???Questions???

Essential Question:
What is the best course of action for me as an 11th grader to take in order to have a career in Marine Biology?
Foundation Questions:
1. What is marine biology?
2. How does one become a marine biologist?
3. How is marine biology studied?
4. What is marine mammalogy?
5. Why study marine biology?
6. What is the history of marine biology?
7. What schools have good programs in biology and marine biology?

Central Question

I think that I finally have a central question that I am comfortable with.
How can I go from right now in 11th grade to having a career in Marine Biology?

This is my question and I think that I will be able to create something of a Career Plan out of it.

I'll try to document my internship, research and get to work on what eventually will be my final product.

Week 4

I am really happy with what I have been able to achieve so far, especially since it took me so long to come up with a topic. Lately, I have been dedicating all of my class time to refining my list of links. I think that I have a really good list that will help me a lot. One site that I found actually gave me a speech that a professor gave to a bunch of high school students, that pretty much explained how when students think about working with marine mammals, they think that all they will be doing is swimming with dolphins. He explains that this is not true. He set straight all of the misconceptions about working with marine mammals. I am hoping that his ideas along with all of my other information will help me to put together a near perfect Career Plan. I have finished my terms and links list, so my next step is to finish my Webliography.

Webliography

Today i tried to put some finishing touches on finding websites and terms-to-know. hopefully tomorrow i will actually be able to start the webliography.

Websites

today i was able to find even more great websites of aquariums and other places that will be great help.

Progress!

YEAH!! I MADE SOME REAL PROGRESS TODAY!!! =)

Marine Mammalogy

today i found alot of great web sites that will narrow my project's focus. i was thinking that marine mammalogy is the specific field of marine biology that i would like to get into. i still want to use the idea of creating a career plan for myself. in the end i hope to have found more out about marine biology/mammalogy, what schools are best to attend for majors in biology and marine biology, what kinds of places hire people with these degrees, and possibly where i could get hired if i followed through on this plan.

Marine Biology

I think that i have finally came to a decision for my project, marine biology. i think i'm going to do something that will end up being like a career plan for me. for example, the bases of marine biology, history, etc. and the then move in to what are some of the colleges that offer degrees in marine biology, and what are some of the places that hire marine biologist. it is ridiclous that i didn't come to this comclusion earlier, i mean i have an awesome internship with people who would be extremely valuable resources in any number of directions that i could follow up on in my project. although it may seem really corny, i think that it would be alot of fun to work omewhere like Sea World or Discovery Cove. now, i need to find out more specifically what i want to actually have as a final project.

Book to Movie

I was thinking about this topic for a while now, and I was thinking that maybe I could work off of the book to movie idea. I though that maybe I could look into how the message or point of a book is changed when it is turned into a movie. How the underlying principles that made a book so interesting are often taken away when it is turned into a film. The only problem with this is that this is more of a philisophical question, based more on opinion than anything else, and that could make it very difficult to do any research.

Animal Intelligence

Right now, i think that i may be leaning towards a project having to do with animal intelligence. I did a lot of research on the topic today, and i found a bunch of stuff that i didn't know. I even found a person that i may be able to contact. I found a like to a page on the Parade magazine Pets Page, and found a discussion board were you can email a women named Dr. Karen Haligan who is a vet. I think that asking her a few questions about animal intelligence might help me out some. Hopefully, this will help me actually settle on a topic. Yet who knows, tomorrow i might just have a completely different topic.

Random Research

I am still trying to determine what I want to do with my Grad Project. I kind of narrowed down the list, but not really. Right now I'm thinking that I might want to do: Books turned into movies, animal intelligence, swimming, marine animals, and a few others. I want to do something within one of these topics, but I can't find any reliable sources on the internet on most of them, because the areas I would like to look at are up to interpretation. Making it extremely difficult not only to do research, but to also to think of some kind of action I could do within one of these areas.

Research and More Grad Ideas

I started thinking that I like to read and I like movies, so it might be cool to try doing some kind of comparison between movies and book, and how they change going from one to the other. Also, I started doing some research on animal minds, and found a good article on National Geographic

http://als.lib.wi.us/bookmovies.html

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/animal-minds/virginia-morell-text/3.

The more I thuink about it, the more I would like to look and books and movies. I still can't think of a way that I would be able to do something active for any of my topics though.

More Grad Projects Ideas

I was thinking during this weekend that it might be interesting to something having to do with marine life, swimming, women in the military, how forms of entertainment (movies, books, tv, games) affect us, rock music, men vs. women in sports, how has swimming developed over time? how pieces of fiction influence the world around us, comparing events in movies to events in real life or analysis of animal intelligence. I really like all of these topics, but I feel like my real problem, is how can I turn all of these topics into something that I can actively do out in the community? All of these topics I have no doubt would make an interesting Research Paper, but wht can I do to get first hand information from people in the community? So my problem now, is what do i pick as my topic, and how can I turn that into something I can get information from people in the community?

Grad Project Topics

I have no idea what to do this project on. I'm hoping to do something with animals and/or swimming. Maybe how the study of marine animals can help swimmers improve.

September 4, 2008

Today, I started my blog. It didn't take that long, until we had to reply to a post that Mrs. Savido wrote. After blogging, I plan to start looking at topics for my Graduation Projects. This is probably going to be difficult, because I'm interested in so many things. In fact, this is probably going to be the hardest part of the entire project.

September 3, 2008

Yesterday was the first day for me in Research. We had to read an article called "For Some, the Blogging Never Stops," then answer questions about it. I didn't know how addicting people found blogging, but I guess that it is a good way for people to just express themselves, and not really worry about the people reading it.