Period 4

Our last nights home work was to read an article about World of War Craft. There was a glitch that caused a disease to spread just like a real disease in the real world. Scientists were able to study how the disease spread and what people did about it. They used this to figure out what to do in the real world if an epidemic was to actually break out. For example, it gave the scientists an idea of what kind of curfew people would kneed to get better and how much quarentine they should institute. The scientists are epidemeology scientists which means that they are scientists that study epidemics.The scientists used how the players reacted to the disease and compared it to what would happen in the real world. On the plus side, The scientists had no control over anything other than observing. Since it is a game, some people act and talk meanly or shyly. This makes it even more like the real world because there are people who act like that. All in all this this game was just like every other game until there was a glitch that helped scientists understand more about epidemics.

Many people in the class had many technical dificulties or computer issues with theri home work. Mr. Finley has told us multiple times that there are many things we can do to fix it. Since Mr. Finley is the best science teacher ever, he has provided a page on his webpage for just the problem. On his webpage, he has put a tab called thechnology help. On this page and different internet browsers, if you are having trouble with the one you have, and there areflash players so we can watch our homework one way or another by just downloading either adobe java or quick time. Also, Mr. Finley added a free microsoft word download so you can open the files. It is called open office instead of microsoft office but basically does the same thing. If that doesnt work than you can always phone a friend or email Mr. Finley about your problem and see what he has to say to help you.

Whenever you kneed extra help you can just email Mr. Finley and set up an appointment. If he is not there when you get to his room whether before or after school, feel free to text him and ask him where he is. He might be stuck in traffic or in another room. If you are ever questioning some science related or not just run by Mr. Finley and ask for help or advise.

Today durring class, we began investigating a possible epidemic at one of Mr. Finley's friends school. They gave us limited acess to their school website and a link to community health center that is researching the disease. We had to pull anything interesting we read and try to use it to figure out if there actually was a disease or not. Not many people got very far but we know that we have to make up a hypothesis, prediction, write down our evidence and other questions we might have. This is a very cool experiment beacuse it is an actual school with this problem not a simulation.