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tepui, tepuy: the lost world
Feb. 28th, 2009 07:14 pmYounger daughter's class was assigned to do a geography report on one of several sites in South America. I saw that the Atacama Desert was one of the options, and I hinted that it was the site of many telescopes already with more being built. She chose Angel Falls instead.
I did not know what the rules were for her research, but she informed me that I had to let her use the account with unrestricted web access. I let her type in search strings and gave a running commentary as she looked at the results. I noted that the pages described going to the falls as an adventure, and that I didn't think my mom had gone there for she's not that adventurous. I also pointed out the pages about the tour companies and their prices. It looks like it's possible to get from Ciudad Bolivar to the base of the falls for around US$200, but getting to the top of the falls exceeds $1000.
Younger daughter was unimpressed with my interests. She wanted just the facts, ma'am. She made use of the image search as well as the text search, she chose two of the images from wikimedia, and I directed her to store them locally for report. She expected me to type the report. I insisted that the words had to be hers, and I had her write down her report for me to transcribe. When she was ready I started up OpenOffice and instructed her to start typing her name and title and words -- and not worry about the formatting, just get the words. I was pleased when she proceeded to do just that. After the first sentence I took over the typing from her dictation (tell me where the period is, please) and finished the report. Then we inserted and resized her images.
She was dissatisfied with how much smaller her words seemed when typeset. She proceeded to compose and insert a couple more sentences. In the end she filled a page with words and pictures.
In the lulls I started up Google Earth and we flew around the region of Venezuela. Wow. I had no idea just how spectacular the tepuis are. Best of all is one far from Angel Falls, named Sarisariñama, which has a huge sinkhole. See it with Google maps. Also see aerial photos and movie. It's 300 m across, and just as deep, with it's own ecosystem inside. That's ten times as big as the telescope we might build at Atacama.
It's good to have kids. It's good to learn something new every week.
I did not know what the rules were for her research, but she informed me that I had to let her use the account with unrestricted web access. I let her type in search strings and gave a running commentary as she looked at the results. I noted that the pages described going to the falls as an adventure, and that I didn't think my mom had gone there for she's not that adventurous. I also pointed out the pages about the tour companies and their prices. It looks like it's possible to get from Ciudad Bolivar to the base of the falls for around US$200, but getting to the top of the falls exceeds $1000.
Younger daughter was unimpressed with my interests. She wanted just the facts, ma'am. She made use of the image search as well as the text search, she chose two of the images from wikimedia, and I directed her to store them locally for report. She expected me to type the report. I insisted that the words had to be hers, and I had her write down her report for me to transcribe. When she was ready I started up OpenOffice and instructed her to start typing her name and title and words -- and not worry about the formatting, just get the words. I was pleased when she proceeded to do just that. After the first sentence I took over the typing from her dictation (tell me where the period is, please) and finished the report. Then we inserted and resized her images.
She was dissatisfied with how much smaller her words seemed when typeset. She proceeded to compose and insert a couple more sentences. In the end she filled a page with words and pictures.
In the lulls I started up Google Earth and we flew around the region of Venezuela. Wow. I had no idea just how spectacular the tepuis are. Best of all is one far from Angel Falls, named Sarisariñama, which has a huge sinkhole. See it with Google maps. Also see aerial photos and movie. It's 300 m across, and just as deep, with it's own ecosystem inside. That's ten times as big as the telescope we might build at Atacama.
It's good to have kids. It's good to learn something new every week.
