education
jdupuis | November 14, 2010I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
Since I did a science/religion review earlier this week, I thought I'd continue the theme this weekend with a couple of older reviews of books by Matthew Chapman.
This one, of 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design,…
jdupuis | November 13, 2010I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
Since I did a science/religion review earlier this week, I thought I'd continue the theme this weekend with a couple of older reviews of books by Matthew Chapman.
This one, of Trials of the Monkey: An Accidental Memoir, is from…
gregladen | November 12, 2010Louisiana is one of those states where really stupid stuff tends to happen, especially when it comes to evolution in the school curriculum. Recently, a state panel was in a position to chose either creationist textbooks with which to abuse the children for whom they are responsible, or good biology textbooks to educate the children for whom they are responsible. Under considerable pressure to not become the next national laughing stock, the advisory council voted 8-4 to use the correct books.
That's good news, but it ain't not over yet. This was only a preliminary vote, and the final…
mikethemadbiologist | November 11, 2010Certainly, you shouldn't when the topic is education 'reform.' Some snarky bloggers refer to The Washington Post as the Kaplan Test Prep Company, since most of the Post's profits come from the KTPC, not the newspaper (both of which are owned by the Washington Post Company). Well, any claims The Washington Post might want to make about ethics or morality (not to mention for-profit education) should be utterly ignored:
Though Kaplan is not the largest in the industry, the Post Company chairman, Donald Graham, has emerged as the highest-profile defender of for-profit education.
Together,…
sa smith | November 10, 2010
Dad wanted me to thank all of my blob readers for voting.
Im not joking.
... blag... blob... blab?
So thank you blob readers!!! Remember you can vote every day!
bioephemera | November 10, 2010
For health organizations, federal agencies and nonprofits alike, it's a challenge to get anyone to pay attention long enough to hear your prevention messages, much less to actually change their behavior as a result. It's even harder with kids. It's not that they don't care about science; quite the contrary, they love it - especially if it's gross. It's more that they don't want to hear an authority figure talking down to them about the parade of terribles that will befall them if they binge drink, have unprotected sex, etc. Be honest: can you think back to your high school health classes…
drorzel | November 10, 2010We've just recently completed pre-registration for Winter term classes, so I've been thinking a bit about why students do and do not sign up for things. Thus, a poll:
You are a college student considering an elective class in your major, and you see it has a lab. Your reaction is:survey software
Feel free to replace "English" with the non-lab-science major of your choice when answering.
jtoney | November 8, 2010
This Halloween, Lady Gaga costumes were all the rage, but one fan has taken devotion to a whole new level.
This fan, who has attended some 28 Lady Gaga concerts worldwide (so far!) and created an "adoring fan" website, happens to teach sociology and has developed a new sociology course, "Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame" at the University of South Carolina, as reported in The New York Times (Oct. 29). It is often said that the tenure system is founded in academic freedom, allowing instructors to teach subjects without constraint, hopefully with the students' best interests in mind.…
sa smith | November 7, 2010My dads school is one of the final 5 in the NBC/Windows 'School Pride' competition! The prize is a brand new computer lab (and I think they get to be on TV or something too)!!
I want to SEND TEH HORDE over to vote for Dads school, but I cant. All I know about that school and how much the kids *need* a computer lab, I cant tell you all who to vote for and still feel good about myself.
Its like choosing between puppies at the pound. But at least someone might come along to adopt the pups you dont choose... the kids who dont win this competition will most likely just be screwed.
So I just ask…
kbonham | November 6, 2010I think understanding the basics of inheritance is pretty easy for most people - the traits of parents are passed down from parents to offspring. Simple! Humans have known and exploited this fact for thousands of years. When Gregor Mendel came along, he meticulously worked out some mathematical rules for inheritance in peas, and we now know that these rules work (more or less) from plants, to ants to elephants, and we know the molecular basis lies in the replication and transmission of DNA.
There's far more nuance than you learn in basic biology, of course. Most visible traits aren't governed…
jdupuis | November 5, 2010York University Computer Science & Engineering professor Anestis Toptsis was kind enough recently to invite me to speak to his CSE 3000 Professional Practice in Computing class.
He gave me two lecture sessions this term, one to talk about library-ish stuff. In other words, what third year students need to know about finding conference and journal articles (and other stuff too) for their assignments and projects. You can find my notes here, in the lecture 1 section.
In the second session, which I gave yesterday, he basically let me talk about anything that interested me. So, of course,…
drorzel | November 5, 2010I haven't been flogging it as hard as in some past years, but the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge is still going on, though it wraps up on Tuesday. To date, we've raised just over $1,300 to support education in needy schools, which is great, and thanks to all those who have donated.
