education
mikethemadbiologist | October 15, 2010Despite The Boston Phoenix's running articles that occasionally contain the word fuck, as well as having an 'adult section' complete with ads for 'massage' (why one has to wear a bikini to give a massage escapes me; also, prostitution isn't exactly feminist), their politics are about as alternative or radical as a wet noodle. This is best shown by their unrelenting and irrational assault on teachers, although the continual brushback by their readers seems to have had a slight effect.
Well, now the Phoenix editors have decided how to fix the Boston schools--even as these same schools have…
drorzel | October 14, 2010Emmy and I are in Buffalo today, after a long drive last night, made longer by the NY Thruway authorities decidin to randomly sprinkle lane closures along the westbound portion of I-90. They also made the sadistic move of putting on the "tune to this radio station for information" flashers before the big back-up, and then playing only a recording saying that they were updating the messages on the information network. For at least an hour. Nice work, Thruway idiots. That was positively Pennsylvanian.
Anyway, we're here in scenic Buffalo, where it isn't snowing yet, so don't ask. Which means I…
cagapakis | October 12, 2010It's not just Scott Kern who thinks that science is only about tedious benchwork and that grad students should be boring robots moving small volumes of liquid around 20 hours a day for the greater good. An unscientific analysis of the 169 comments and numerous comment thumbs ups of Hydrocalypse Industries' most popular video shows that a significant percentage of the commenters who aren't saying something completely inane, off topic, or conspiracy-theory laden are criticizing us for not working hard enough.
I hopefully don't need to go into detail about how many hours we are all actually…
drorzel | October 12, 2010It's that time of year again, which is to say "October, when we raise money for DonorsChoose." As you may or may not know, DonorsChoose is an educational charity which has teachers propose projects that would make their classrooms better, and invites donors to contribute to the projects of their choice. Every October since ScienceBlogs launched, we have done a fundraiser for them here, and this year's entry is now live:
While the warm-fuzzy sensation of doing a good deed for school children in poor districts may be enough to get some people to donate, I'll also sweeten the pot a little with…
drorzel | October 11, 2010Via Tom, a site giving problem-solving advice for physics. While the general advice is good, and the friendly, Don't-Panic tone is great, I do have a problem with one of their steps, Step 7: Consider Your Formulas:
Some professors will require that you memorize relevant formulas, while others will give you a "cheat sheet." Either way, you have what you need. Memorization might sound horrible, but most physics subjects don't have that many equations to memorize. I remember taking an advanced electromagnetism course where I had to memorize about 20 different formulas. At first it seemed…
mikethemadbiologist | October 5, 2010I've got a bunch of education-related links that I'll never get around to blogging about. Maybe you will? Anyway, here they are:
Has education reform jumped the shark? A teacher says 'yes'
What 'Superman' got wrong, point by point
Obama's Education Agenda Prioritizes "Reform" Over Resources
Are charter schools really innovative?
Obama Loses a Mayor: Adrian Fenty's defeat puts Washington, D.C.'s aggressive school reform efforts, spearheaded by schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, on the chopping block--and is a lesson for the president from voters.
PERSISTENTLY LOW-PERFORMING INCENTIVES
Left Ed…
jdupuis | October 5, 2010This year's Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing took place this past week in Atlanta, GA.
I thought I'd gather together some small part of the blog posts I've been seeing floating around the Internets on this wonderful event.
Opening Session of Grace Hopper Conference - 2010
Dancing with Hundreds of Technical Women at Grace Hopper
The Impact of the Grace Hopper Celebration
It's the most wonderful time of the year
Back from GHC10@tlanta, now time to retrospect
Together, We Are Big Fish!
