6/16/10 "Keying your brain"

Today was a strange day.. not much was accomplished other than filling in a packet that matched a power point. The difficulties with this were that many of people's packets did not have the right amount of papers and some were out of order. This, of course, was blamed on other people, like another packet we received which was blamed on a substitute teacher, although he had nothing to do with it.

This power point, of course, was saturated with every transition and sound effect MS Office has to offer and packed with irrelevant images that we were told were designed to "key your brains." In fact, we were told that Marsha was "keying our brains" 5 times in a 5 minute period.
If keying a brain is anything like keying a car, I might be able to agree with her.

To give you an idea of how irrelevant the brain keying images are, I'll describe some:

"Which of the following describes biodiversity?" = smiley face holding recycling can
"Why do scientists warn that a mass extinction is occurring now?" = brick bridge
"Why have poulations in most developed countries stopped growing?" = smiling flower
"What is a hectare?" = picture of starfish
"What is a placer deposit?" = tornado
"Which abiotic factors characterize a forest ecosystem?" = child on beach
"What might happen within an ecosystem when a keystone species is driven to extinction?"
= a nerve synapse w/ neurotransmitters
This one was my favorite, and I had to explain to her that it was a nerve synapse. I must admit, my brain feels extremely violated, almost as if someone key'd it.
After inquiring about this one and explaining to her what it was, she said:
Because everything that happens with a key species affects everything.
Stay classy, Marsha Sall.


..and to top things off, the New Paper count for today for each student is: 8
CONSERVING RESOURCES!