If you haven't donated yet, and have some cash, there's still time to win fabulous prizes, including the naming of one of the example animals in the forthcoming sequel to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog after a pet of your choosing. One animal will be named after a pet chosen by the biggest single donor (the…
kbonham | November 5, 2010A few weeks ago, I read an article in Wired talking about an amazing new project led by E.O. Wilson: an all-digital, not-for-profit textbook called Life on Earth. It looks amazing, and it's going to be offered to K-12 schools for free.
Neil Patterson, director of Life on Earth with 50 years of science textbook publishing experience to his name, said the format could revolutionize science education for students.
"Motion and film are powerful ways of teaching," Patterson said. "We're trying to exploit the human brain, like videogames do, and it's not a small matter to use technology now…
drorzel | November 5, 2010Regular commenter onymous left a comment to my review of Warped Passages that struck me as a little odd:
The extended analogy between the renormalization group and a bureaucracy convinced me that she was trying way too hard to make sophisticated concepts comprehensible. Also, I'm not really sure that analogies are the best way to explain concepts to people without using mathematics.
I'm not talking about the implication that making sophisticated concepts comprehensible is not worth doing, but rather the negativity toward analogies. It's odd because, if you think about it, a huge chunk of…
drorzel | November 4, 2010I'm spending the day trying to get some work done on the book-in-progress, so I'm avoiding both work- and blog-related stuff. I don't want to leave the site completely quiet, though, so here's a question to ponder, relating to SteelyKid's continuing fascination with Goodnight Moon:
How does a cow jump over the moon?
The father of one of SteelyKid's classmates, who is not originally from the US, asked why there's a cow jumping over the moon in that (or, as SteelyKid puts it: "Cow jumping MOON!!"), and I don't have a good answer. I'm aware of the nursery rhyme and the Tolkien joke, but why…
mikethemadbiologist | November 4, 2010We read that a conservative Texas faith tank has convinced the Texas Legislature to force universities to release a "profit-and-loss" statement for every professor:
A 265-page spreadsheet, released last month by the chancellor of the Texas A&M University system, amounted to a profit-and-loss statement for each faculty member, weighing annual salary against students taught, tuition generated, and research grants obtained.
Ms. Johnson came out very much in the black; in the period analyzed--fiscal year 2009--she netted the public university $279,617. Some of her colleagues weren't nearly so…
drorzel | November 2, 2010Today's a lab day in my main class for the term, with a fairly involved experiment to measure the charge-to-mass ratio of the electron. This is going to be all kinds of fun, because 1) I can't get into the room to set anything up until an hour before the start of class, and 2) SteelyKid is home sick, which means I can't go in to pull stuff together until about an hour before the start of class. Whee!
Today's a day to (attempt to) accentuate the positive, though, so let's use this as a jumping-off point for a more upbeat topic, namely:
What's the best lab you ever did in a lab science class?…
mikethemadbiologist | October 29, 2010I've often wondered why college tuitions are rising so rapidly ever year. While in the ultimate sense, they rise because they can--there are enough wealthy people who can pay full freight, it's not clear what internal cost require such massive, regular price increases.
Well, Robert B. Archibald and David H. Feldman propose that these increases are part of larger economic trends. First, college has to be understood as a service industry (italics mine):
First, higher education is a service industry. From 1947 to 2009 the average annual price increase for services was 4.0 percent, while for…
drorzel | October 28, 2010I finished Jennifer Ouellette's new book a few weeks ago, shortly after my trip to Alabama, but it's taken me a long time to get around to reviewing it due to a combination of too much work and being a Bad Person. There's finally a tiny break in the storm of work, though, so here's a slightly belated review.
The Calculus Diaries is not a book that will teach you how to do math. There aren't worked examples, detailed derivations, or homework problems in the main text. It might, however, teach you not to fear math, as it provides a witty and accessible explanation of the key concepts behind…
sa smith | October 27, 2010Some of you in the atheisphere remember what happened this past year with 'Tom Johnson' and the 'Youre Not Helping' blog. Quick recap from Jerry:
On October 22 of last year, Chris Mooney put up a post at The Intersection called "Counterproductive attacks on religion--exhibit A." The "exhibit" was an excerpt from an earlier comment on that website by someone named "Tom Johnson." Johnson claimed that he was a biologist who had gone to "conservation events" (that is, outreach meetings designed to educate people about conservation), and that atheists had behaved very badly at these events,…