education
mikethemadbiologist | January 16, 2011I found this comment to a Bob Herbert column by a teacher who works at a school attended mostly by poor whites. I'm excerpting it in full as comments have a tendency to disappear into the ether, but also because I don't think many people have (fortunately) any idea what poverty really means for educational outcomes. The comment, followed by a comment about Rebecca Skloot's book (italics mine):
As a teacher in a low income, mostly white, school district, 'the poor' are not an abstract concept to me; they are my students. I see first hand what poverty does and it's not just - as the wealthy…
drorzel | January 16, 2011I was at a meeting of the Committee on Informing the Public of the American Physical Society at the tail end of last week, so it seems appropriate to post a couple of APS-related announcements here on my return:
1) The APS has just created a Forum on Outreach and Engaging the Public. You may have read about this in the monthly APS News, but in case you missed it, there is a new organization with APS to bring people interested in outreach together:
"The forum provides a venue for people to congregate, provide best practice manuals...and disseminate things that work so people don't have to…
bioephemera | January 15, 2011
A video montage from a sci|art institute for high school students hosted by UCLA's Art | Sci Center and the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI). The stuff they're playing with is cooler than what I got in grad school! Jealous now.
More information about the course here. I don't know when registration/applications open, but the site seems to suggest checking back Jan 15 (that's today!).
mikethemadbiologist | January 14, 2011...getting an abortion. Because that seems to be the message from the presidents of the third-year class of the UC Davis veterinary school--with the apparent approval of the Chair of the Department of Medicine & Epidemiology. By way of ScienceBlogling Dr. Isis, the enlightened solons:
Dear Colleagues,
One of our classmates recently gave birth and will be out of class for an unknown period of time. This means she will undoubtedly miss one, or more, or all quizzes in VMD 444. Dr. Feldman is not sure how to handle this and has requested the class give input and vote. He has provided us…
sa smith | January 13, 2011NOW.
Do not read this post.
Hook your computers up to your external hard-drives, back up your data, then come back to read this post.
... Okay, Im assuming the only people reading right now are people with Apple-->Leopard-->Time Machine, and already have things constantly backed up, or non-scientists who want to know what the hell Im talking about.
Two scientists (a couple who work together) at my Uni had their laptop stolen from their car.
Their work laptop.
One they had used for years.
... None of their data was backed up. I shit you not.
I feel so bad for that couple. But for…
drorzel | January 13, 2011I am in Florida for a meeting this week, having flown from Albany to Ft. Lauderdale. Due to the vagaries of the air travel system, though, this required a change of planes in Orlando. The Orlando-Ft. Lauderdale flight is sufficiently short that I like to think of it as a ballistic route-- you're not cruising at altitude for any significant time, but start going down practically as soon as you're finished going up.
Let's imagine that we have a commercial enterprise-- let's call it Angry Birds Airlines-- that wants to fling objects from Orlando to Ft. Lauderdale. What would that require? That…
bioephemera | January 12, 2011
A new biology game called EteRNA "crowdsourc[es] the scientific method" by inviting players to design their own self-folding RNAs. The best designs are synthesized and tested in the lab to see how well the predicted structure plays out in the physical world - an innovation the game's creators see as an improvement over other folding games like Foldit, where there is no experimental feedback.
"Putting a ball through a hoop or drawing a better poker hand is the way we're used to winning games, but in EteRNA you score when the molecule you've designed can assemble itself," said one of the PIs…
jtoney | January 9, 2011I receive many emails from students that were likely composed using a mobile device. Their sentences do not contain capitals ("i request..."), there are often grammatical and spelling errors as well as incomplete sentences. This comes as no surprise, I know.
But tYp3 LyK tHi5?
What is the point of this? Does it reflect a generation gap?
Perhaps this is simply a farce, a hook to get people's attention on the web. I admit that it got my attention, if only as a reminder of the challenge of written communication with so many choices of mobile devices and networks.
This latest example seems…
jtoney | January 8, 2011.
Photo by cohdra (source)
What is learning? Is it the ability to recall facts or to solve an equation? How can you measure it? For college bound students, the Advanced Placement (AP) exam has attempted to address these questions since 1955 and offers students an opportunity to earn college credit while attending high school.
A major portion of AP exams includes multiple choice questions along with a free response section. As a student, I disliked multiple choice questions because I would often second guess myself. What if the "obvious" answer is a trap? In contrast, the free response…
jtoney | January 7, 2011
Prof. Cornel West, Princeton University (source).
The media storm about altering Mark Twain's classic "Huckleberry Finn," published in 1885, to replace the "N word" with the term "slave" has sparked debate amongst scholars. How can we teach our children about bygone days, if sharing creative works includes using offensive language in today's vernacular?
