education
gregladen | February 27, 2008I've been avoiding discussion of the patent issue. This is partly because I don't know enough about it, and partly because I am terribly annoyed by it. Yes, yes, I blog about stuff that annoys me all the time, but these are topics that I'm professionally engaged in, so the annoyance is not personally as troubling.
The basic idea is this: The US patent office has apparently gone nuts, or is being well paid off, and is accepting or approving patents on things that really should not be patented. The result is that a corporation with lots of money can patent something, and the next day sue…
clock | February 26, 2008There are three interesting, thought-provoking articles on Open Education today:
The Digital Commons - Left Unregulated, Are We Destined for Tragedy?
An Interview with Ahrash Bissell of the Creative Commons
The Open Digital Commons - A Truly Endless Array of Success Stories
Worth your time and effort.
gregladen | February 26, 2008My wife, a biology teacher, gets crazy in the biology classroom. She is famous for her interpretive dance renditions of numerous cellular processes. The students in the first class of the day reportedly stare in disbelief and roll their eyes, but the students in the other classes throughout the day seem to love it. Several of her students have taken to filming her pedagogical paroxysms, and you know that some day, Amanda will be a YouTube Star.
But this brings up the interesting and difficult mixture of students, personal technology in the classrooms, teachers, schools, school…
drorzel | February 26, 2008On the subject of silly things said about academia, Matt Yglesias does a quick pass over "assessment,", and in the process recommends Alan Kruger's research that claims the benefits of elite colleges are all from selection effects. He links a Newsweek article on the topic, which contains this paragraph:
Dale and Krueger then compared graduates who had been accepted and rejected by the same (or similar) colleges. The theory was that admissions officers were ranking personal qualities, from maturity to ambition. Students who fared similarly would possess similar strengths; then, Dale and…
denialism | February 26, 2008I've almost come to the end of the core 8 weeks of my surgery rotation (4 more weeks follow in electives) and am currently working on the trauma service for another couple days before taking exams.
I don't have a great deal to say, the hours stay long, the medicine remains interesting etc. I'm enjoying the decrease in laundry that wearing scrubs entails. I enjoy how much doctors tend to take joy in their work. Medicine is a great field that way, as it gives you a feeling of accomplishment as you see what you do day to day really can make a big difference in people's lives. The debt may…
mikethemadbiologist | February 25, 2008And shifts much of the other aid packages over to grants:
Brown University is eliminating tuition for students whose parents earn less than $60,000, after decisions by fellow Ivy League universities to bolster financial aid as their endowments grow.
The university, in Providence, R.I., said on Saturday that it also planned to substitute grants for student loans in the financial aid packages of students whose families earned less than $100,000 a year. The new program cuts reliance on loans for all students regardless of family income, the university said in a statement posted on its Web site.…
clock | February 21, 2008Wow! Al Upton teaches kids aged 8 and 9 and he is teaching them how to run their own blogs. Each young blogger also gets an adult mentor and you can sign up to be a mentor if you want. Sue Waters, who provides some good tips on classroom blogging, provides more detail about Upton's work and points to two of his good posts: Class blogs - management, moderation and protection and Class blogs - personalise your blog, a sequence of settings, which are full of good information and advice for any age students.
clock | February 21, 2008Wow! Al Upton teaches kids aged 8 and 9 and he is teaching them how to run their own blogs. Each young blogger also gets an adult mentor and you can sign up to be a mentor if you want. Sue Waters, who provides some good tips on classroom blogging, provides more detail about Upton's work and points to two of his good posts: Class blogs - management, moderation and protection and Class blogs - personalise your blog, a sequence of settings, which are full of good information and advice for any age students.
purepedantry | February 21, 2008I remember when I was studying for Step I of the medical Boards. Step I is the first of three very large tests that you have to take to become a doctor. This first test comprises everything you learn in the first two years of medical school, and it can in theory include the pathology and physiology of anything that can go wrong with the human body. Most people take at least 6 weeks of continuous time to study for it.
Sufficeth to say it is a lot to learn.
Numerous techniques are employed by medical students studying for the Boards. There are the readers who attempt to reread every one…
gregladen | February 21, 2008Plan B is, of course, inserting Christian Creationism into the Social Studies curriculum. This is disconcerting. Many otherwise perfectly rational and intelligent people think this is a good idea. It is not.
This sort of proposal is becoming more common now (this week) in editorials and other opinion outlets, with the defeat of the Wedge Strategy to water down the science standards in Florida. (This rebound effect occurs every time creationists are defeated.)
