education
grrlscientist | March 10, 2009tags: Long-billed Dowitcher, Limnodromus scolopaceus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Long-billed Dowitcher, Limnodromus scolopaceus photographed in Brazoria Refuge, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 12 February 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, 1/640s 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 | March 10, 2009A few weeks ago, Neil DeGrasse Tyson was on the Daily Show telling stories about Pluto, and mentioned getting a letter from a little kid who added the postscript "Please write back, but not in cursive, because I can't read cursive yet." We were talking about this in the car yesterday, because Kate's been reading one of these books, and I realized that I don't think I could write a letter in cursive, even if I wanted to.
I did learn how to write in cursive, back in the day, but my handwriting was always borderline illegible, and I switched back to printing pretty much as soon as the teachers…
pontiff | March 9, 2009Via Swans on Tea: Academic Earth: a collection of top lectures on a variety of academic topics. Nothing on quantum computing yet :)
ddobbs | March 9, 2009"Primates on Facebook" -- "Even online, the neocortex is the limit" to how many people we can really have as friends.
People who use more textual shortcuts (lk whn they txt in skl) when texting have higher reading skills. The coverage seems to assume this is causal, but it's almost surely just an association -- people with good reading skills more quickly come up with or absorb textual shortcuts.
Does "pay for performance" work in learning? For a bit, then not. "A number of the kids who received tokens didn't even return to reading at all," Dr. Marinak said. From the Times.
Babies can…
gregladen | March 8, 2009Well, not ALL of you. Just the ones who also happen to be Scientists. Texans only, please. If you are not a Texan Scientist do not read this blog post.
The National Center for Science Education is asking Texas Scientists to contact the State Board of Education regarding the Proposed Texas Educational Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Amendments.
Find your SBOE member here.
You are being asked to write your State board of Education member regarding the TEKS amendments passed in Janurary, 2009.
In general, the amendments single out topics touching on evolution (including the age and…
grrlscientist | March 8, 2009tags: leucistic House Finch, Carpodacus mexicanus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] leucistic House Finch, Carpodacus mexicanus, photographed on Farm Island near Pierre, South Dakota. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Terry Sohl, 16 February 2009 [larger view].
Photo taken with a 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:
"It's not in the book."
A birding acquaintance of mine, long since passed away, I fear, once told me about the "…
grrlscientist | March 7, 2009tags: Streak-backed Oriole, Icterus pustulatus microstictus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Streak-backed Oriole, Icterus pustulatus microstictus, photographed at the Water Ranch in Gilbert, Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Richard Ditch, 15 December 2006 [larger view].
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
Any doubt that this is an oriole? Good. Confused about just what an oriole is? Better.
The English word was first applied, naturally…
drorzel | March 6, 2009Over at Unqualified Offerings, Thoreau is bemused by his students' reaction to unusual numbers:
[I]t is fascinating how we condition people to be used to numbers in a certain range, and as soon as a number is either very big or very small it becomes disconcerting. On one level, I'm glad that they are able to do the conversion and that they at least realize that numbers need to be checked. I've had people happily measure the dimensions of an object in millimeters, get their conversion to meters wrong, and cheerfully tell me that their tiny metal cylinder has a volume of 27 cubic meters. At…
grrlscientist | March 6, 2009tags: Short-eared Owl, Asio flammeus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Short-eared Owl, Asio flammeus, photographed at Fort Pierre National Grasslands in South Dakota. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Terry Sohl, 9 December 2005 [larger view].
Photo taken with a Canon 50D, 400 5.6L.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
ddobbs | March 6, 2009Ezra Klein reviews Obama's handling of yesterday's health summit -- a piece well worth reading for a taste of how sharply focused and serious Obama is about truly comprehensive health-care reform.
Karen Tumlty, a health-care expert, describes in Time her own family's grueling wrestling match with the health-insurance industry. A timely story -- no pun intended -- as it makes painfully clear that it's not just the 46 million people uninsured (did I just say "just" 46 million people) who fare poorly in the current system.
Genetic Future looks at how a Victorian-era height-prediction system…
ddobbs | March 5, 2009
Is this working?
