ScienceCam!
Have you seen the webcam we have set up to track plant growth? Click below if not. The Plant on the left is the control plant and gets light all day, fertilizer and water. The plant on the right is the same except it is covered at night so it does not get as much light. What do you think will happen? What do you notice so far? Click to comment. Come back soon to comment again!
April 12th, 2008 at 10:22 am
THe plants are really taking off aren’t they?
May 1st, 2008 at 7:23 am
Pelion Middle School Students and Teachers,
After watching all of the videos (some a couple of times) I am really impressed with your project. It really looks like your learning some important stuff and having fun at the same time. I also like the writing part of this project, too. I can not wait to see what some of your reflections will be on this project…. not only what you learned but how could you have made it better or how you would change some of the things you did. Looking forward to more good stuff.
Thank you for sharing.
Patrick Hanks
Director of Instructional Technology
Lexington School District One
May 1st, 2008 at 1:03 pm
This looks like a well designed experiment and a good use of technology. This should allow you to control the necessary variables and gather a great deal of data. Would you expect to get the same results if you had started this experiment in January? If you were to do this again, how would you make the experiment better? Thanks for sharing.
Mike
May 1st, 2008 at 3:25 pm
What a great project! I liked the student explanation video as well as integrating music and writing into science curriculum. Thanks for posting.
May 1st, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Great job PMS.
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:27 pm
I teach at PHMS and I liked the idea of the webcam. I will definitely think about doing that next year. I know that all my student would want their plants to be ‘featured’. Maybe a different group each week. Thanks for sharing.
May 6th, 2008 at 10:20 am
The project looks great! I have even seen the ones in Ms. Shealy’s room, and they are really taking off. Good work! Keep it up. I can’t wait to teach you guys next year!
May 12th, 2008 at 7:27 am
I have enjoyed reading the posted responses. Would love to see what the students write about this. You have put together a pretty comprehensive project, Jeff, and it looks like those involved have thoroughly enjoyed the interactive technology. Thanks for sharing this with all of us.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:50 am
I like to look at the plants. not every dazy but i look at them.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:52 am
For my plant i used crowding so it was more plants in it than other peoples plants. I really liked the project but it did not last to long. My plants they were really tall and very hard to measure.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:53 am
i really liked doing this project it helped me understand more about plants, although it was hard sometimes we had to keep trying.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:53 am
In this project I was in the furtilestion, the olny plant that did great was the one that hade the right amount of furtiliser.The other plants eather got burnt or did not have the right amount of enthing so they died.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Germination happened within the first day with my plant. Germination is the process in which the plant starts to grow from the seed to the plant. there were a lot of things to do with this project. The overall project was very neat and exciting. I think that everybody should do this project. It helps you learn a lot about plants and how they start from a seed to a full size plant. The rising sixth graders will enjoy this project next year and if they but their effort into it it will pay off. I learned that if your plants dont get pollinated they will die.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:56 am
I think that this project was fun but wasn’t sometimes because we did it over and over but at the same time it was fun because i’d rather do a project then class work and it made it fun because we got to learn information about the plant.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:56 am
I think this project was fun but sometimes it wasn’t because we did the same thing over again and again but also it was fun because we could learn about plants but not just sitting in your desk and do worksheets and reading in books about what we are doing now, we can do the project and see what steps you have to take to plant a plant.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:58 am
The plant project my class had a blast.Although my plant did not make seeds.It was vry fun because we took so much time on these here plants and my controled variable was pollenation and that means my plants were not pollenated.
Although my plants died and did not produce seeds the project was fun.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:59 am
in this project we saw how plants grow and it was pretty cool we did the fertilization and all that good stuff!!!!we had much fun while growing are little plants in class ,we would come in and copy down our data on our plants The whole class had different controlls and my controll was light ! It means that the plant you have dont get as much light as some of the other plants do!! our plants hae grown ad died well it was sweet to watch somthing grow that you have planted even if it was a weed or a pretty flower
May 27th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I thak it was fun. I had space. It was were you had to keep your plants crowdedother poeole had to cut theres out of there pot holder.Mine and a few other people did not think it was bad. I am glad its over thouht it was kida borring.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I really liked this project i thought it was really cool. I really liked it when mr. faulk put the comedy strips.
