education
sporte | March 30, 2009A few weeks ago I heard a story from a friend in Oklahoma. She works with high school science teachers, helping them learn how to add biotechnology to their courses.
One teacher, in particular, has taken the new science activities to heart. Her students did so well, they won a science competition and were asked to fly somewhere to accept the prize.
For many of those students, this would be their first trip on an airplane and their first trip outside of rural Oklahoma. It was pretty exciting!
But there were some unexpected problems.
Some of these children were illegal.
Just like the…
grrlscientist | March 30, 2009tags: Gray Jay, Perisoreus canadensis, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Gray Jay, Perisoreus canadensis, photographed during a snowstorm on Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park, Olympic Peninsula, Washington [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Lee Rentz, March 2009.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
A big fluffy gray bird in the north woods is almost certainly a Gray Jay. Even from this angle, we can see the contrasting dark cap that confirms…
grrlscientist | March 29, 2009tags: Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Tyrannus forficatus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Tyrannus forficatus, photographed near Brookings, South Dakota. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Terry Sohl, 18 October 2008 [larger view].
Photo taken with Canon 40D, 400 5.6L.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
My usual admonition to start at the rear seems just a bit too obvious with this bird: the combination of a long, forficate…
evolvingthoughts | March 28, 2009A dozen or so years ago, or maybe more, I was heading up the communications section of The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, when I employed a young biology graduate as a graphics guy to do medical graphics. This he did for a while, until he started playing with three-dimensional graphics software. He did some animations of cell surface signalling molecules, and of malaria parasites, and cancer cells, and took them to the director, and suggested that we set up an animation unit within the department.
This we did, and within a short while, Drew Berry had managed…
grrlscientist | March 28, 2009tags: Blue-winged Teal, Anas dicors, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Blue-winged Teal, Anas discors, photographed in Brazos Bend State Park, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 10 March 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/400s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
The white "fender" patch, bright brown sides, and gray head and neck quickly identify this shy…
drorzel | March 27, 2009OK, "quiz" isn't really the right word, because I don't know the right answer. But here's something weird that I noticed a while ago, and since I needed an excuse to fool around with video a bit, I thought I'd shoot some pictures of it:
Here's the deal: My cell phone is gently curved on one side. If I put the phone on a table with that side down, it will spin reasonably freely, with very little effort. If I try to spin it fast, though, it very quickly develops a pronounced wobble that damps out the spin very quickly. You can see it in the YouTube video above.
So, the question is: Why does…
drorzel | March 26, 2009I'm teaching the intro mechanics course next term, starting on Monday, and my colleagues who just finished teaching it in the Winter term used WebAssign to handle most of the homework. They speak very highly of it, so I'm probably going to use it next term.
I'm curious to know what other people think, though. The reasons my colleagues give for liking it sound good from a faculty perspective, but I'm not sure how well it would go over with students (for one thing, it's another $15 on the price of the text). Does anybody have experience with using WebAssign, either as a student or as an…
grrlscientist | March 26, 2009tags: Townsend's Warbler, Dendroica townsendi, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Townsend's Warbler, Dendroica townsendi, photographed in San Francisco, California. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Terry Sohl, 18 December 2008 [larger view].
Photo taken with Canon 50D, 400 5.6L.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
A diminutive, brightly colored bird makes us think of a wood warbler, and the black throat and crown point us in the direction of the "…
drorzel | March 26, 2009A few days ago I asked people's opinions regarding drop deadlines for students who decide they no longer want to be in a class. As usual, I forgot a few qualifiers, and nobody used the categories I gave, but after sorting the answers into roughly the categories I gave, here are the results:
A drop deadline four weeks into the ten-week term is the clear favorite, with just over half of the votes (I eliminated one "students should never be allowed to drop, ever," which would've made it exactly half). How does this map onto what we actually do?
Amusingly, our actual drop deadline is in the gap…
gregladen | March 25, 2009Over 50 scientific societies representing hundreds of thousands of American scientists today publicly urged the Texas Board of Education to support accurate science education....
From the National Center for Science Education
Over 50 scientific societies representing hundreds of thousands of American scientists today publicly urged the Texas Board of Education to support accurate science education. The board--dominated by creationists--has been embroiled in a debate over changes to the Texas science standards that could compromise the teaching of evolution.
