Hello,

Now that I’m back from a refreshing 4th of July weekend, I’m looking back on the last week and realizing how many different things happened! Plans for da Vinci Days are ongoing and we’re trying to assemble all the necessary components before the event hits us in the face – hard to believe it’s the weekend after next! Last Tuesday, Josh and I met Cindy Newberry and she showed us how to set up the giant Oregon Sea Grant display – at 8 feet by 10 feet, it is much taller than me! It took about an hour to set up and take down but hopefully we’ll be able to recreate it when the time comes in a couple of weeks.

Josh and I also went shopping for da Vinci Days supplies… we’re planning on using Sea Grant’s Enviroscape, an interactive plastic display that models how watersheds work. It’s actually an awesome visual to show kids what can happen from various pollutants. The plastic is ridged and colored to look like a watershed, with mountains, meadows, neighborhoods, and of course a river. Using things like soy sauce to exemplify an oil spill, we can show how polluting in one area can spread all across the watershed. The Enviroscape’s website had some funny suggestions, like using chocolate sprinkles for dog poo and small pieces of paper for highway litter. I’m looking forward to trying it all out!

I was finally able to meet Tania Siemens, my third supervisor for my internship. She told Josh and I about some teaching opportunities we will have throughout the month, mostly to do with invasive species and watershed issues. She also introduced us to her aquatic invasions toolkit project, a resource for teachers that provides them with information so that they can teach their classes about aquatic invasive species.  The toolkit includes lesson plans, species guides, and a well-written introduction, but since the toolkit is still being developed, I might have the opportunity to work on it and contribute.

I’ll add one more random thing to this list! Last week, Sam Chan (one of our supervisors) asked us interns to start working on a project for the Oregon Invasive Species Council, of which Oregon Sea Grant is a member. Basically, the Oregon Invasive Species Council has a document that outlines protocols for state agency field workers. These protocols are intended to help prevent the spread of invasive species, and include information on things like cleaning gear and avoiding contaminated areas. The document is six pages long and not very attention-grabbing, so Sam asked us to come up with some clearer, more concise ways to communicate the material. Jen, professional intern-in-residence, suggested that I make a website using WordPress, so that was my task. I’ve never tried anything like that before, so it was an adventure. Since I am technologically deficient, I ended up drawing my own pictures and scanning them in for illustrations, except for the two diagrams that were provided in the document. Although it was  a struggle figuring out how everything worked, I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out! Not a dazzling production, by any means, but good enough for a prototype.

One of my low-tech illustrations :)

Hope you all are having a good week!