education
grrlscientist | January 26, 2007This streaming video, below the fold, was old when I was an undergrad, but it never lost its instructive nor entertainment value in the classroom. As an added bonus, one of my biochemistry professors, who developed knockout mice, was a character in this film. More info on this film;
Directed in 1971 by Robert Alan Weiss for the Department of Chemistry of Stanford University and imprinted with the "free love" aura of the period, this short film continues to be shown in biology class today. It has since spawn a series of similar funny attempts at vulgarizing protein synthesis. Narrated by Paul…
drorzel | January 26, 2007Via Eurekalert, a Florida State press release touting a paper in Science studying techniques used to teach reading. The conclusion won't surprise anyone who has worked in education:
The researchers found that "the efficacy of any particular instructional practice may depend on the skill level of the student. Instructional strategies that help one student may be ineffective when applied to another student with different skills." The trick, then, is to more precisely determine the reading skill level of each child and then find a way to cater the curriculum to each student's individual needs.…
clock | January 24, 2007Most of our anti-Creationist battles are over efforts to infuse Christian religion into K-12 education. One common battlefield is the courtroom where our side has (so far, until/unless the benches get filled with more clones of Priscilla Owen) won. But another place where we can stop them is the college admission office.
Sara Robinson of the Orcinus blog (which everybody should read daily) revisits, in more detail than I ever saw on any science blogs at the time this first started, the legal battle between the University of California and the Calvary Chapel Christian School over what…
drorzel | January 23, 2007It's going to be a very busy day, in ways that will keep me away from the Internet for most of the day, so you'll need to entertain yourselves. Here's a question for the science-minded:
What's your least favorite science textbook of all time?
It could be a book that you loathed when you were a student, or it could be a dreadful book that you were forced to teach out of, but if you've got a least favorite textbook, leave the name in the comments. Obviously, my expertise in dealing with textbooks is mostly in physics, but I'll throw this open to all sciences, so go ahead and nominate that…
drorzel | January 23, 2007It's going to be a very busy day, in ways that will keep me away from the Internet for most of the day, so you'll need to entertain yourselves. Here's a question for the science-minded:
What's your favorite science textbook of all time?
It could be your favorite book from when you were a student, or it could be your favorite book to teach out of, but if you've got a favorite textbook, leave the name in the comments. Obviously, my expertise in dealing with textbooks is mostly in physics, but I'll throw this open to all sciences, so go ahead and nominate that biology book you can't get enough…
drorzel | January 21, 2007The discussion of Charles Murray continues in comments to my earlier post, and some interesting things have been said there. Also, some fairly loathesome things-- you take the bad with the good.
For those who can't get enough Murray-bashing, let me also point to a few other people:
Dave's collecting suggestions of things that Murray ought to read.
Brad DeLong helps Dave out.
Ezra Klein has a comprehensive round-up of links discussing Murray's various failures.
I'm closing comments on this post, not because I want to suppress discussion, but because I'd like to consolidate it in one thread.…
mikethemadbiologist | January 20, 2007...but I saw Al Gore speak last night, and he's not going to run for president. He did, however, have a lot of interesting things to say.
-role of television
-need to incorporate internet differently into schools
-overemphasis on liberal arts education (tension)
-slammed Bush and global warming critics
-decried scientific censorship
Gore was a keynote speaker at the "Science and Society: Closing the Gap" meeting held here in Boston. In his talk and the Q&A, Gore made some interesting observations:
1) The last forty years we have moved from a society built around the written and spoken…
drorzel | January 19, 2007Charles "The Bell Curve" Murray is back with a three-part essay series on edcuation, published in The Wall Street Journal:
Part I: The world is full of stupid people.
Part II: Too many stupid people go to college.
Part III: We should spend more money on the tiny fraction of people who are smart.
(You can also find them on the American Enterprise Institute site, if the WSJ links rot.)
Charles Murray bugs me, because he makes my life more difficult. Not because he's a bold iconoclast challenging the hidebound educational establishment, but because his writing on these topics has a smugly…
drorzel | January 19, 2007As I said previously, I get a lot of emails from people looking to promote their sites, and I do try to look at most of them. Yesterday's batch included ePrep, a site offering college preparation advice, and while I can't speak for the quality of their services, they get a link for pointing me to these SAT prep shower curtains. From the Amazon page, you get the chirpy description:
A simple, effective, and stress free learning tool for your children taking the SATs, allowing them to learn the basic SAT math concepts while taking a shower. Concepts include fractions, geometry, probability, and…
clock | January 17, 2007The 102nd Carnival of Education is up on Dr.Homeslice
Carnival of Homeschooling #55: Parents' Meeting Edition is up on Dewey's Treehouse
mikethemadbiologist | January 14, 2007So those who oppose global warming are using the same strategy as the creationists: teach the 'controversy.'
