education
gregladen | August 13, 2008This just in:
A federal judge has ruled the University of California can deny course credit to Christian high school graduates who have been taught with textbooks that reject evolution and declare the Bible infallible, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
U.S. District Judge James Otero of Los Angeles ruled Friday that the school's review committees did not discriminate against Christians because of religious viewpoints when it denied credit to those taught with certain religious textbooks, but instead made a legitimate claim that the texts failed to teach critical thinking and omitted…
gregladen | August 11, 2008You will recall a review I wrote some time ago of a book called "Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments" by Robert Bruce Thompson, and published by O'Reilly. I liked the book a lot and strongly recommended it for homeschoolers and hobbyists who were serious about chemistry.
Now, we have a news report of someone who appears to be a chemistry hobbyist (no, not cooking meth or making bombs) in Marlboro Massachusetts, who has had his lab dismantled and confiscated by local authorities.
This event is summarized and criticized by RB Thomson, author of the afore mentioned book.…
tqa | August 11, 2008
The initial phase of the California Creationist Lawsuit is over, and quality education is the decisive winner. Kevin Vicklund has Judge Otero's decision, as well as a very nice analysis of the ruling up over at his blog. If you've been following the case closely, you can probably jump right over there for the details. If you haven't been tracking the events closely, or want a quick review of the case, keep reading. I'm going to go over the history first, then I'll talk a bit about what Friday's decision means, and what is likely to happen with the case in the future.
The lawsuit (ACSI v.…
gregladen | August 7, 2008Common spelling mistakes should be accepted into everyday use, not corrected, a lecturer has said.
Ken Smith of Bucks New University says the most common mistakes should be accepted as "variant spellings".
He lists the 10 most commonly misspelt words, which include "arguement" for "argument" and "twelth" for "twelfth".
Mr Smith says his proposal, outlined in an article in the Times Higher Education Supplement, follows years of correcting the same mistakes.
Mr Smith, a criminology lecturer, said: "Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes…
drorzel | August 6, 2008Arts & Letters Daily sent me to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education with the headline How Our Culture Keeps Students Out of Science. "Hey," I thought, "Good to see this issue getting some more attention." And, indeed, the article starts off well enough, with a decent statement of the problems in science education:
Back in 2003, the National Science Board issued a report that noted steep declines in "graduate enrollments of U.S. citizens and permanent residents" in the sciences. The explanation? "Declining federal support for research sends negative signals to interested…
drorzel | August 4, 2008Last weekend's post, The Innumeracy of Intellectuals, has been lightly edited and re-printed at Inside Higher Ed, where it should be read by a larger audience of humanities types. They allow comments, so it will be interesting to see what gets said about it there.
I may have some additional comments on the issue later, but it's a little hard to focus while going crazy waiting for FutureBaby.
(There's also a tiny chance that this will be noticed by some of my colleagues, which could be interesting. I know that some of them read the Chronicle of Higher Education religiously, but I'm less…
clock | August 3, 2008Classroom 2.0:
...the social networking site for those interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education.
NoodleTools: Basic Language Literacy:
Online Opportunities for Young Writers - Publications Which Accept Student Submissions
drorzel | August 1, 2008You know, my opinion of "No Child Left Behind" style attempts to measure "failing" schools is as low as anybody's, but even I think this new Ohio State study sounds ridiculous:
Up to three-quarters of U.S. schools deemed failing based on achievement test scores would receive passing grades if evaluated using a less biased measure, a new study suggests.
Ohio State University researchers developed a new method of measuring school quality based on schools' actual impact on learning - how much faster students learned during the academic year than during summer vacation when they weren't in class…
bioephemera | July 30, 2008Following up on last month's buzz about the Internet killing literacy, this NYT article baldly states,
Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author's vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends.
Yes, internet reading is nonlinear. Yes, it may be tied to some disturbing trends in youth literacy (the article cites the same National Endowment for the Arts data and Atlantic…
clock | July 30, 2008The NYTimes (also International Herald Tribune which I mentioned before) piece on book-reading, the Web and literacy of the new generation, has provoked quite a lot of interesting responses:
SciCurious:
But this change in internet language has happened very quickly, almost as as fast an an invading force. Is it here to stay? Is I gonna haf 2 strt riteing all my posts liek this? And is this an acceptable change to the language? Are these new grammar and spelling rules that we should teach in the schools as evidence of language evolution?
Samia:
My one issue with printed media is that I…
clock | July 28, 2008Like we did the last two years, SciBlings will have a month-long fundraising drive for educational projects via DonorsChoose. More info soon.
For now, check out Janet's first teaser for some info.
Also checkk out the DonorsChoose blog for their information.
For the locals - there is an exciting NC part of this all:
The Burroughs Wellcome Fund, an independent private foundation in North Carolina, will support $25,000 in inquiry-based science and mathematics projects through DonorsChoose.org during the 2008 / 2009 school year.
These funds are only available to North Carolina teachers, so take…
drorzel | July 28, 2008The New York Times front page yesterday sported an article with the oh-so-hip headline "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?." This turned out to be impressively stupid even by the standards of articles with clumsy slang in the headlines:
Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.
As teenagers' scores on…
clock | July 27, 2008Literacy debate: Online, r u really reading?:
As teenagers' scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading -- diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.
But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.
bioephemera | July 24, 2008Woo hoo! I've been tagged with a book meme!
The rules: boldface the books on this list that you've read, and italicize books you started but never finished.
Okay. . .
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte~
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee~
6 The Bible - I think I've read over 75% of this, so I'm going with it. The begats don't count.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte~
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens~…
bioephemera | July 23, 2008Today FAS put up an online public archive of documents produced by the Office of Technology Assessment.
As you may know, the OTA was a legislative office authorized in 1972 to produce comprehensive nonpartisan reports for Congress on a variety of scientific topics. It was defunded and closed in 1995, and the bulky paper reports it produced have been rather hard to find. Although these reports no longer represent the state of the science, they are remarkable, often prescient time capsules - a fascinating look at how teams of experts tried to predict the trajectory of new technologies we now…
bioephemera | July 21, 2008
Vintage public health posters like this one are remarkable not only for their skilled design, but also for the varied ways they remain remarkably timely or seem bizarrely dated.
For example, compare the playful-yet-kinda-creepy "keep your teeth clean" poster above, as opposed to the very different meaning of "clean" in the anti-VD poster below. I think alarmist STD posters like this one and its contemporaries would have some difficulty getting approved today.
The National Library of Medicine has many more vintage posters here - or visit this Newsweek gallery for a quick tour.
grrlscientist | July 20, 2008tags: Sanderling, Calidris alba, birds, nature, Image of the Day
Sanderlings, Calidris alba, at Bolivar Flats, Texas.
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 24 June 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/1500s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400 .
grrlscientist | July 19, 2008tags: Marbled Godwit, Limosa fedoa, birds, nature, Image of the Day
Marbled Godwit, Limosa fedoa, at Bolivar Flats, Texas.
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 27 June 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/640s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
grrlscientist | July 18, 2008tags: peeps, shorebirds, birds, nature, Image of the Day
Identify these peeps -- photographed at Bolivar Flats, Texas.
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 4 June 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/750s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
clock | July 17, 2008The third issue of the Open Access journal 'Evolution: Education and Outreach' has been published, and it is again full of good, thought-provoking articles. You can see them (for free, of course) if you click here.