May 27th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
In this project I learned more about the parts of a plant. Also I liked pollinating the plants with bees. But, the plants liked to lean over so it was hard to measure them. But my favorite activity we did with the plants was making their styer foam containers.
May 27th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
My variable was fertilizer but somehow my they crowded. This project was a coolio projet. Learning about how plants grow it was so totally awesome.
My plants were kinda strange plants. I had 2 or 3 in a cell so some were removed. I thought that was good cause i named all my plants and it is hard to keep up with all the names. So there was one to each cell. Flash and connie helped other people in the school who didn’t do this understand what was going on one thing is tell them we are doing a plant project doesn’t help them understand. We were doing so much more than doing that. Flash and Connie also had their own personalities. Just because they are plants doesn’t me they don’t breath. Flash seemed like the more outgoing person while Connie is the nice and quiet one maybe just looking for a friend so she ask Flash. The project was fun measuring it seeing all of the outcomes of this project. And the most fun part is that everyones was differant which we came compare each others. See whos is the tallest. How many flowers one got.
My plants died and didn’t produce any seed pods. Now this is over some kids came take theirs home with theirs.
Hoping that some people will enjoy this as much as i did!!!
<3~~~HuNtEr~~~<3
May 27th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
in this progect i uesd exstra fertilizer. i lerned that if you uesd more fertilizer than your plant will grow twise as tall and twice as strong you plant will have bigger seed pod s and twice the seeds of ta normal seed pod.every day the plant would get bigger and bigger.untill i had to get a bigger ruler.it was similar to what happen weith connie and flash because connie and flash also got really big and they also got very strong.all my 4 plants got a different size one of then got 8 fertilizers and grew taller than the ruler. plant 2 died soon and plant 1 got very small and the plant in 3 was bigger but still looked small compared to plant 4.
May 27th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
For my plant I had the response water. I enjoyed having water b/c I got to give more water than other people. With Connie and Flash I didn’t have to do anything b/c it was not mine. So i got to watch how other people took care of them. Also I liked the song that Kailen wrote. The song was cool:) I enjoyed doing this project.
May 27th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
the project helped me understand the way plants reporduce an how the grow an watching them grow takes a long time I had pollination an the buds on my wessconsin fast platn was not very big i really like your web site
May 27th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
What I learned from this plant project we’ve been doing was when plants grew taller and that they grow buds in each day we take care of them. This project taught me that plants grow blossoms after they grow buds. I thought that it was fun because I have observed the difference of how long the plant grew each day it grows.
May 27th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
For my plant i had to give it plenty of light a plant cant grow without light,water,and air, so light and water is what i had to give my plant to live.Connie and Flash are the same way they cant live without any light water or air and the song kailen wrote about the plants was very cool and creative
I liked it alot another thing i liked is the project it was very fun and cool to work with 
May 27th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
The plants we have been working on have turned out to be really great.And the plants that Mr. Faulk worked on connie and flash turned out to be good……… And connie grew more than flash because connie had more light …….IT was really cool to seee the plants grow each day………!! I would like to work on another project like this one again ….. ITs really cool to do a project like this i liked seeing the plants and how they work in each section …. And how some plants had to be pollinated .. And some had to have diveders…. Then at the end were we had to take and get all the seeds out of the plants and we keeped them. I put mine in a flower plot and im gonna see if they grow! :}
May 27th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
The plant project was a very exciting expirement!! My variable was light so at night we had to cover it up! My plants were kind of tall one got up to 10 inches!!!I enjoyed having to get the data and having to draw what my plant looked like every day!!!!!!! I really hope next year that we get to do alot of fun, exciting,and a very good strategy to help you learn and study ,such as getting to see all the parts and getting to see the pollen!! We also got to pollonate them by having dead bees on tooth picks, this how it worked you rub the bee on the open flower !!
