education
mikethemadbiologist | March 13, 2008No, that's accurate:
The first national study of four common sexually transmitted diseases among girls and young women has found that one in four are infected with at least one of the diseases, federal health officials reported Tuesday.
Nearly half the African-Americans in the study of teenagers ages 14 to 19 were infected with at least one of the diseases monitored in the study -- human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, genital herpes and trichomoniasis, a common parasite.
The 50 percent figure compared with 20 percent of white teenagers, health officials and researchers said at a news…
drorzel | March 13, 2008Over at the new(ish) Of Two Minds, Shelley has posted a video giving advice on scientific presentations from a couple of guys at Michigan. They offer a few quick tips to giving better presentations:
Know your material well enough to give it without slides
Skip the outline (for short talks in particular)
Minimize text on slides
Make your figures big and visible
The central point is really to put the focus on the data, not the words or slides.
The one specific tip I would add to their list is this: When you put up a graph, you should clearly identify what is being plotted on what axes. The…
mikethemadbiologist | March 9, 2008I'm not a fan of charter schools: they typically 'cherry pick' the best students, and then claim spectacular results (if they can do so at all), while paying teachers less and expected them to work even harder. However, here's one charter school trying something that I hope works--paying teachers more:
A New York City charter school set to open in 2009 in Washington Heights will test one of the most fundamental questions in education: Whether significantly higher pay for teachers is the key to improving schools.
The school, which will run from fifth to eighth grades, is promising to pay…
clock | March 8, 2008[rant]So, if you organize a study-group online instead of in meat-space, the old fogies who still remember dinosaurs go all berserk. A student is threatened by expulsion for organizing a Facebook group for studying chemistry. Moreover, as each student got different questions, nobody did the work for others, they only exchanged tips and strategies. See the responses:
The Star:
Yet students argue Facebook groups are simply the new study hall for the wired generation.
Yes, they are.
Greg:
How much of this is a matter of administrative fear of the internet?
100%.
Larry:
Today, that sense of "…
gregladen | March 8, 2008A Ryerson University freshman set up a Facebook study group for his Chemistry class. He now faces 147 counts of academic misconduct.
The computer engineering student has been charged with one count of academic misconduct for helping run the group - called Dungeons/Mastering Chemistry Solutions after the popular Ryerson basement study room engineering students dub The Dungeon - and another 146 counts, one for each classmate who used the site.
Avenir, 18, faces an expulsion hearing Tuesday before the engineering faculty appeals committee. If he loses that appeal, he can take his case to the…
gregladen | March 7, 2008.... Have you ever had this happen: You are minding your own business, teaching your life science course, it's early in the term. A student, on the way out after class (never at the beginning of class, rarely during class) mentions something about "carbon dating." This usually happens around the time of year you are doing an overview of the main points of the course, but before you've gotten to the "evolution module" (more on the "evolution module" another time ... or come to the Bell on Friday to hear me rant about that in person).
Jeanne d'Arc was a very influential 10th grader. I…
denialism | March 6, 2008My least favorite thing? Being constantly ill. Of the eight weeks or so I've been back, I've been sick for about four of them. I managed to get by the first three or four weeks cold-free through neurotic hand-washing before the current cold circulating the hospital got a whack at me.
It was a pretty obnoxious cold and I still was just getting over it when I got hit by this second cold, a gift, I believe, from a friend working on a pediatrics rotation. This one actually floored me with a fever of over 101 and now I'm finally coming down below a hundred. And you know what the real…
mikethemadbiologist | March 6, 2008Rebecca of Skepchick.org is putting together a monthly lecture series in Boston, aka Boston Skeptics, and I've been asked to speak on March 24 (hopefully, I won't kill the damn thing off). So, if you were at a meeting of Boston Skeptics, and had to listen to me rant for around forty minutes (give or take), what would you want to hear me rant about?
I'm thinking that I want to speak about how, at a fundamental level, I don't think defenders of evolutionary biology are making the best defense of evolution--or the best offense against creationism (which is that biomedical research is so…
clock | March 6, 2008Regular readers must be familiar by now with the ZooSchool in Asheboro, NC. Today's news from the school - their students have put up the first issue of their online newspaper, the ZSX-Press. Go check it out!
In related news, and also at the Asheboro Zoo and related to education, The NC Zoo and NC Zoo Society will be hosting the No Child Left Inside Conference Thursday (today), March 6th, which will be held in the MPR [multi-purpose room] of the Stedman Education Building. I wish I could go. Perhaps someone there will write about it and post something online.
clock | March 5, 2008In 1986, 22-year-old Boston Celtics forward Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose. This week, DrugMonkey argued that Bias' death--as opposed to educational programs like DARE--was the major reason why self-reported rates of cocaine use by 20-year-olds dropped from 20% in the mid-1980s to 7% in the early 1990s.
