education
mikethemadbiologist | April 23, 2011Yesterday, I described how education reform, which implies (or overtly states) that teachers need better incentives to improve outcomes, makes no sense when Massachusetts is considered. Yves Smith, in a post about the widespread failure of performance pay incentives, makes a very relevant observation to education reform efforts:
Other factors can thwart an organization's meritocratic efforts (many of these observations derive from a 1992 paper by Patrick D. Larkey and Jonathan P. Caulkin, "All Above Average and Other Unintended Consequences of Performance Appraisal Systems"). Many people,…
jdupuis | April 22, 2011And perhaps student tweets complaining about professor tweets also reaches an all-time high!
Anyways, here it is, 11am on a holiday Friday morning and all I really want to do is relax and read a book. But what do I have to do? Write a Friday Fun post! What a drag.
So, if I want to get the dreary chore of trying to be funny over with as quickly as possible, where do I turn? The Cronk News of course!
Professor Tweets Complaining about Student Tweets Reaches All-Time High
Twitter has become a popular way for faculty and staff to complain about the students with immediate gratification by "…
mikethemadbiologist | April 22, 2011Noahpinion recognizes a problem that probably familiar to readers with kids in high school--the high cost of college:
While college enrollment rates are up a little over 50% since 1980, the price of college is up by over 1000%.
What this points to is a supply shortage...
More people want to go to college (probably because of the higher college wage premium), but the supply of high-quality colleges simply isn't that big. People are flocking to for-profit colleges because there just isn't room at public ones. And since there are good theoretical as well as empirical reasons to believe that for-…
sa smith | April 21, 2011Are you kidding me?
Are you freaking kidding me??
Remember several months ago, the story about the PIs leaving their laptop in their car while they ate some Panera? And while they were NOMing someone broke into their car, stealing the laptop, and all their un-backed-up data?
And we are all like "OMFGWTF?"
"Who the hell leaves a laptop with that kind of information on it in their god damned car?? Who doesnt back up their data?? WAT??? ... Oh well, costly reminder for the rest of us."
YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS.
Okla. health department laptop stolen
Nearly 133,000 people may have had personal…
jdupuis | April 20, 2011I don't usually announce these sorts of things on the blog, but since Randy is a long-time friend, colleague and fellow Habs fan, I just had to make an exception.
The SLA Engineering Division is the group that hands out the award. From their mailing list:
2011 SLA Engineering Librarian of the Year Award
The Engineering Librarian of the Year, sponsored by IHS, highlights the accomplishments and contributions of SLA Engineering Division members to the engineering librarian profession.
The SLA Engineering Division is pleased to announce: Randy Reichardt is the recipient the of the SLA…
jtoney | April 20, 2011
Korycheer Happy Children
To mark the one year anniversary of the disastrous BP oil spill, I wanted to share this article that I published last summer.
Like many New Jersey families, my children and I spent several sunny, fun-filled days on the Shore last summer, enjoying mini-golf, water parks and beautiful, pristine beaches. The BP oil spill disaster loomed over our brief vacation like an ominous dark cloud.
Since the BP oil spill began, my young children have been asking a lot questions -many of which I, or anyone else, cannot answer. "Why can't they turn off the pipe?" Before we…
mikethemadbiologist | April 18, 2011The New York Times' Jonathan Mahler waxes philosophical over the divide in education policy, using the recent dismissal of NYC Chancellor of Schools Cathleen Black, to offer up Compulsive Centrist Disorder-inspired banalities about education:
As is often the case with morally charged policy issues -- remember welfare reform? -- false dichotomies seem to have replaced fruitful conversation. If you support the teachers' union, you don't care about the students. If you are critical of the teachers' union, you don't care about the teachers. If you are in favor of charter schools, you are opposed…
jdupuis | April 16, 2011Yeah, and I'm touchy and upset and discomfited by this whole thing as much as anyone. This is about my touchiness, not yours. Although please feel free to add your own feelings in the comments.
Thinking about it over the last few days I've come to glimpse the sources of my own unease.
And I've come to think that they are related to the various threads that are becoming tangled up in this controversy. It's almost like there's a Cartesian diagram with four or more quadrants of issues and all the various responses are each focusing on one drawn through one or two or three of those quadrants…
bioephemera | April 15, 2011How do you get kids to master science, math, and engineering? Ask them to make a video game that teaches it to other kids. Check it out:
One of these kids wrote a video game to teach himself his multiplication tables. Another calls his elementary school cousins his "user test group." I clearly am way, way, older than I ever realized I was. I learned to "program" by writing long strings of BASICLOGO commands for a "turtle" which could. . . drumroll. . . draw lines. Pathetic.
Video: winners of the 2010 national STEM video game challenge, "a competition to motivate interest in science,…
bioephemera | April 13, 2011Oh, to be eight years old again, and oh-so-eager to suspend all disbelief. . . this video had me laughing in pure delight:
The baby T-Rex, which you can obviously tell is an actor (see the legs?) is touring Australian schools to promote the show "Walking with Dinosaurs." Don't get me wrong - the show looks as charming as a James Gurney musical - but I really love the expressions on the childrens' faces as they're alternately surprised, scared, and thrilled. I think I just saw four or five future paleontologists spring into being. . .