"Evolution is the foundation of…
drorzel | March 25, 2009The Female Science Professor had a nice post about working with someone who was afraid to write a paper:
Out of desperation, I told the graphophobe to meet me at a particular cafe at a particular time, with the latest draft of the manuscript and whatever other notes or references he needed. We met, I copied the manuscript to my laptop, scrolled to the first extremely incomplete section of the text and said "Tell me what you think should go in this section." He talked and I typed.
We worked our way through the manuscript that way, discussing each section. What should go in it? What was the…
grrlscientist | March 25, 2009tags: Red-legged Thrush, Turdus plumbeus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Red-legged Thrush, Turdus plumbeus, photographed near Ceiba, Puerto Rico [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Dennis Paulson, 11 March 2009 [larger view].
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
This is a pretty bird, and one quickly identifiable to genus for anyone who knows, say, American Robin or Song Thrush. The Turdus thrushes are large, alert-looking birds with long and…
drorzel | March 25, 2009I fell behind on course reports from my modern physics class a few weeks back, but I do mean to get back to them, when I have more time. The material remaining is the end-of-term sprint through a bunch of topics in modern physics-- three classes on atoms and molecules, three classes on solid state physics, three classes on nuclear and particle physics.
It's a mad dash through a lot of material (as the eventual course-wrap-up post will make clear), which raises one of the eternal questions of academia:
When teaching undergraduate students about a discipline, which is more important, breadth or…
grrlscientist | March 24, 2009tags: American Bittern, Botaurus lentiginosus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] American Bittern, Botaurus lentiginosus, photographed in Brazoria Wildlife Refuge, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 10 March 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.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
How much of a bird do you need to see to identify it? Depends: on the…
bioephemera | March 23, 2009Via Morbid Anatomy: the Discovery Channel series "How It's Made" features the construction of modern anatomical models. You can watch the five-minute segment after the fold.
Discovery Channel, "How It's Made", Season 11, Episode 2/Part 1
mikethemadbiologist | March 23, 2009By way of ScienceBlogling Sandra Porter, we discover that Cofactor Genomics has announced that they will sequence some genomes for free to enable students to learn about genomics:
In response to a great post on Keith Robison's "Omics Omics" blog which highlighted how Next-Gen DNA sequencing platforms could change the science classroom as we know it:
http://omicsomics.blogspot.com/2009/03/next-level-in-genomics-term-papers.html
Cofactor will ask course organizers for a 1 page description of how their ~700Mb sequencing project could be used as an effective teaching aid in their class. We will…
mikethemadbiologist | March 23, 2009After reading these two posts by ScienceBlogling Sheril (and the many comments) about scientific literacy, I suppose I'm in the minority about what scientific literacy. Unlike most of the commenters, I think scientific literacy revolves primarily around a core set of knowledge, and not 'critical thinking skills.' More importantly, to combat anti-science, facts are vital.
Now, that core set of knowledge should include a basic understanding of what hypothesis testing and the scientific method are. But, in my experience, stupidity regarding science (no need to be polite about it) stems…
drorzel | March 23, 2009I handed in my final grades for the term this morning, and am now on "Spring Break" which is the misleading term for the week of frantic preparation for next term's classes that our schedule allows. Here's a poll question for you, though:
We operate on ten-week "trimesters." How late into the ten-week term should students be allowed to drop a course without special permission?
A) By the end of the second week.
B) By the end of the fourth week.
C) By the end of the sixth week.
D) By the end of the eighth weeks.
E) By the end of the tenth week.
Leave your answers in the comments. If you'd like…
grrlscientist | March 23, 2009tags: Anna's Hummingbird, Calypte anna, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Anna's Hummingbird, Calypte anna, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Richard Ditch, 7 July 2005 [larger view].
Date Time Original: 2005:07:07 07:19:59
Exposure Time: 1/319
F-Number: 11.00
ISO: 200
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
We're usually so distracted by the bright colors of a hummingbird's head that we forget to start at the rear. In this…
evolvingthoughts | March 23, 2009Kate Devitt is so much better a teacher than I am (and she's smarter, better educated and more attractive a person, but let's deal with just one of my insecurities at a time, hey?). I wish I had thought to teach students about Turing Machines like this.