
One thing I would like to add that has helped me to become a better teacher is to reduce the amount of time when changing activities. I thought about this one day a long time ago when I was reflecting on what I could do to reduce the noise level when switching between activities and reduce the stress of changing gears during the day. What I do is on the first day of school, I give just one rule to know for the day. The rule is when I raise my hand the class should 1) stop talking and 2) raise your hand. This one rule has helped me every day to keep my stress levels low by being able to transition between activities during class. Now when the class is working, and we need to move on, I just raise my hand and instant quiet.
The first week of class, someone might test the water and see what happens if they don’t raise their hand. I usually add on a second mini rule so that the last person to raise their hand is the last one out of the classroom. Just keep it lighthearted and try not to be so serious. Give this a try and reduce your stress level.
Bacteria reproduce by binary fission. They break in half and one becomes two. I use this topic to link math and science when we study bacteria and viruses. I start off with the question: If you start with a penny and double it every day, how many dollars will one have in one month? Let the month have 31 days. At first, they think it might be a hundred dollars or a thousand. But I have them do the math by doubling the number 31 times and see what they come up with.
As you can see, I’m using latex gloves because it’s not good to touch the cells with your fingers as the oils from your skin are damaging to the cells. The cells are very fragile and I broke one of them by pressing too hard with the hot iron. I’ve adjusted my technique and I only apply a light pressure. It just takes some time getting used to soldering.
The next step is to solder all the cells in series. I’ll start this soon. I have a few 8th grade students that want to help but I may do most of it at home. The only tool that I need to buy is a pencil style soldering iron. I’ll get this at the store today so I can start to solder this week. I hope to have this completed in two weeks. 
Here is a piece of bread at 100x. All of these pictures were imported into iPhoto and given a quick edit using the enhance magic wand.