I am aware that some of my fellow Sciblings (Greg Laden, Uncertainty Principles), have already shared their views on this topic, and I had hesitated to do so until I read Prof. Cornel West's (Princeton University) Tweet on this very topic (…
jdupuis | January 7, 2011I'll be doing a session at the upcoming ScienceOnline 2011 conference on ebooks with David Dobbs, Tom Levenson and Carl Zimmer:
Here's the description:
Sunday, 11.30-12.30
eBooks and the science community - Carl Zimmer, Tom Levenson, David Dobbs and John Dupuis
Ebooks are by far the fastest growing sector of the publishing industry. The New York Times is about to launch a best-seller list exclusively for ebooks. New systems, such as Amazon CreateSpace, allow writers to directly place their ebooks in the marketplace. In theory, they could do away with the need for a conventional publisher.…
bioephemera | January 7, 2011This wooden octopus counting toy is adorable!
The only odd thing here is that the tentacles and baby octopi are numbered in a single sequence. It makes sense, I suppose - you want the child to put the numbers in the proper order, and that works better if you're filling gaps between numbers: 1 _ 3 _ 5, etc.
It's just . . . unexpected to see an octopus with a tentacle marked "15."
Wait - a second odd thing is that it has a small parts warning: for 3 yrs & up. Aren't most kids losing interest in basic counting toys by 3-4? Oh well, it's still adorable.
Via NOTCOT.
mikethemadbiologist | January 6, 2011Having grown up (or at least physiologically developed) in Virginia, this story about the totally awesome and rigorous history textbooks used in what are the wealthier counties in the state is not at all surprising, though depressing (italics mine):
In the version of history being taught in some Virginia classrooms, New Orleans began the 1800s as a bustling U.S. harbor (instead of as a Spanish colonial one). The Confederacy included 12 states (instead of 11). And the United States entered World War I in 1916 (instead of in 1917)....
Historian Mary Miley Theobald, a former Virginia…
sporte | January 6, 2011About mid-morning, my 16yr old daughter called me from school and asked me to help her get an interview transcript that was on her computer.
Four years ago, when my older daughter was in high school, I would have printed that document and driven to the school to deliver it.
Not today.
Today, I found the document on YD's computer, opened a browser, logged in to Google Docs, uploaded her file to my Google Docs account, and set the sharing settings so that YD could log in from school and get the document, which she did.
No one had to drive to the high school. No child had to stand outside in…
sa smith | January 4, 2011For some reason, our local FOX affiliate decided to cover a blog post by Sanjay Gupta:
Anger at God common, even among atheists
Technically they were covering some study by Julie Exline, but considering the fact no one has linked to it, and I cant find it anywhere online, lets be honest. It was opinions on second hand opinions using third hand opinions.
High-five there, traditional media!
Anyway, the gist of it is that atheists are 'mad' at a god-like creature Christians imagine as their choice of deity. OKC Atheist president Nick Singer rightly noted that that is stupid. Atheists cant be…
kbonham | January 4, 2011I rely on my phone to keep track of time - I tend to lose/break or cover watches in chalk, but my phone is pretty reliable. But how does it know the time, and how to people keep track of the passing seconds? Find out in this month's SITN Flash.
Last month, the Flash was spintronics, but the latest is atomic clocks:
While atomic clocks are technologically more complicated than the average timepiece, their operating principle is more or less the same - time is kept by precisely measuring the frequency of a signal. Frequency expresses how often a periodic signal repeats itself. In a grandfather…
drorzel | January 4, 2011There was a faintly awful essay by Melissa Nicolas at Inside Higher Ed yesterday, giving MLA job candidates advice on how to dress:
Let's start with your shoes. Anyone who has been to MLA knows that it is a big conference, and whether you are on a search committee, attending sessions, or interviewing, you are most likely going to be doing a lot of walking. In a city. Often in the cold (though not this year!). While it is certainly inappropriate to come in your Wellies, teetering into the room on heels that are as stable as a university's endowment sends the message that you might not be a…
jtoney | January 4, 2011
Photo source.
I think that's what I'm trying to do," he says. "I think Darwin's life is a great story. So why not tell it as a great story?
NPR Interview with Jay Hosler, Feb. 14, 2005
Amidst the media storms about teaching evolution in the classroom, I wonder whether anyone considered using comics? It is such a simple, elegant idea. Comics can draw students into the subject, using humor and whimsy, in a way that is simply not possible using a textbook. Plus there's nothing like humor to throw water on a fierce debate between a self-righteous religious zealot and a town's school board.…
drorzel | January 3, 2011The clock in my classroom for this term appears to be set five minutes slow. Which is an improvement over the one in the hall that's ten minutes slow, but kind of plays hell with starting and ending class on time. It is, however, a great excuse for a poll:
Clocks in academic buildings should be set:survey software
Combine the odd clock settings with our daft class schedule (to make our ten-week terms nominally equivalent to standard semester classes, we teach in 65-minute blocks instead of the more typical 50-minute blocks. This means that classes start and end at odd times, which I've…
drorzel | January 3, 2011It's the first day of the new term, and the projector bulb that was working on Friday decided to stop working by Sunday. After that bit of excitement this morning, plus my lecture, I'm beat. I always forget how much talking is involved in intro physics lectures.
My class for the term is the first term of introductory physics, which seems like a good idea for a poll:
What is your favorite part of Newtonian physics?online survey
Given the book we use, "The Momentum Principle," "The Energy Principle," and "The Angular Momentum Principle" would be better names for what I've got in mind, but it'…