May 27th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I did not know most plants need more lights than others because I thought they all need the same amount of light so that is so cool I learned something new. I also did not know that some grew faster than others they should all grow at the same time but it is better to grow at a diffrent speeds because we all grow at diffrent speed so that makes sense now!!
May 27th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
it is very good and it,s funny.
May 27th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I think the plants grew by getting water & sunlight
May 27th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
I think that the plants are growing good;; and I love the song my cousin kealin wrote.
I think that the plants grow different ways because it didn’t have alot of light and that maybe, not the same amount of water. Also i think that some ways the plants grow alike were that they both got light; water; feed; soul and stuff. Thats what i think of the plants. I also think that the plant project was fun kind of boring so maybe next year the teachers could do videos to all the plants;; and maybe they can get the kids into a play with the plants or something like that so that they like it more,, cause that is what you want right? But anyways that is what i think. You may think different. (:
May 27th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Flash you are a mean plant and a parypopper
May 27th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I think that the plats wheara big responsbilty. IT was cool!!!!!!!!!
May 27th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
the project was cool my thing was space that mens they are crowded .
May 27th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
The plants we have grown in Mrs. McAruthur’s sixth grade class were called Wisconsin Fast Plants. We have watched the growth or development of these plants. Since you weren’t there, i will tell you about what i observed. If you saw the web cam on this website, then you know that Flash, the variable plant was covered up with a sheet for about 2 days. Connie the control plant was left uncovered later we checked it, and Flash was about 3 cenetimeters shorter than Connie. I observed that the plants would stay green a lot longer if you didn’t touch them. I have also learned that working with science can be really fun (if you follow directions) I have to say something to the next 6th graders, (FOLLOW DIRECTIONS! and this project can help you realize a lot about science) and who knows, maybe you will be teaching science someday! (have Fun!!)
May 27th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
As you saw on the website, Flash got covered over night for about 2 or 3 days and when he got uncovered Connie was about 3 inches taller than Flash. I believe this is because it was covered so it couldn’t get any light to help it grow like Connie did. My variable was control and my plants grew about normal sized but when my seed pods produced there weren’t any seeds in them. I belive this has something to do with pollination. I think that overall this project was fun and it taught me alot too. As for advice for the upcoming 6th graders all I can say is just listen carefully to your teacher and follow all directions having to do with caring for your plant. Also I can say just think of this project as a fun learning experiment.
May 27th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I think that the plant projet ,was a very easy projet because all i had to do was jest measure it and plant the seed in the soural.
May 27th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I think that the plants whear cool!!!!!
May 27th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
one of the plants was taller then the other.becouse one was covered up.And the other was not.The one that was not covered was taller then the one thats was covered.
May 27th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
one of the plants was taller then the other.becouse one was covered up.And the other was not.The one that was not covered was taller then the one thats was covered.
May 27th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
this plant was very hard to grow. you had to water it and it was sorta difficult, but at the same time it was easy i like it .it takes a big resposibility! we had to measure it every day but it had alot to do with your varible.i think this was a very good project.
May 27th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
What I thought over all about my project was that it was all right. I guess I mean it’s not that I didn’t like the project it’s just that, to me I was kind of borad about this and so yeah. I think the science teacher’s can do a lot better than that I mean the plants were expansive yeah what ever. But couldn’t they do something else that is also fun but at the same time helpful to futrue sixth graders. over all it was alright.some advice I would give to next year’s sixth graders is whenever you do this project well if you ever do this project don’t be negitve like I’m right now but also whatever you do don’t I ‘m warning you don’t mess with Mrs. Mcauther she will bite you. No, I’ m just kidding but no really don’t mess with her unless you want to get yelled at or writen up other then that try to be good.