This week in Federal Way schools, it got a lot more inconvenient to show one of the top-grossing documentaries in U.S. history, the global-warming alert "An Inconvenient Truth."
After a parent who supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education complained about the film, the Federal Way School Board on Tuesday placed what it labeled a moratorium on showing the film. The movie consists largely of a computer presentation by former Vice President Al Gore recounting…
drorzel | January 12, 2007In a back-channel discussion among ScienceBloggers, John Wilkins suggested that it might be interesting to do occasional posts on really basic concepts in our fields-- the sort of jargon terms that become so ingrained that we toss them around without realizing it, and end up confusing people. A lot of these terms often have a technical meaning that is subtly (or not-so-subtly) different from the use of the word in everyday language, which provides a further complication.
The original example given was "vector," which turns up a lot in mathematical discussions, and loses a lot of people (it's…
drorzel | January 11, 2007There's been lots of news from the AAS meeting in Seattle this week, but the best from my perspective is that high school physics enrollments have neevr been higher:
Presenting new data that encourage this outlook, [Michael] Neuschatz [senior research associate at AIP's Statistical Research Center] will show that enrollment in high school physics classes is up and likely to continue increasing. The data show more than 30 percent of high school seniors have taken physics classes, more than ever before. This percentage has been rising steadily since the mid-1980s.
In addition, the percentage…
drorzel | January 4, 2007One of the standard elements of most academic hiring and promotion applications, at least at a small liberal arts college, is some sort of statement from the candidate about teaching. This is called different things at different places-- "statement of teaching philosophy" is a common term for it, and the tenure process here calls for a "statement of teaching goals."
I spent hours and hours on this, because I get a little obsessive about written work. It did get read closely by the ad hoc committee, at least-- at my first meeting with them, they asked a couple of questions about details of…
drorzel | December 29, 2006Yesterday's Inside Higher Ed had a story about the latest group to report on science education. Like any good blue-ribbon commission, they have changes to suggest:
The panel's members seemed agreed on several major goals. One is to align all components of education in science technology, engineering and math (STEM). The current system in the United States, they agreed, lacks any attempt at coordination either horizontally across school districts, or vertically from one level of education to another. Lack of a coherent system for STEM education means that students who move between states may…
mikethemadbiologist | December 28, 2006...and decides that Massachusetts shouldn't be Mississippi. A couple of months ago, Republican Mitt Romney engaged in financial chicanery to cut social spending, including vaccination programs and programs that assist the mentally disabled. Why? To establish his Republican credentials. Thankfully, Democratic Governor Deval Patrick has decided to restore most of those cuts. Thankfully, someone realizes that the role of government isn't just to build roads and schools for suburbanites, but to provide for the welfare of all.
grrlscientist | December 26, 2006A report by the Education Department was just released showing that, as usual, the existing educational inequities are being rewarded and exaggerated with inequities in distribution of education funding;
For example, the report shows Maryland has fewer poor children than Arkansas but gets about 50 percent more federal aid per poor child, $1,522, than does Arkansas, at $1,009.
The gap occurs even though Arkansas dedicates a larger share of its resources to education than does wealthier Maryland, the report says.
But on the other hand, different regions have different educational needs, so…
clock | December 20, 2006I did not have time to go through all the posts on all of today's carnivals, but Larry Moran discovered a real gem on today's Carnival of Education. Check the comments as well. Then come up with your own system.
mikethemadbiologist | December 18, 2006You might have heard about the $500 million that El Jefe Maximo is trying to raise for his presidential library. Apparently, no price is too great for the rehabilitation of his 'legacy.' It was supposed to be housed at Southern Methodist University. One problem, though: the Methodists--Bush's own church--don't want to house the library.
grrlscientist | December 15, 2006
They say our solar system is not alone in space.
The Universe has endless mystery.
Some future astronaut
May find out that what he'd thought
Was a shooting star instead turned out to be...
Interplanet Janet, she's a galaxy girl,
A solar system Ms. from a future world,
She travels like a rocket with her comet team
And there's never been a planet Janet hasn't seen,
No, there's never been a planet Janet hasn't seen.
.
tags: schoolhouse rock, education, teaching, streaming video