CastleLearning & SmartScience Lab Updates

To all my students:

• Your Mid-Winter Recess Take-Home Exam has already been posted on CastleLearning.Com as of this past Monday. Please use your 9-digits OSIS # for your UserID and Password to log-in (or use your own password if you have changed it already). Due Date: Monday.

• Your class rosters for the Spring 2012 semester have already been set up, please follow the instruction below to log in and make up the missing labs. Due Date: March 9, 2012 (for 1st marking period, Spring 2012).

---- SmartScience Make-up Labs Online -----

• The main purpose of SmartScience Online Labs is to provide you an opportunity to satisfy the NYS mandatory Regent Lab Requirement if you had missed regular in-class hands-on lab sessions. It is meant to be a supplement, not a replacement, of the regular labs. Hence, your performance on the online labs will not affect your regular course grade (unlike the regular labs which account for 20% of your course grade) - unless it's a lab specifically assigned by your teacher.

• Remember: If you fail the labs., you automatically fail the course - end of discussion. Hence, it's very important that you make up any missing lab online immediately (right after the week you missed your assigned lab session).

• The student must complete the whole lab (Pre-lab Quiz, Post-lab Quiz, Data Collection, and Final Lab Report) in order for that specific lab. to be counted as "satisfactory". F.Y,I, I do check your lab report, so if you do a sloppy job, you get no grade - "unsatisfactory"!

• You can access the SmartScience online labs. in the following manner:
a) Go to SmartScience Lab's URL address directly.
Make sure you select "NYC Public School" and then "Information Technology High School".
b) Select your class (look for LIU - Period # - Course Name - Semester Year); then use drop down menu to choose your name.
c) Type in your 9-digit StudentID (OSIS) number and select "Login".
d) Open the Window for the lab. session, this should start your JAVA running and get the session started. You will then be able to select the lab. activity. Be sure to click submit after you finish the entire lab (up to and include the conclusion of lab report).
* If you have trouble, make sure you use a different browser and make sure JAVA is installed on your computer (Preferred browser - Firefox).

• Listed below is a list of SmartScience online lab. activities that are assigned for Chemistry 1 and Earth Science 1 terms. I tried to arrange the order of the labs roughly according to the pace of our curriculum with increasing difficulty level, so the best approach for you is to find the labs for your to start with lower number labs first before proceeding to the higher number labs. For example, if you missed two chem 1 labs and need to make them up, go to Chem 1 Lab List and select two lowest number labs (e.g. 1 & 2) to make up those labs. In choosing the make-up labs, be sure to work on the labs that are not assigned in class. Send me an e-mail to notify me after you have completed the make-up labs (since I do not normally check the online labs unless I assign them specifically).

Regent Chem. 1 Lab List:
1. Lab Glassware Exercise
2. Measurement
3. Volume Graph
4. Chemical Change
5. Brownian Motion
6. Gas Volume-Temperature
7. Gas Pressure-Temperature
8. Liquid Volume-Temperature
9. Periodic Table Activity
10. Chemical Periodicity
11. Molar Volume
12. Absolute Zero
13. Empirical Formula Chlorides

Regent Chem. 2 Lab List
14. Heat Conduction in Solids
15. Specific Heat
16. Evaporation
17. Solubility
18. Crystal Violet Bleaching
19. Enzymes
20. Reaction Rate Wet Lab
21. Equilibrium Constant
22. Acid-Base Titration
23. Indicators
24. Iron-Tin Reaction
25. Oxidizing Power

Earth Science 1 Lab List:
1. Volume Graph
2. Measurement
3. Density
4. Buoyancy
5. Earthquakes
6. Basic Rock Identification
7. Erosion and Flow
8. Heat Conduction in Solids

Earth Science 2 Lab List:
9. Cloud Activity
10. Gas Volume-Temperature
11. Evaporation
12. Porosity
13. Soil Permeability
14. Specific Heat
15. Moon Phases
16. Daily Tides
17. Solar System


• Write me an e-mail if you have any question (but read the whole instruction first).

Dr. Liu