mini biosphere theory

When making a biosphere you should realise that nature (and thus your biosphere) is all about cycles and balances. Because your biosphere will be a closed ecosystem, you have to make very sure that there is no cycle that is broken. Only light and heat are capable of going in/out of your biosphere, so all the other essential elements have to be present and available.

One example is the CO2/O2 cycle. Plants use CO2 and produce O2 in sunlight, animals use O2 and produce CO2. This way the cycle is complete and they are in balance. If you make a biosphere with just animals, they slowly consume all the O2 and eventually die from suffocation.

Another cycle you should consider is the food chain. It always starts with a plant or alga, which may be eaten by an animal, which in turn may be eaten by another animal etc. Plants or alga should therefore always be included in your biosphere.You shouldn't forget that all animals and plants eventually die and (as well as the animal-droppings) have to be decomposed for the cycle to be complete. This is done by bacteria, so your biosphere should also include a healthy population of different species of bacteria.

Below are 4 types of organisms that you should at least include:

1. Plants. These are necessary for photosynthesis. This is the production of sugars and oxygen from carbon dioxide, water and light energy. In stead of plants you can also use green algae.

2. Animals. They breath oxygen en produce carbon dioxide.

3. Food for the animals. Preferably a food source that will not run out, so it must replenish itself. Alga is very suitable for this, because most small animals will eat this, and it grows so it will not easily run out.

4. Bacteria. Some bacteria will decompose dead organisms and animal droppings. (Bacteria can also serve as food for the animals.)

Take a few minutes a week to record the changes in your biosphere. This could be very helpful later. See this example.

· Maybe it would be good to let the bottle 'get to rest' before you seal it. This is important because the water and organisms in your bottle come straight from the pond, where the temperature and light intensity are very different from in your house. So, just keep the bottle open for a few weeks to let gases diffuse in and out, and to let the animals and plants/alga find a balance. This sounds like a step which impatient people will 'forget' easily, but I believe it could be a very important step. Also, it is less boring than it sounds to look at an open bottle; you will certainly see life change in these few weeks.
· See if the water fleas will reproduce. If they do, your biosphere could in theory last forever… (Read carefully: in theory :) )

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080204175049AAXnDMJ

biopshere for a frog

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=21670.0;prev_next=next

Real education is about knowing how to obtain information

Real learning, real education is about knowing how to obtain information.

Children who have never been schooled learn in a natural way. They know how to learn, they know how to think, they know how to get information.

Learning through Living

Today for Show and Tell, I've brought a tiny marvel of nature: a single snowflake. I think we might all learn a lesson from how this utterly unique and exquisite crystal turns into an ordinary, boring molecule of water, just like every other one, when you bring it in the classroom. And now, while the analogy sinks in, I'll be leaving you drips and going outside." ~ Calvin, from Calvin & Hobbes

"True learning-learning that is permanent and useful,that leads to intelligent action and further learning, can arise only out of the experience, interest, and concerns of the learner" ~John Holt

Good article about unschooling and learning the natural way:

Learning through Living

http://learningthroughliving-stephanie.blogspot.com/search/label/natural%20learning

Each day my kids learn so many new things and they explore ideas and concepts and discuss them.

Why do mosquito bites itch?
Hawaiian Islands
Cyborgs
Robots
Pictionary
Clue
Wallaby
Butterflies
Kangaroos
Rabbits
Tongue Twisters
Legos
PS2
WOW
TV
Internet
Store
Drawing
Lots of questions and talking

That's off the top of my head,
I have a hard time remembering everything. I normally wouldn't care but need to learn how to keep track of stuff when I start registering.

Jared is constantly asking me questions, I mean almost non stop.

All sorts of questions...
How do you spell ____?
What is 100 +10?
What does grounded mean? (he heard it on The Incredibles)
How many zeros in a trillion?
Is kazillion a real word?
How long does it take to build a road?
How many days until I'm 100 years old?
What does ground mean?
What does _____mean? He has been asking what everyday words mean, those are hard to answer.
He just asked me what 3+3+3+3 is, is that 12? He answered his own question.
He just wrote 1,ooo,ooo on his doodle board, with commas, now he is making a trillion.
He drew a map of our road too.
Thank God for doodle boards, he uses his constantly
He asks some really thought provoking questions too, like when are Grandma Lynn (my mom) and Grandpa Hank (new stepdad) going to have kids, LOL!
How come ghosts are white?

I wish I could remember all of his questions, they are so constant. He has a unique perspective just like all kids do.
So I think that I will try to keep tab on things we learn about.

The key seems to be curiousity!!! and feeling responsibility!!

"Through Life We Learn" William Bruce

William Spiers Bruce(1867-1921) was a Scottish Explorer who was determined to conquer Antarctica in the name of science.

When his ship became stuck in a sheet of ice he sought shelter in a cabin he and his team built.

Making their shelter from rocks they could find on the beach and wood they could salvage fro the ship,

here is the door which was built from biscuit boxes.

He carved on the lintel above his shore base (Omond house)

"Through life we learn",

Bruce cared very much about this philosophy and was his guiding principle for those who lived and worked with him through the harsh days. This philosophy is very similar to Patrick Geddes "By living we learn".

BBC iPlayer - The Last Explorers: William Speirs Bruce

Dynamic Earth research

Head to dynamic earth for research

Does my device need to be eye catching, fun, exciting, how do I keep people engaged for a long time? sharing? discovery pod?





also discover place in Carolina , learning through play



How combine some sort of gamification into device

Geddes view of technology and natural education and CIVICS

"In Nature's infinite book of mystery I can a little read."

