education
mikethemadbiologist | March 26, 2007I usually stay away from the various pissing matches that occur between big name commentators. Watching Hollywood actors and actresses is far more entertaining, and unlike the famous and beautiful people, pundits are definitely NOT TEH HOT! But in the midst of a clash between Eric Alterman and Joe Klein, Alterman makes an interesting observation (italics mine):
What you see with Klein, I think, is the panic of the pundit seeing his prestige destroyed by a blogosphere that can do for pundits what academics have always done for one another (and demonstrating why few pundits' work could…
drorzel | March 23, 2007I'm going to be away from the computer for much of the weekend (I may schedule some posts, so the site doesn't go completely dark, depending on how much time I have this morning), so I'm not able to do a really thorough discussion of this. And, honestly, I'm kind of getting sick of the subject.
But for those who aren't sick of reading about school vouchers, let me note this solid piece of voucher wonkery from the Quick and the Ed (via Brad DeLong).
Less wonky, but also worth noting is this Slacktivist post, that somehow slipped through my last links dump. Which means it's two weeks old, and…
drorzel | March 22, 2007There's an article in Inside Higher Ed today on the problem of college readiness:
We must come together in postsecondary education on many of these points if we are to prepare far greater numbers of students for college. ACT Inc. estimates that 60 percent to 70 percent of its test takers are not well-prepared for college study. Considering that only about half of students who enroll in college actually earn a degree or certificate, we must find ways to confront this problem. Research shows that most future job opportunities in the U.S. will require some level of college study or career…
clock | March 19, 2007The case is made by an atheist, of course - Amanda - but the important part of the post is the explanation of why is it impossible in the current educational system in the USA and why is the current system inherently conservative.
mikethemadbiologist | March 10, 2007One of the little things I liked about Rick Weiss' cefquinome article was a diagram about how antibiotic resistant strains evolve.
One of the confusing things about the evolution of resistance (and natural selection, for that matter) is the notion that the evolution of resistance happens among individuals within populations. This graphic from the Washington Post lays that out quite nicely:
It might be good for students too.
grrlscientist | March 8, 2007Have you noticed how you tend to remember things better after you've figured them out for yourself rather than listening to someone else's explanation? Well, this phenomenon is typical for toddlers, too.
According to a study published today, toddlers have an easier time learning new words when they figure out the meanings themselves.
"There are two ways to learn as a child: you either learn because you figured it out yourself, or you learn because somebody told you, and lots of our school-based education is engaged in people telling us things," said Justin Halberda, assistant professor of…
drorzel | February 27, 2007Kate's in Rochester to argue a couple of cases, and the Queen of Niskayuna is being Difficult this morning, so I don't have as much time as I'd like for this. As a result, it may come out a little more inflammatory than I intend, but then, that's half the fun of blogging. Or something.
Anyway, the minor kerfuffle over firing teachers has produced the usual spate of off-hand comments about the obvious evil of teacher's unions. For some reason, this seems to be widely accepted as fact by just about everybody-- despite evidence that unionized districts perform better. Score another victory for…
drorzel | February 26, 2007There are some comments in the earlier post about firing teachers that probably deserve responses. They don't deserve the responses they would've gotten yesterday, though, as I was grading lab reports all morning, and the snark level was high.
Having cooled off a bit, I'll try to get back to that today (day job permitting). Let me note, however, Mark Kleiman's follow-up post, after a report from a teacher in a non-union school in Georgia.
Well, OK, that's pretty snarky, too, but it does make a useful point...
drorzel | February 24, 2007Kevin Drum and Mark Kleiman are both talking about firing teacehrs. Being moderate, wonkish guys rather than fire-breathing ideologues, they mostly say sensible things-- Kevin notes that it's really difficult to document bad teaching, and Mark has a particularly good point about teacher pay:
[T]he brute fact is that we're not currently paying teachers enough to attract an adequate number of high-quality teachers. The only way to fix that is by raising wages for the kind of people we want to attract. Without that, making firing easier is mostly a matter of rearranging the deck chairs on a…
drorzel | February 23, 2007Buried in a "Quick Takes" post a few days ago, Inside Higher Ed had a link to a set of suggestions for improving public education:
Education Sector is offering the following eight education ideas for the 2008 presidential campaign. They cover the educational spectrum, from preschool to higher education. They range in scope from big ideas that would chart entirely new directions for policymaking to others that would simply help schools and colleges improve what they are already doing.
