Education
Category archives for Education
Homework Is Evil?: “The benefits of completing homework for students with different aptitudes in an introductory physics course”
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 14, 2013 
One of the perennial problems of teaching intro physics is getting students to do their homework, so I was very interested to see Andy Rundquist on Twitter post a link to a paper on the arxiv titled “How different incentives affect homework completion in introductory physics courses.” When I shared this with the rest of…
Explaining, Education, and Outreach
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 18, 2013 A couple of days ago, Alom Shaha posted on the new Physics Focus blog (by the way, there’s a new Physics Focus blog…) about his dissatisfaction with some popular books: I recently read a popular science book on a topic that I felt I needed to learn more about. The book was well written, ideas…
On Talent in Sports and Science
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 16, 2013 Nobody’s ever going to mistake me for an elite basketball player. I’m taller than average (about 6’6″, a hair under 2m in SI units), but I’m not especially quick, or agile, or all that good a jumper. And I’m carrying at least 40lbs of extra weight above what a really good player my size would…
E. O. Wilson and Learning the Wrong Lesson
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 12, 2013 One of the reasons I held off on commenting on the whole E. O. Wilson math op-ed thing, other than not having time to blog, was that his comments were based on his own experiences. And, you know, who am I to gainsay the personal experiences of a justly famous scientist? At the same time,…
I Teach for Free, They Pay Me to Grade
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 25, 2013 Over at Unqualified Offerings, Thoreau has a bit of a rant about what students perceive as grading on a “curve”: Moreover, many students have only the foggiest idea of what a curve is. Many (though probably not all) of their high schools had fixed grading scales with fixed percentages for each letter grade. The A/A-…
Why Are Physics Classes Full of Old Stuff?
Posted by Chad Orzel on November 15, 2012 
Everybody and their siblings have been linking to this Minute Physics video, an “open letter” to President Obama complaining about the way that most high school and even intro college physics classes don’t teach anything remotely modern: I’m not entirely sure where the date of 1865 comes from, but it’s true, the standard intro physics…
Twilight of the Elites and the Rise of the Culture
Posted by Chad Orzel on November 9, 2012 In which I use my double license as a physicist and a science fiction fan to engage in some half-assed futurism spinning off Chris Hayes’s much-discussed book. ————- I don’t read a lot of political books, because I tend to find them frustrating. They’re usually surprisingly ephemeral, trying to spin Deep Meaning out of a…
Science Is Our Human Heritage
Posted by Chad Orzel on October 18, 2012 
In which I get a little rant-y about yet another proud display of ignorance from the Washington Post’s education blog. ———— Some time back, I teed off on a school board member who couldn’t pass a simple math test, who proudly told the world about his ignorance via a post at the Washington Post‘s education…
Excellent Approximations and Lying to Children
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 31, 2012 In which I talk about the common complaint that we teach students physics that “isn’t true,” and the limits on that statement. ———— Frequent commenter Ron sent me an email pointing to this post by David Reed on “What we “know” that t’aint so…. and insist on teaching to kids!”: he science we teach is…
What Does It Take to Evaluate Teaching?
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 30, 2012 In which we compare a couple of different systems for evaluating teachers, looking at what’s involved in doing a fair assessment of a teacher’s performance. ——– Another casualty of the great blog upgrade, in the sense of a post that was delayed until the inspiration for it has been forgotten by most of the people…