So, why is this not a good idea?
Social studies is a broad field of investigation that has many important goals. Like modern…
clock | February 18, 2008Science Cafe on Teenage Brains :
Teenagers sometimes act as though they were from a different planet. On Tuesday February 19, the Museum of Natural Sciences will host a science cafe entitled "Altered States: Inside the Teenage Brain" at Tir Na Nog in Raleigh at 6:30p.m. The session will be led by Wilkie Wilson, Duke professor and director of BrainWorks, a program for brain research and education. Wilson studies the effects of drugs on learning and memory, and has helped write several books on teenage drug use. RSVP to Katey Ahmann by Monday, February 18.
gregladen | February 15, 2008A survey conducted by the St. Petersburg Times shows that half of the respondents want "only faith-based theories such as creationism or intelligent design" taught in public school classrooms, and only 22 percent want evolution-only life science curriculum.
The Florida State Board of Education will decide next Tuesday to adopt ... or not ... new standards that would make a subtle but important change in the wording of life science standards. The change would place evolutionary biology (also known as "evolutionary theory") clearly at the center of the life science curriculum.
The survey…
gregladen | February 14, 2008Katie Criss has a post critiquing home schooling.
When I asked myself the question, How do you feel about home schooling? I first thought "Why would anyone do that" So I researched exactly that, What are the reasons that people give of why they choose to homeschool and how valid are they.
Link died, has been removed.
drorzel | February 14, 2008Via a EurekAlert release with the catchy headline "As graduation rates go down, school ratings go up", a new study of the Texas school system, which provided the inspiration for "No Child Left Behind". It's not pretty:
A new study by researchers at Rice University and the University of Texas-Austin finds that Texas' public school accountability system, the model for the national No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), directly contributes to lower graduation rates. Each year Texas public high schools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation -- a disproportionate number of whom are African-…
gregladen | February 14, 2008On Wednesday the Bay District School Board voted to sign a resolution saying it does not agree with the proposed science standards as they are currently written.
The new proposed standards adjust language for life science that would move Florida schools into modern, 21st century thinking regarding the role of evolution (as central) in life science. The Bay District School Board has rejected this modernization, opting instead to allow the teaching of creationism along side evolution in public schools. This decision, if enacted, would be a violation of well established case law. If the Bay…
mikethemadbiologist | February 11, 2008Actually, the Mad Biologist's Rule of Base Ten Numbers is a pithier way of describing how certain numerical estimates or quantities are chosen based on little or no evidence. For example, when asked what an appropriate sample size is, someone will often respond, "ten." Of course, it might very well be that either nine or eleven are, in fact, the appropriate sample sizes, but we have a tendency when making shit up to focus on numbers divisible by five or ten, or, if we're dealing with really large quantities, increasing the quantities ten-fold (i.e., moving from 100 to 1000).
To give a…
drorzel | February 11, 2008Via Inside Higher Ed, the Boston Globe reports that the Pentagon opposes increasing GI Bill funding. Why? Because if they gave them full tuition, eligible soldiers might not re-enlist:
Now, five years into the Iraq conflict, a movement is gathering steam in Washington to boost the payout of the GI Bill, to provide a true war-time benefit for war- time service. But the effort has run headlong into another reality of an unpopular war: the struggle to sustain an all-volunteer force.
The Pentagon and White House have so far resisted a new GI Bill out of fear that too many will use it - choosing…
clock | February 10, 2008As I promised the other day, I went to Carrboro Century Center this afternoon (right after meeting with Anton around the corner) to see the Island Projects designed by the Chapel Hill High School students of Rob Greenberg.
I did not see all of them - they were doing this in "shifts" throughout the afternoon and I could only stay for an hour - but I saw several of the projects and talked to a number of students (and to Rob himself). I have to say I was really, truly impressed with their work, as well as with their enthusiasm as they explained the details of their projects to me and other…
clock | February 10, 2008If you read my blog you must be aware how enchanted I am with the ZooSchool in Asheboro, NC. Unfortunately, at the last moment something came up, so the delegation of two teachers and six students could not make it to the Conference three weeks ago. I intend to go and visit there some time soon and I hope they can make it to the Conference next year.
But in the meantime, they need something that WE can help with - some lab coats. They have placed a proposal on DonorsChoose (read it carefully to understand why they need these) and I hope you feel generous today and help them get funded. I…