education
zooillogix | October 2, 2008Zooillogix is participating in DonorsChoose, a very cool annual fundraising effort to directly provide needy schools with the materials they need. There are literally thousands of projects to choose from and we selected some pretty modest ones that we hope our readers will choose to support.
#1 An enterprising elementary school teacher in the Bronx wants to buy supplies to keep all sorts of live critters in the classroom, including: hermit crabs, butterflies, worms, ladybugs, pill bugs, and praying mantises.
#2 Another Bronx elementary school teachers wants to get an incubator, fertilized…
grrlscientist | October 2, 2008tags: DonorsChoose2008, education, public school education, fund raising, evolution education, nature education, bird education
One of the highest poverty areas in America is in Washington DC, our nation's capital. That's just disgusting. But we do not need to let the kids who live there succumb to the rampant despair of broken dreams, poor health and poverty. This proposal seeks to give these kids wings by teaching them about birds. Birds are a magical gateway into biological sciences; drawing kids into learning about the wonders of evolution and behavioral ecology and conservation. I know…
pontiff | October 1, 2008DonorChoose, an organization which matches teachers requests for funds with donors, is running their annual blogger challenge. Already Cosmic Variance is trying to harness their vast resources of physicists, The Optimizer is appealing to the base nerd in everyone, He of Uncertain Principles is offering up his dog's services for donations (does the dog know?), and the moral Mathematician is offering solutions to math homework problems (err I mean blog posts on a chosen topic.) But I think you shouldn't fall in this trap and support those blogs....
Because, of course instead you should…
clock | October 1, 2008You may have noticed, all around Scienceblogs.com, that we have started our traditional annual fundraiser - helping fund science and math projects in schools around the country, mainly focusing on schools in low-income areas where most of the students get free lunches and there is not much support for "extras" which should be normal part of every school - the basic supplies for math and science instruction.
I am right now having a technical problem with my side-bar widget, which I will install as soon as I can. But in the meantime, check out the Scienceblogs.com leaderboard, and pick some of…
grrlscientist | October 1, 2008tags: DonorsChoose2008, education, public school education, fund raising, evolution education, nature education, bird education
Mrs. G is seeking supplies for a microbiology lab. I, as a microbiologist, recognize the value (and the intense fascination!) of teaching students about the natural world, particularly microbes!
I teach 7th grade Science in a school where the majority of the students are classified as Title 1, meaning that they need remedial help with their basic skills. Even without that classification, students this age are hard to motivate, especially in the content area of…
drorzel | October 1, 2008I signed up for the Adopt-a-Physicist program run by the APS, and I've been "adopted" by three high school classes. The program pairs professional physicists with high school classes, and provides a web forum both groups can access. The students ask questions, and I answer them.
I'd love to be able to link directly to the forums, but they're password-protected, so you can't get in. The questions so far have been really good, though, and I'm enjoying providing answers.
Some of my answers have included pointers to the blog, so I thought I'd give a shout-out here to the classes that have "…
drorzel | September 29, 2008In the comments to last week's science majors follow-up post, commenter Jim G calls me out:
OK, I agree with that 100%, and I'm sure everyone who reads this post has observed the phenomena you mention dozens of times or more. But I wonder whether you have a proposal, or if you're just pointing out the problem. With no snarkiness intended, to change this we need something a bit more concrete than "it's the fault of the kids/parents/media/poverty," or "someone needs to spend more money" to fix it.
Really, I'm curious. I don't want to clutter up your blog with my own theories; but this is your…
drorzel | September 28, 2008There's an interesting exchange over at the Reality-Based Community around the topic of "earmarks" for science, like the grizzly bear DNA study McCain keeps mocking. Michael O'Hare argues that science should not be funded by earmarks:
Almost any piece of scientific research, especially in biology, that isn't called "Cure cancer!" is liable to the kind of ignorant ridicule lobbed at these. Sure, some research is deeply silly and some is not worth doing. But that non-specialists can make fun of something from its title means nothing, and these japes indicate only the smug ignorance of the…
ddobbs | September 26, 2008This week's Science is particularly rich in stories, it seems. These stories require a paid subscription, alas -- but the write-ups here, in Science's weekly mailing, make pretty good reading on their own for those without a subscription. My favorites:
From the Minds of Babes
I became fascinated with baby cognition when I did a story on Liz Spelke's work with infants while also raising a couple. Spelke and others have focused on the wee'ns's innate or very early powers of cognition, including numerosity and early logic and perception. Here, though, is an interesting study that proposes…
bioephemera | September 25, 2008Tomorrow may or may not be the first of the presidential debates between Obama and McCain. I'll watch, although I find political debates really depressing, and not just because reality is a little bleak right now. I'm always frustrated at the level of the discourse. If a candidate goes where a president should be intellectually prepared to go, attempting to seriously discuss the ambiguities and challenges of complex issues like finance or health insurance systems, he'll be totally shooting himself in his (obviously elitist) foot. People don't want to hear serious, complex discussion. They…
hrynyshyn | September 25, 2008I usually like to refer to the actual study, but I can't find it, so we'll have to make do with the Independent's story on a survey of thousands of British primary and secondary schoolchildren that found most have no idea that science is something of value.