Jefrey Mervis brings the word from Science ($):
U.S. students using educational software do no better learning primary school math and first-year algebra than their counterparts who follow a traditional curriculum. That's the conclusion of a new federally funded study that is loaded with caveats about what it means for students, educators, and the companies that make the software.
The $14.5 million study, funded by the U.S. Department of Education and conducted by Mathematica Policy Research Inc. in Princeton, New Jersey, was designed to find out whether students are…
drorzel | March 4, 2009I spent a few hours Sunday afternoon interviewing students for positions in the Minerva House program, a student life initiative that I'm involved with. The interviews were don by a panel-- me and four students-- and we tried to mix in a few oddball interview questions with the serious stuff.
The most successful of these was "What are five things you can do with a straw?" One of the students kept trying to ask "If you could be any Pokemon, which would you be, and why?" but we're apparently not drawing from a nerdy enough pool of students, because most of them couldn't think of anything.
I…
drorzel | March 4, 2009I went to a panel discussion yesterday on teaching critical thinking skills. It was more of a panel presentation than a panel discussion-- the panelist-to-allotted-time ratio was too high to allow much discussion-- but it was interesting to see how different disciplines approach the task of teaching students to think critically, and support arguments with evidence.
I thought the best comment of the panel was from a chemist, who said that the best test of the development of critical thinking skills is involvement with undergraduate research. This is a big emphasis for us, and one of the things…
sheril | March 3, 2009I LOVE all things space--arguably more than the next girl. For years I wanted to be an astrobiologist. Infinite possibilities and the ultimate opportunity to explore the unknown. And it's no secret to readers that I adore Carl Sagan and Cosmos, which fostered a love and appreciation of science in so many of us.
All I'm saying is, just perhaps--for the time being--we might be better off spending the kind of figures currently invested in large scale BIG 'what if?' projects on more proximate concerns. No doubt the mission of Kepler is really cool, but why rush to search for planets like…
grrlscientist | March 3, 2009tags: Rough-legged Hawk, Buteo lagopus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] light-morph Rough-legged Hawk, Buteo lagopus, photographed on the Fort Pierre National Grasslands in South Dakota. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Terry Sohl, 26 November 2008 [larger view].
Photo taken with a Canon 50D, 400 5.6L.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | March 3, 2009tags: human-chimp hybrid, humanzee, chuman, science, streaming video
Humans and chimps have DNA that is something close to 99% identical, so could there ever be a human-chimpanzee hybrid -- a Humanzee? Watch this video to learn the answer to this question [2:28]
bioephemera | March 2, 2009
Wax anatomical figure of reclining woman, Florence, Italy, 1771-1800
Science Museum London
Starting today, the Wellcome Trust and sciencemuseum.org.uk open a brand spanking new collection of medical history archives. "Brought to Life: Exploring the History of Medicine" is searchable by people, place, thing, theme, and time. You can view a timeline of medical history in Europe next to similar timelines for the Islamic empire, Egypt and Greece (I do wish China and India were as prominently placed). You can read essays about larger questions, like what "wellness" means, or play with a cool…
grrlscientist | March 2, 2009tags: Pine Siskin, Carduelis pinus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Pine Siskin, Carduelis pinus, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Richard Ditch, 16 April 2008 [larger view].
Date Time Original: 2008:04:16 08:46:29
Exposure Time: 1/319
F-Number: 5.60
ISO: 320
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
drorzel | March 1, 2009A partial list of phrases I would like bound to a macro key, to save myself typing them over and over again as I mark up student lab reports (not all of these apply to the current crop of students):
Not only were you able to [verb] the [noun], you did [verb] the [noun]. Say that directly.
You are describing an experiment that you did a week ago. That makes it a little odd to talk about what you "hope to find" in your report.
Do not talk about the educational purpose of the lab. Pretend that you did this experiment on your own, because you wanted to learn something, and not because I made you…
grrlscientist | March 1, 2009tags: Eastern Screech-Owl, Otus asio, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Rufous morph Eastern Screech-Owl, Otus asio, photographed at near Beaver Creek Nature area in Minnehaha County, South Dakota. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Terry Sohl, 11 June 2006.
Photo taken with a Canon 50D, 400 5.6L.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.