These ideas are neither Democratic nor Republican. They are pragmatic solutions to real problems that both…
drorzel | February 21, 2007John Scalzi is being railroaded into heading a new movement in SF: The New Comprehensible. He disdains manifestoes ("people who issue literary manifestos should be thrown into jet engines"), but does offer a set of precepts for people seeking to write in the New Comprehensible:
1. Think of an actual person you know, of reasonable intelligence, who likes to read but does not read science fiction.
2. Write with that person in mind.
He goes on to note that these same rules apply to other genres of fiction. He does not, however, make the point that this is also excellent advice for non-fiction…
drorzel | February 14, 2007Somebody at work had printed out a table of MCAT scores by major, compiled by the AIP. I couldn't find it on the web, but I found the original source, and made my own version of the relevant bit. This shows the average numerical scores on the three sections of the MCAT test for students majoring in biological and physical sciences (shortened to "biology" and "physics" for the table), for students who applied to med school, and students who got into med school:
The results are striking. Not only did the physics applicants do better than the biologists on the physics portion of the test, as…
drorzel | February 9, 2007Or, um, a banana. Or something...
The Evil Monkey at Neurotopia is soliciting donations to support an essay contest to be run by the Alliance for Science. The idea is to offer prizes for students to write essays about evolution, to encourage students to learn more about the foundations of biology.
They're a registered charity and everything, and this probably fits the definition of "noble cause" (if you give them money, the Discovery Institute suffers humiliations galore), so I'll plug it here for those who might be interested.
drorzel | February 2, 2007
Time spent locating the parts for the Compton Effect experiment: 15 minutes.
Time spent dragging lead bricks for radiation shielding into the lab: 10 minutes.
Time spent bulding little lead houses for the hot 137Cs source and Photo-Multiplier Tube (PMT): 15 minutes.
Time spent trying to find somebody who knew the administrator password for the computer: 20 minutes.
Time between saying "What happens if you just click 'Cancel?'" and getting the computer working: 2 seconds.
Time spent connecting the detector, amplifiers, and high-voltage power supply: 5 minutes.
Time spent swapping…
grrlscientist | January 31, 2007Below the fold is a video about fungi that selectively infect specific species of insects, with devastating effects.
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tags: fungus, insects, nature
clock | January 30, 2007I am so glad to see that conversations started face-to-face at the Science Blogging Conference are now continuing online (see the bottom of the ever-growing linkfests here and here). While some are between science bloggers, as expected, others are between people who have never heard of each other before and who came from very different angles and with different interests. The cross-fertilization we hoped for is happening (and if you had such an experience, let us know)!
See, for instance, what a casual chat over lunch at the Conference did to David Warlick - made him think about education…
clock | January 30, 2007Parenting is hard. Are you ready (re-posted from October 20, 2005)
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Earlier today Mrs.Coturnix and I took Coturnix Jr. and Coturnietta to the pediatrician (and the dentist - they are in the same building). While sitting in the waiting room we saw a strange scene. A father and a son (about 14-years old, I'd say) walked out of the office, the boy vigorously rocking a little baby, the father saying "It's great we have a car. Cars are good things".
I guess I made such a face that the receptionist started laughing: "It's a doll". A girl waiting in…
grrlscientist | January 30, 2007Do you have troubles with multiplication? Below the video is a demonstration of an easy way to multiply large numbers together. How long has this method been known? Why were we never taught this when we were kids?
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tags: multiplication, mathematics
grrlscientist | January 29, 2007Below the fold is a video of cellular vesicles "walking" along microtubules inside a cell. I thought that the assembly of the microtubules was especially interesting to watch, particularly since my students often could not understand the dynamics of this process.
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tags: vesicles, microtubules, cell, biology
grrlscientist | January 26, 2007This is another streaming video that reveals how 6 feet of DNA is meticulously packed into the nucleus of each of your cells. In addition, it shows how DNA strands are replicated prior to a cell dividing into two.
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tags: streaming video, DNA packing, cell nucleus