The story starts off with the now predictable gnashing of teeth over the finding that "among every generation of school leavers, there are tens of thousands of potential scientists who are, partly owing to ignorance, turning their backs on careers with a science component." But the really depressing part comes in the form of some…
bioephemera | September 25, 2008Shelley Batts, Nick Anthis, and Tara Smith authored an article on science blogging which appeared yesterday in PLoS Biology. In their words,
We propose a roadmap for turning blogs into institutional educational tools and present examples of successful collaborations that can serve as a model for such efforts.
The article gives solid examples of how blogging has facilitated scientific collaboration, in fields from plant genetics to science policy. I don't think anyone disputes that blogs can open the lines of communication and enable interactions across research groups, institutions, and…
gregladen | September 23, 2008We're talking about the Minnesota Science Standards and we're talking about nothing less than the Pope Mobile.
Consider the following statement currently part of the proposed Minnesota Science Standards:
The student will be able to explain how scientific and technological innovations as well as new evidence can challenge portions of or entire accepted theories and models including but not limited to cell theory, atomic theory, theory of evolution, plate tectonic theory, germ theory of disease and big bang theory.
Think about this for a moment. The standard is asking that the basic, minimal…
sheril | September 22, 2008
Three types of pigments are involved in leaf color.
- Chlorophyll is responsible for the green we see most of the year. It's necessary for photosynthesis which harnesses sunlight to make the sugars that plants need to grow.
- Anthocyanins result in magnificent reds and are produced in the fall as a response to bright light and excess sugars within leaf cells.
- Carotenoids produce yellow, orange, and brown and are present in the chloroplasts of leaf cells all year, but masked by chlorophyll.
During autumn, night length increases, and chlorophyll production stops. The carotenoids and…
gregladen | September 22, 2008Members of the Public: Now is your only chance to comment on Minnesota's new Science Standards. My suggestions: Take out the woo, dampen down the special interests, and please, consider NOT removing biology from the High School standrds!!!!!
To comment, go to this web site and read the context, the standards, and use the resources available there. And/or visit one of the public meetings listed on that site.
Overall the standards are probably an improvement on prior standards. A few questions to consider:
Looking at these standards, it seems as though High School Biology has been removed…
gregladen | September 19, 2008 Gustavus The Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College, naturally.
Gustavus Adolphus was the king of Sweden and founder of the Swedish Empire from the age of seventeen until he his death at the age of 37, in 1632. He looked, as a testosterone-ridden teenager, at vast unconquered lands, at his large and experienced army, and noticing that he was in charge of everything, made a run at taking over the world. He left Sweden with his army and never looked back.
Meanwhile, well, a couple of centuries later, Alfred Nobel was busy inventing TNT and establishing the Nobel Prizes for…
rallain | September 17, 2008So here I was in thermal physics class. The students were talking about the assigned homework and then asked: "can't we get some homework credit for this? Why are we even doing this?" Immediately in my head popped "wax on, wax off". This was the same situation Mr. Miyagi (from [The Karate Kid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Karate_Kid)) was in with Daniel-san. Homework should not be done just for the points. Homework should help the students become more proficient at blocking blows from the test.
I really like the movie karate kid. Mr. Miyagi brings up some good points. How does…
clock | September 17, 2008Not in my back yard!
It appears that some people are, erm, a little behind the times down in Brunswick County. That dog will not hunt, though, as it has no legal legs to run on, as PZ explains - it's even less sophisticated than what the Dover board tried to do.
clock | September 14, 2008This post was first written on October 28, 2004 on Science And Politics, then it was republished on December 05, 2005 on The Magic School Bus. The Village vs. The University - all in your mind.
Eric at Total Information Awareness wrote two excellent posts on something that touches me personally, yet has much broader consequences on the country as a whole: the well-organized and well-funded assault of the Right on the University (check some links in the comments section, too): Freedom Fighters and Academic Freedom Fighters.
There were a couple of other articles on the same topic, e.g.,The…
gregladen | September 14, 2008That depends ... on what X and Y are!
And if that does not come naturally to you, perhaps you should read The Complete Idiot's Guide to Pre-Algebra by Amy Szczepanski and Andrew Kositsky.
The CIG to PA is built just like the other books in the Idiot's series, using familiar conventions to keep the flow of the book smooth while providing additional ancillary information, and in the case of this text, practice problems (answers provided in the back). This book reminds me of a tired old reference I've got on my shelf called Technical Mathematics. Sometimes you just need a place to look up…