Journals 2008/2009

Megan O'Neill
Fairhope High School, Fairhope, Alabama

"Thermal Tolerance of Antarctic Fishes" R/V Laurence M. Gould April 21 - June 11, 2009

Journal Index: April 17/18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 24 - 25         26 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 30 May 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11        12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20        21 - 22 - 23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29        30 - 31 June 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11

May 8, 2009
"Mornings with Megan"- new TV show!

The big day!

Jeff and Beade had worked tirelessly adjusting lights, locating cords, moving furniture, getting a video camera set up outside and testing the Polycom system several times to make sure that everything was in working order for the video conference with my students at Fairhope High School.

It seemed like just days before that I had contacted Jeff to get this all organized when it was actually a couple of months ago! Mr. McRae and the IT guys at Baldwin County, Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Hannon, Mrs. Stuart and Ms. Smith (science teachers that involved their classes) had also worked numerous hours out of their busy schedules to get it all organized on that end as well. It was quite a production!

The teachers emailed me questions from the students ahead of time, so we could alleviate some of the slight time delay across the transmission with the questions. It turned out that most of the questions were split in to three areas-the icefish research, living at Palmer Station and wildlife around Palmer Station. I created some short videos, about 2-4 minutes each about each of these areas from my personal video recordings during my experience so far. I used iMovie on my Mac, which was super easy even with my first time using it. After the video segment on the icefish research, I had the assistance of Dr. Crockett and Dr. O'Brien to answer students' questions and lend their expertise. It was such a treat to have them talk to my students! They have such incredible knowledge of the icefish and physiology. It was also helpful because as college professors, they were able to lend advice to aspiring marine scientists amongst the students as to which courses they should focus in college. Jeff Otten also helped answer questions about the Giant Petrel Research on which he has been working and that I got to help with and take pictures.

After the first conference at 8:00 a.m., we had another "show" planned at 10:00 a.m. Jeff and Beade coined my new program, "Mornings with Megan." It was fun, and I greatly appreciate everyone's help in making it such a success!