education
drorzel | June 19, 2009There's an interesting discussion going on in a place I can't link to, spinning off a comment to the NEA post from the other day:
The point is that the amount of people who see value in or are trained to appreciate more esoteric, more difficult, less accessible music **may** have dropped.
The basic idea is that the decline in the audience for "high art" forms of music may be attributed to cutbacks in musical education in schools. People just aren't educated enough to know that they ought to like classical music, or some such.
This led to a discussion of people's experience with music…
drorzel | June 19, 2009The smart-people blogosphere is all abuzz about questions from the French college entrance exams, with comments from Matt Yglesias, Dana Goldstein, and Kevin Drum, among others. The general tone of the commentary is summed up by Goldstein's question:
Could you ever imagine the SAT or ACT asking students to write an essay on such complex, intellectual topics?
The answer is "Sure. The answers would suck, but you could ask them."
And that's the important thing, here. What matters is not whether you ask ostentatiously intellectual questions of your students, but whether the answers they give are…
grrlscientist | June 19, 2009tags: Bohemian Waxwing, Bombycilla garrulus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Bohemian Waxwing, Bombycilla garrulus, photographed near Brandon in Minnehaha County, South Dakota. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Terry Sohl, 12 February 2005 [larger view]
Photo taken with a Canon 20D, 400 5.6L.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | June 18, 2009tags: BBC America, natural history, nature programming, television, entertainment, education, streaming video
I just wanted to let you all know that every one of you with a television is the subject of my enduring envy because I just learned from Nicole Wetzold that my favorite radio news and television programming source has done it again: BBC is now bringing all of its natural history content together under one brand, BBC Earth. This programming is available in the United States on BBC America. As a taste of what to expect, here is a video they sent me to share with you. It is a tiny bit of…
drorzel | June 18, 2009Kevin Drum commented on a charter school study a couple of days ago, which made me go look through the report (available from this ultra-minimalist page-- seriously, you can't even be bothered to cut and paste some of your introductory boilerplate into an HTML file to give people an idea of what's behind those PDF links?).
The summary message is kind of bleak. From Drum's post, quoting the LA Times:
The study of charter schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia found that, nationally, only 17% of charter schools do better academically than their traditional counterparts, and more than…
grrlscientist | June 18, 2009tags: Green Heron, Ardeola virescens, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Juvenile Green Heron, Ardeola virescens, photographed on a farm pond in central Kentucky. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Mark Selter, 14 June 2009 (thanks to Roger Brown for sharing) [larger view].
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | June 18, 2009tags: TEDTalks, biomimetics, biomutualism, biology, engineering, origin of flight, Robert Full, streaming video
Biologist Robert Full studies the amazing gecko, with its supersticky feet and tenacious climbing skill. But high-speed footage reveals that the gecko's tail harbors perhaps the most surprising talents of all. [12:27]
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on…
grrlscientist | June 17, 2009tags: Purple Gallinule, Porphyrio martinica, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Purple Gallinule, Porphyrio martinica, photographed at Anahuac Wildlife Refuge, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 19 May 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200 ,Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/500s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
drorzel | June 17, 2009There have been a half-dozen stories in the past few weeks that looked interesting, but didn't even make it into the Links Dump for the day. Why not? Because the stories or studies were only available as PDF files.
I have no idea if this is actually getting worse, but I'm finding this more irritating than ever. It's particularly annoying as there's usually no good reason for presenting the information in question in PDF form-- you could perfectly well present it as an easily linkable and quotable HTML page. Take, for example, this NEA report on the arts-- the one-paragraph note on Inside…
drorzel | June 17, 2009Two announcements landed in my Inbox yesterday and are worth passing along:
1) The Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism is now accepting nominations:
# Articles must have been published for the first time between 1 July 2008 and 30 June 2009.
# Entries must state clearly the website where each article appeared and the date that each article was published.
# Consideration will be given to the articles on the following criteria: intellectual coherence; persuasiveness; wit and relevance; clarity and simplicity; wider impact (as indicated by additional information provided by entrants in the…
grrlscientist | June 16, 2009To encourage innovation and excellence in education, Science magazine has established a prize for online resources in education. The SPORE prize will recognize outstanding projects from all regions of the world that bring freely available online resources to bear on science education.
Winning projects should reinforce one or more of the four strands of science learning recommended by the National Academies and be consistent with the science education standards published by the National Academies and the AAAS. Read more about SPORE rules and where to send your entries.
grrlscientist | June 16, 2009tags: Bateleur Eagle, Terathopius ecaudatus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Immature Bateleur Eagle, Terathopius ecaudatus, photographed in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania, Africa. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Dan Logen, 31 August 2007 [larger view].
Nikon D2X 200-400 NIkon VR lens, at 400 mm. ISO 400, f4.5, 1/250 sec.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | June 16, 2009tags: National Center for Science Education, NCSE, religion, fundamentalism, creationism, intelligent design, streaming video
This video gives you a brief overview of what the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) does to protect our schools from the tyranny of religious brainwashing posing as "science" [3:19]
grrlscientist | June 15, 2009tags: Mountain Plover, Charadrius montanus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Mountain Plover, Charadrius montanus, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Richard Ditch, 25 December 2007 [larger view].
Date Time Original: 2007:12:25 10:06:24
Exposure Time: 1/319
F-Number: 10.00
ISO: 400
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | June 14, 2009tags: Tree Swallow, Tachycineta bicolor, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Tree Swallow, Tachycineta bicolor, photographed at Lake Thompson in Kingsbury County, South Dakota. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Terry Sohl, 2 May 2009 [larger view]
Photo taken with a Canon 50D, 400 5.6L.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
grrlscientist | June 13, 2009tags: Pectoral Sandpiper, Calidris melanotos, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Pectoral Sandpiper, Calidris melanotos, photographed at Anahuac Wildlife Refuge, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 19 May 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200 ,Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/180s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | June 12, 2009tags: book review, Animals Make Us Human, animal welfare, pets, farm animals, agriculture, Temple Grandin
What do animals need to have a good mental life? This question seems easy to answer until we realize that even though we can provide for an animal's physical welfare, we actually don't know that much about the specifics of an animal's emotional life and what they need to be happy. In this book, Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2009), animal welfare guru Temple Grandin explores what the most commonly kept species of domestic…
bioephemera | June 12, 2009Maybe you can't leave town this weekend on vacation, but you can take an awesome behind-the-scenes video tour of UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, which is closed to the public, courtesy of Wired Science:
Officious handwritten tags tell the story of each and every animal's capture. In a screwtop container on the tray, a half-dozen chipmunk skulls rattle, picked clean of all their tissue by a beetle colony housed downstairs. . . You'll visit the bone room and the fur room, where the big mammals are kept. You'll see capybara furs, komodo dragon skins, and whale skulls.
grrlscientist | June 12, 2009tags: Little Bee-eater, Merops pusillus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Little Bee-eater, Merops pusillus, photographed in Amboseli National Park, Kenya, Africa. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Dan Logen, 6 August 2006 [larger view].
Nikon D2X, 200-400 mm VR lens at 400. ISO 250, 1/160, f/5
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | June 12, 2009tags: agribusiness, agriculture, dairy farm, cows, industrial dairy farm, milk, dairy products, streaming video
This is an interesting video of a modern mega-dairy farm, with "all" aspects visible to the public (well, I'll bet not all aspects are visible, since they don't show how sperm is collected, packaged and stored, nor do they show the process of artificial insemination). Visitors get a close up and personal view of the entire process, from the milking barns where they observe cows being milked and fed, and they even can witness live births. This mega-farm also recycles manure into…