On October 17,2006 the Callisburg Middle School and the Omose Junior High School conducted their second joint video conference. The topic covered was the fall bugs and soil collections. The Callisburg students made the following presentations:

The Callisburg Fall 2006 bugs and soil video conference will begin with an introduction by an 8th grade student.

The text of her introduction:

On September 11, 2006 the Callisburg 8th graders conducted their bugs and soil collections.
The weather was 90F with an ESE wind at 2MPH. The humidity was 42% with a dew point of 64F. The north Texas area experienced the third year of drought conditions.
The ground was very dry even though 2 days prior we had a rain storm. The students were set up in two groups that took samples from a wooded area and low grass. There were no high grass areas due to the drought and the fact that the pasture we used had cattle grazing.

The wooded area results will be presented by an 8th grade student.

Our team observed the soil to be light brown in color and sandy with a small amount of moisture.

We observed termites (Isoptera) in rotten wood, butterflies and moths (Lepidotera). There were worms in the soil and many ant mounds some were fire ants.

We made the hypothesis that the bugs were deeper in the soil due to the drought conditions.

The low grass results will be presented by an 8th grade student.

The soil was a medium brown color and very hard packed. We observed butterflies (Lepidotera). We also observed grasshoppers (Orthoptera), crickets and large red ants. The soil was very dry and it was very hard to dig much deeper than 10 CM. Since there were cow patties in the pasture we did observe flies ((Diptera).

A presentation about North Texas bugs will be given by a 7th grade student that has an extensive bug collection.

The text of his presentation:

I have been collecting bugs for about 6 years. Here are some of the bugs I have collected. Most of the time I freeze the bugs to preserve them for my collection. The reason I became interested and started to collect bugs was of my interest in their colors, shapes, and I am interested in their exoskeleton. I have some photos of the bugs I have collected.

The Callisburg students also explained to our Japanese students the concept of Halloween complete with photos of costumes and vocabulary words that related to Halloween.

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