Now go and do the survey and check back in a week for the results.
mikethemadbiologist | March 4, 2008I've written before about how the Collapse of the Jenga of Shit (aka the 'subprime' loan crisis) has raised the price of borrowing money--which is paid for with higher state and local taxes--due to the collapse of bond insurers and a liquidity crisis in municipal bonds. Now your property and sales taxes can take another hike courtesy of ratings agency like Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investors Service, and Fitch Ratings. From the New York Times (italics mine):
If they are right, billions of taxpayers' dollars -- money that could be used to build schools, pave roads and repair bridges --…
gregladen | March 4, 2008It is very common, across the U.S., for science teachers to dread the "evolution" unit that they teach during life science class. As they approach the day, and start to prepare the students for what is coming, they begin to hear the sarcastic remarks from the creationist students. When the day to engage the evolution unit arrives, students may show up in the classroom with handouts from anti-science sites like Answers in Genesis, to give to their friends. They may carry a bible to the lab station and read it instead of doing the work. If there is a parent conference night around that time…
bioephemera | March 3, 2008
St Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, DC; wall of Room in Ward Retreat 1
Reproductions made by a patient, a disturbed case of dementia precox [praecox?]; pin or fingernail used to scratch paint from wall, top coat of paint buff color, superimposed upon a brick red coat of paint. Pictures symbolize events in patient's past life and represent a mild state of mental regression. Undated, but likely early 20th century.
I saw recently that the National Museum of Health and Medicine has released a flickr stream of images from its archives, but I hadn't had time to really delve into them. I finally…
drorzel | March 3, 2008Michael Nielsen is planning to attend an "unconference" and is considering possible topics. He quotes one from Eva Amsen:
My idea: find 4 or 5 volunteers from different backgrounds to sit on a 20 minute panel and (with audience feedback) make a list of Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Science. Since we have a wide audience, this hopefully would be a varied list. Actually, maybe we could just put up a large sheet of paper and have people write down what they think should be on the list and get back to it later.
Michale offers a suggestion, which leads him to ponder scientific literacy,…
drorzel | March 3, 2008The Sunday New York Times magazine has a big article on single-sex public education, one of the latest educational fads. The bulk of the article is taken up with looking at promoters of single-sex classrooms for kids:
Among advocates of single-sex public education, there are two camps: those who favor separating boys from girls because they are essentially different and those who favor separating boys from girls because they have different social experiences and social needs. Leonard Sax represents the essential-difference view, arguing that boys and girls should be educated separately for…
drorzel | March 1, 2008The Science Fiction class for which I agreed to guest lecture is an 8am class, which is earlier than I like to be up and about. Knowing this, I went to bed early on Thursday night. Of course, being a bookaholic of long standing, I needed something to read to put me to sleep. Genius that I am, I grabbed the ARC of Cory Doctorow's upcoming YA novel Little Brother...
So, I hadn't really had enough sleep when I got to campus for the class on Friday. Still, adrenaline can make up for a lot...
I was introduced as "Not only a physics professor, but also a world famous blogger," though I suggested…
drorzel | March 1, 2008As mentioned previously, I was invited to discuss physics and politics at one of the local fraternities earlier this week. Oddly, given the primacy of Greek organizations on campus, this is only the fourth time I've set foot inside a fraternity or sorority house in seven years. The previous occasions were times when I was doing housing inspections for the committee that handles those matters.
They've cleaned up the house since the other time I was there-- they used to be Φ Γ Δ, years ago, and then there was a brief interregnum when they were officially "Alpha Beta" (referred to as "oh, those…
drorzel | February 28, 2008Yesterday's cheery hypothetical came about because I've agreed to do a guest lecture in a Science Fiction class in the English department. I'm going to be talking about Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life," whose connection to the hypothetical should be obvious to people who have read it, but is a spoiler for those who haven't.
My guest spot will be this Friday, and I sat in on a class last week (where they discussed a Zelazny story and one of Bradbury's Martian Chronicles) to get an idea of what the class is usually like. This will be a different experience for me. It's been fifteen years…
drorzel | February 28, 2008EurekAlert tossed up a press release from the University of Minnesota yesterday with the provocative title: "U of Minn researchers find primary alcohol prevention programs are needed for 'tweens'" and the even more eye-popping subtitle "Study recommends that prevention programs occur as early as third grade." What, you may ask, is the problem this is intended to solve?
The study found that adolescents who already use alcohol are less receptive to prevention programs aimed at all students. Intervening at earlier ages, specifically between third and fifth grade, would allow for truly universal…
gregladen | February 27, 2008Bennett Gordon has a post on the Har Mar Science Fair:
...Every diorama in the Home School Science Fair, which took place inside a shopping mall in Roseville, Minnesota, had a biblical quote attached to it. A young woman whose project involved teaching her dog how to run circles between her legs decorated the words: "If you love me, you will obey what I command." (John 14:15) in pink lace fabric. This quote got to the crux of the science fair, in my opinion: parental commandment. These parents pulled their children out of school, away from their peers, and said, "Now prove that Darwin was…