Capacidad de erosión del agua.

Aprovechando un video que me ha enviado un amigo sobre las recientes inundaciones en la zona de Jerez, se lo mostré a los chavales para que vieran de forma gráfica la capacidad de erosión del agua, de la cual les había hablado en bastantes ocasiones mientras comentábamos unidades de la asignatura de Conocimiento del Medio.

(El video que había incluido aquí ya no está disponible en la web).

Leonardo da Vinci & the Renaissance

Nicolás is now learning about the Renaissance at school. He is being taught the importance of humanism, the return to classical antiquity, ingenuity and observation of your surroundigs, all values that had little to do with the Middle Ages and its mindset. And who better than Leonardo da Vinci to illustrate this new and daring spirit. So, we watched —and commented— BBC's documentary on Leonardo, in three different parts. Here is the link to the first part of episode 1. You will find the rest on YouTube.




What did I learn?
(Nicolás)
I'd say that Leonardo da Vinci was a very knowledgeable person and probably the most intelligent person known to humanity. His work involved science, art and technology and, on the other hand, every scientist we know (besides Leonardo) only studied and worked on one thing that they where good at and they never really studied anything else. Leonardo was a great artist, a great mechanical engineer, a great anatomist and a great philosopher. His real name is actually Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci.

Interpretando un mapa.

Mi esposa vio hace unos meses un mapa de gran tamaño en casa de una amiga, así que decidió comprarse uno en Ikea y colgarlo en casa en una de las paredes de la oficina para que los chavales puedan usarlo cuando les haga falta. Eso sí, les será de bien poca ayuda sin el conocimiento necesario sobre cómo interpretarlo. Esta tarde me reuní con ellos en la oficina, le echamos un vistazo y aprendimos los conceptos básicos para interpretar el mapa geográfico y político, así como los husos horarios y las coordenadas geográficas.

Planet Earth: The Future. Into the Wilderness.

Planet Earth is a TV series produced by the BBC Natural History Unit that was originally aired in the United Kingdom back in the year 2006. After a few episodes where Richard Attenborough introduces us to a few ecosystems (the poles, the mountains, fresh water, the seas...), there are a few more where they take a step back and consider the environmental problems we are facing as a society.




What did I learn?
(Sophia)

I learned that there are many endangered species in our world that, most likely, the next couple of generations will not be able to see themselves, only in movies or documentaries because we are endangering a lot of animals. I also learned that we are taking a lot of water from rivers by taking some using the dams. One river from Colorado that ends in the Gulf of California, is polluted because people throw chemicals into the river and all those chemicals they throw into the river goes to the Gulf of California and so, most of the fish there are dying, and it just so happens that that river doesn't have much water the same as other rivers that don't have a lot of water left. An what I think, is that if everyone on this planet tried to help, we could save many of the animals and rivers that are about to disappear.

I also learned that on some mountains, animals are going to disappear because farmers are using those areas to grow there crops, so, since eventually they need to move up, the animals that live there also need to move up, so now they are on top of the mountain and have no were to go, so, most likely, they will go extinct. Also there are a group of animals that live on top of a place with a lot of oil, so the people want to dig there to be able to use it, now, they say that there wont be any accidents, but, of course there will be accidents. And, maybe now they only want to use a little of the land, but later, they will say the same and soon the land will be gone; also, they may say that they only need to use some land, but it's obvious that they're going to need land to build houses and places to work and get the things that they may need, and food, and roas to go to town and so that cars can drive and transport people and oil.

In a different documentary, there was a species of animal that was called The Golden Toad from a different episode (the previous one) and it talks about how one day someone went to study it, but that it was extinct; because people used to use frogs to see if a women was pregnant, and some of the toads that they used escaped, and since they used chemicals on them, they spread some sort of disease and so now they are extinct, within the last few decades! And I don't think that's a very good thing.

So, I would just like to say that the scientist looked so worried, that some almost looked they were about to cry. So, if that doesn't worry you...

Also in a different documentary, it was talking about how the ice is melting, and, I mean like, super fast. Last year there was enough of ice so that Polar Bears can hunt easily, in a documentary, it showed a polar bear that started hunting at it's normal time, but most of the ice was gone. So the polar bear nearly froze to death (or drowned); but it reached land and since it was starving, it tried to kill a walrus, which a polar bear barley ever does, so you could see it was desperate. And the same documentary talked about how the ice from The North Pole may be gone soon, so the oceans and seas will rise about thirty meters.

Now, I think that the world that we live in is very beautiful, and that we at least owe to our planet, Planet Earth, and all the living things on it the trouble of trying to save it, and I think that if everyone helped we could save it (mostly). Because I've seen very tragic things in the documentaries, and, like I said, we owe it to our planet and to all the living things on it (not just us humans) to try and save it.