Via, like, everybody. It's dinoviral.
bioephemera | April 13, 2011I've been remiss in not recommending my temporary Scienceblogs scibling "Art and Science Learning" to those of you who are, like me, interested in the sciart intersection. However, I have to say I am not 100% behind its latest (and quite popular post), by Robert Root-Bernstein. It starts,
Most people are at a loss to be able to identify any useful connections between arts and sciences. This ignorance is appalling.
Hmmm. Do you think that's really true, much less "appalling"?
I'm not so sure. I do think it's true that people tend to view arts and sciences as distinct disciplines, which is…
bioephemera | April 12, 2011
Calling all dataviz peeps: you know you want to meet Stephen Colbert. All you have to do is win DonorsChoose's version of the Netflix Prize.
It's a contest called "Hacking Education". DonorsChoose explains, "We've opened up [our] data, and invite you to make discoveries and build apps that improve education in America. Help to shape your school system's budget by revealing what teachers really need. Build the first mobile app for hyper-local education philanthropy. We've got a list of suggestions to help get you thinking."
Good luck!
drorzel | April 12, 2011I'm in last-minute-revision mode here, made mroe frantic by the fact that SteelyKid developed a fever yesterday, and had to be kept home from day care. I did want to pop in to note that I will be giving the Natural Science and Mathematics Colloquium at St. Mary's College in Maryland tomorrow, Wednesday the 13th. This will be the "What Every Dog Should Know About Quantum Physics" talk, described for the colloquium announcement as:
Quantum physics, the science of extremely small things like atoms and subatomic particles, is one of the best tested theories in the history of science, and also one…
mikethemadbiologist | April 11, 2011A couple of weeks ago, President Obama acted like the president we hoped he would be and not the corporate donation seeking tool that he has turned into--he declared a sane educational policy in response to a question about the absurd number of standardized tests some students end up taking:
... we have piled on a lot of standardized tests on our kids. Now, there's nothing wrong with a standardized test being given occasionally just to give a baseline of where kids are at.
Malia and Sasha, my two daughters, they just recently took a standardized test. But it wasn't a high-stakes test. It wasn…
jdupuis | April 11, 2011Welcome to the latest instalment in my occasional series of interviews with people in the world of higher education and scholarly publishing.
This time around it's a bit different with the circumstances being a little unusual. Last week I did a back-of-the-envelope tweet about the Twitter habits of senior academic administrators and my experiences creating a list of those administrators. The uses of social networks in education is an area that really interests me and the habits of those senior administrators was something I'd been wondering about.
Well, my old blogging buddy Stephanie…
bioephemera | April 9, 2011At the moment, a few blocks away, a few of my friends are attending a Science and Technology Studies (STS) conference at the Harvard Kennedy School. I have no idea what they're doing, although I'm sure it's very smart. I'm only here to tell you they have THE CREEPIEST POSTER I have ever seen for an academic conference:
I'm just saying, STS is definitely humanities, not science. (Now I have to run away before my boyfriend retaliates). When did you last attend a scientific conference with a vintage, artsy, creepy poster by the last surviving member of the Bauhaus? Nice work, Alex Wellerstein.…
mikethemadbiologist | April 9, 2011A few months ago, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg hired a new Chancellor of Schools, Cathleen Black. After 95 days on the job, she was dismissed. Black had been very successful in managing Hearst Magazines and had risen to the rank of president at Hearst. But all that managerial experience--and, no doubt, those critical thinking skills--still didn't prevent her from being hopelessly out of her depth:
Though Mr. Bloomberg chose Ms. Black for her management acumen, the education officials said she had become a feeble figure within the department, frequently sitting silently in high-…
esiegel | April 8, 2011"School sucks, right? I mean you do what you can to improve it, but in the end, there's a limit. Because it's school. And 'school sucks.' Remember?" -Louis C.K.
At every level, education always seems to be a hot button issue. Whether it's in primary and secondary schools, where testing at every level is the primary means to evaluate teachers, or in adult life, where we're always hearing about how scientifically illiterate the public is, we have pressing issues facing us.
And we can't be experts in everything, even the best of us.
Image credit: NASA and the European Space Agency.
Sure, if…
jtoney | April 8, 2011
I had the pleasure of meeting recreational mathemusician (think about the implications) Vi Hart today at the "Thinking Creatively" conference on our campus. Watch this brilliant video (shown during her seminar) and learn mathematics like never before.
Vi's audience included not only design students and professionals, but a cohort of students preparing to become mathematics teachers. Her work is a beautiful example of bridging art, play, music and mathematics and, yes, pedagogy - the study of teaching and learning and how to connect with students. You can follow her videos here.
Bravo,…
jdupuis | April 8, 2011Hey, it wasn't me that said that. It wasn't even another academic librarian.
It was Joshua Kim in his post from today's Inside Higher Ed, 5 Reasons Librarians Are the Future of Ed Tech.
It's a great post, talking from an outsider's perspective about what librarians bring to the educational process. Kim concentrates on the role that libraries and librarians can play in moving into campus educational technology roles but really, the list he gives applies to the roles that we can play all across the various functions on average campus. Especially those we play as librarians.
Not as…