Patrick Geddes, Outlook tower guide

Man lives by deeds not knowledge. His knowledge is to help him to act: he does not live to know but knows to enable him to live a richer and fuller life.

Comments written on Outlook tower guidebook

‘Vivendo Discimus’ by living we learn inscribed on Riddlers Court Archway, Edinburgh.

Dates back to 1889 when Geddes started Edinburgh university summer schools.

Geddes Evolution of Education:

education was not to be seen as one of his manifold activities, because for Geddes education was “the activity” that would move forward the Ascent of Man towards a better future.

Geddes was sure that human potential could be improved through education, therefore education was the key to rise quality of life in the future.

Geddes saw that new technology would bring about rapid development.

He was not anti-technology as such, but he foresaw that technology would give us the means to kill and pollute our natural environment on an ever greater scale than before.

In order to avoid the inevitable doom, he devoted his life to try to see a way forward to a new cultural era. He had to go on hoping that the environment could be controlled by conscious and well informed choices made by informed individuals.

His quest for a new kind of evolutionary education and the nature of knowledge therefore became first priority.

He went back to first principles about how people learn(how do people learn?) and about what methods are most appropriate. His motto “Vivendo Discimus” or “By Living We Learn” was meant to be a spur for action, there was no end to this search.

The main reason for organising his famous Summer Meetings in Edinburgh, indeed some of them inRiddle’s Court, was to test his ideas and methods on real people hoping to

help participants understand more about themselves and their environment.

because of his objectivity and creativity, he tried to

create a new subject which he called “Civics”.

This was a discipline directed both towards reclaiming human individual creativity and the improvement of the environment.

In some of his thinking machines he tried to plot the interaction between the structure and the process in a system of education. In his model he included the feelings, the thoughts and the experience of individuals because it is

feelings

and sense

and thought

which are important in realising creativity.

It was as far away from any formal school than you can ever imagine.

The objective was not to train in some skill or other and get a piece of paper or certificate at the end of it.

This was education where the students could choose their own courses and preferences freely, or change them every day if they so desired. This kind of freedom would be unthinkable for the rigid programmes of formal education.

Geddes, in his Summer meetings, prepared a magnificent banquet of lectures, visits excursions, concerts and practical work and invited people to tuck in and enjoy it. After all this was holiday time.

Model for new Patrick Geddes Centre for evolutionary education

Produced by Sofia G.Leonard

(very similar to my work!!)

The vision is to establish in Riddles Court a world class learning Centre to contribute to the creation of a learning society promoting active, critical citizenship informed by a twenty-first century dialogue around the principles of the Geddes’ evolutionary education.

http://www.patrickgeddestrust.co.uk/SPGMTForce.pdf

Hollow Globe (Episcope) sold at outlook tower

Hollow Globe sold at the Outlook Tower and intended for the teaching of geography.

The brilliant principle of this concave globe was to make cartographic and perspective projection coincide. The geometric construction of the globe was stereographic, i.e. the projection was centred on the surface of the globe. The point chosen was Edinburgh, coinciding exactly with the location where the map was to be seen, so the Episcope presented visitors with what they would have seen if their vision had been capable of stretching across the surface of the earth to countries and continents hidden beyond the horizon. In short, it was a kind of panoramic mappa mundi.

http://patrickgeddes.co.uk/feature_eleven.html

Patrick Geddes

Episcope also known as a magic lantern or overhead projector used in schools = device which displays opaque materials by shining a bright lamp onto the object from above.

Magic Lantern Projector - Rare By Kershaw - Science/Demonstration.

Magic Lantern Projector - Rare By Kershaw - Science/Demonstration. | eBay

modern day overhead projector

see also...

Wyld's Great Globe(giant hollow globe)

an attraction situated in London'sLeicester Square between 1851 and 1862, constructed byJames Wyld (1812–1887), a distinguished mapmaker and former Member of Parliament for Bodmin.

At the centre of a purpose-built hall was a giant globe, 60 feet 4 inches (18.39 m) in diameter. The globe was hollow and contained a staircase and elevated platforms which members of the public could climb in order to view the surface of the earth on its interior surface, which was modelled in plaster of Paris, complete with mountain ranges and rivers all to scale.Punch described the attraction as "a geographical globule which the mind can take in at one swallow."^[1] In the surrounding galleries were displays of Wyld's maps, globes and surveying equipment.

Plans for the great globe, 1851

including exterior galleries

Wyld's guide book to the globe

The Mapparium, a 20th-century take on the concave globe

In Christian Science Plaza, Boston

The Gottorp Globe first modern Planiterium, 1664

Recluses Globe

Centerpiece of New York World's fair, giant ball housing a model of a utopia garden. 1939

“symbol of a perfectly integrated, futuristic metropolis pulsating with life and rhythm and music.”

Biosphere connected to computer idea

biosphere base station and computer facilitator

start off project where it asks questions to user: what is needed to sustain life? light heat, water.
type in.
project on inside back of glass container or presented in computer app.
White base station- glows green when connected.
Then a print out reciept what need for life system.
people then come back to device and add ingredients.
As system continues it could send random open questions through internet to user or could have sensors which detect changes and relay back appropriate questions.
whew getting a bit hot in here, how do you think warming effects your creatures? how does heating up the planet effect the earths creatures? how do we heat up the earth?
warning warning nitrate levels at full capacity please reduce plant life. your creatures are in danger.
Balance seems to be achieved. Where else do you find balance and harmony?

Answers can be typed back through laptop and then posted on a share website.


aimed at user from home studying biosphere and educational aid on biosphere.