Power Point Presentation

The power point presentation was successfully uploaded to http://www.slideshare.net/suga_bb. The only problem with the upload is that some of the fonts that I used to create the power point presentation didn't upload to slideshare.net. I am very aware that this makes it a little difficult to view in the manner it was intended to be viewed. However, I spent a bit of time making sure that the font I selected was one that I really wanted. This font could be a potential problem when I open the power point from an older computer. I am aware of this and will be forced to change it at that point. I would like to keep the font as the original at this point for the video presentation portion of this assignment. The issue should be resolved in about a week or so.
The power point presentation is about the environmental impact of plastic bags versus the environmental impact of reusable bags. I did a simple study that compared the average number of bags given to you at the two local grocery stores when spending a certain amount of money. I compared the average number of bags with an average dollar amount of groceries since I usually buy similar items when I go to the grocery store, spend about the same amount of money, and receive about the same number of plastic bags. I used the average numbers to find out what the numbers would be over a span of time. I estimated the amount of money I spend on food each month and I got results that gave me an estimation of the number of plastic bags consumed over the course of one year to ten years. I also averaged the largest number of reusable bags needed each year and found that the reusable bag numbers were drastically lower than the amount of plastic bags.
This information is presented on one power point slide. The rest of the information on the slides is research that I found on the Internet. Some are news articles, others are environmental activist websites, others are websites containing information on where to find reusable bags on the Internet. I enjoyed searching for images and selecting the text layout. The power point presentation is pretty successful other than the fact that my chosen font didn't upload.

The Educator's Guide to the Read/ Write Web

I. Stacy Naden suga_bb@yahoo.com 10/04/07
The Educator's Guide to the Read/ Write Web Will Richardson

II. Overview of Article
This article is a brief introduction to the tools available on the read/write web. It gives some brief information about weblogs, wikis, podcasts, and RSS, or Really Simple Syndication and how these things can be utilized in the classroom. Weblogs enable anyone to create their own personal or group website without needing to learn hypertext markup language. Students can use these blogs to communicate with other students, teachers, and sources of information all over the world. Some other classroom technology tools discussed were wiki, or wikipedia, an information source kept accurate by the users. Really Simple Syndication enables people to subscribe to various feeds of information. Data are continually streamlined and collected into a file with the help of aggregators. Another tool mentioned was pod casting which is creating and broadcasting content that may be listened to at one's leisure.

III. Bulleted Reference Points

• Weblogs
• Wikis
• (RSS) Really Simple Syndication
• Read/ Write Web
• Aggregator
• Professional mentors
• Information sharing
• world-wide classroom partnerships
• Student ownership of work

IV. Reflection and Significance to me

The article's utility to me as a teacher is mostly just good information to have. I recently learned that wikipedia was a resource created by users and regulated by users. I thought the information of wikipedia was more credible than that. Instead, it is kept credible by the users, in which case, it's credibility is in question in my opinion. I didn't know what pod casting was and I have yet to listen to a podcast. I'm still a little unclear on what they consist of. I understand blogging, but I am curious as to the degree of popularity with the kids. The RSS, or really simple syndication is a completely new concept for me, I have never heard of it and even after reading about it, I am still unclear on how it works and what it looks like. I understand that people subscribe to various feeds of information which are streamlined and collected into a file with the help of an aggregator which checks this information stream regularly to see if there's anything new for RSS subscribers to read. I think that it's a new way of collecting information, yet I wonder how much is filtered, and how much is relevant to the subscriber.

Energy Conservation Project research plan

1. Are re-usable grocery bags better than plastic bags? What are the pros and cons?

2. I found some data using google including: www.reusablebags.com , www.sierraclub.org/bags/, and www.bettercontainers.com

Through reading some of the information on these web pages, I found that

• Reusing a bag meant for just one use has a big impact. A sturdy, reusable bag needs only be used 11 times to have a lower environmental impact than using 11 disposable plastic bags.
• In New York City alone, one less grocery bag per person per year would reduce waste by 109 tons and save $11,000 in disposal costs.
• Plastic bags carry 80% of the nation's groceries.

Although, plastic bags have a lower envirenmental impact than paper bags, they still produce a large amount of waste.

3. It will be necessary to collect more data on the subject. I will be searching for numbers and statistics and I will also be searching for a stance on continuuing the use of plastic bags.

4. My methodology will mainly be researching on the internet. I will possibly take a survey at the local grocery store and count the number of people using plastic bags and the number of people using re-usable grocery bags.