Grace Hopper Celebration 2010 : Day 2 (29 September)
Open Source Codeathon for Humanity (a…
mikethemadbiologist | October 4, 2010Someone is using a post from this blog for a course. The ongoing corruption of the youth of America continues.... I noticed links from this website, which is an online syllabus for a course on digital curation. The course seems interesting (even if the description is written in that jargony, coursebook way):
Digital curation focuses on the active and on-going management of digital artifacts through their lifecycle, particularly by maintaining and adding value to a trusted body of digital information for current and future use. Curation activities and policies enable data discovery and…
mikethemadbiologist | October 3, 2010Curse you Gail Collins and your evidence! Last week, Gail Collins wrote a good op-ed about education 'reform.' While it's probably not anything too new for regular readers, it's good to see that the Rockefeller Republican/neo-liberal educational propaganda isn't being swallowed hook, line, and sinker. First, on charter schools (italics mine):
But plot-wise, the movie seems to suggest that what's needed is more charter schools, which get taxpayer dollars but are run outside the regular system, unencumbered by central bureaucracy or, in most cases, unions. However, about halfway through, the…
drorzel | October 2, 2010A quick check-in from Tuscaloosa, where we're getting ready to head out for the football tailgating. While I've got a minute, though, here are the slides from my public lecture, via SlideShare:
What Every Dog Should Know About Quantum Physics
View more presentations from Chad Orzel.
These are probably less comprehensible that some of my other talks, as I deliberately avoided putting much text on the slides, which I think works better for this kind of presentation. The down side, of course, is that it's not as obvious what some of the slides mean, if you don't know the intended flow of the…
mikethemadbiologist | September 30, 2010A while ago, I listed what I thought made Massachusetts' educational system work:
The recent educational regression reform plan in Massachusetts and the Obama Administration's educational proposals both seem to misunderstand what has made Massachusetts' educational system one of the best in the world (and that does far better than would be expected by demography):
1) Content-based standards that teachers can actually use.
2) Rigorous evaluation of whether those standards are being met.
3) A testing/evaluation regime that has been continuously refined and that is well understood, and that has…
gregladen | September 29, 2010This is an excellent guest post by Scott Rowed on the use of Linux in K-12 schools, including strong evidence that school districts that do not have students using the Linux operating system are placing their students at a disadvantage, as well as a description of one outstanding success story in British Columbia.
Linux in Schools
Scott Rowed
What computer operating system should students learn at school? Most schools use MS Windows or Mac, but a number have switched or are in the process of switching to Linux. For schools the advantages are lower costs, greater security, no viruses or…
mikethemadbiologist | September 29, 2010A recent report bemoaning the sorry state of STEM training and education has been updated and re-released. Like most of these reports, it fits into the typical morality play of educational decline. Sadly, even bloggers I respect have bought into this. We'll leave aside the calls for more awarding of advanced degrees in the sciences, even as there is a scientist glut (that's been going on since I was an undergraduate; why do you think all those quants went to Wall Street?). What I want to discuss is STEM (science and mathematics actually) education in K-12.
As regular readers of this blog…
mikethemadbiologist | September 26, 2010For those who don't know, Texas is very important in determining what is found in U.S. textbooks due to its large purchasing power. While keeping anti-science wackaloons off of school boards is a good thing anywhere, it goes double in Texas. Sheril Kirshenbaum explains:
There are two, local races, where every penny goes to work, that have big implications for science education all over the country. The outcome of either contest could tip the balance away from anti-science extremists who seized control of the schoolboard to professional educators with the students' best interests in mind.…
mikethemadbiologist | September 24, 2010David Dobbs asks a really good question about the effect of scientific (scholastic) publishing on communication of science to the public:
I want to consider another problem with the paper's overvaluation: it discourages scientists from engaging the public. How so? Because many seem to think that when they've finished the paper, they've finished their work.
.....A scientist in the audience said something that always gets said during such discussions: "What if you want to just do the work?" What if you want, in other words, to do the experiment or observation, analyse the data, write and…
drorzel | September 23, 2010One of the things I've been stressed about lately is next week, when I'm making a trip to the South, specifically Georgia and Alabama. As I mentioned here earlier, the original inspiration was a get-together with friends from college for the Florida-Alabama football game next Saturday, but it seems a shame to go all that way and not do something book-related, so I have arranged to give four talks in two days. Two of these are research colloquia, but the other two are public lectures that might be of interest to readers of this blog or How to Teach Physics to Your Dog:
First, on Wednesday,…
gregladen | September 22, 2010You can get it here.
This is a nefarious Canadian version of a plot to guarantee that whack-job religious nut parents get to jam their beliefs down the throats of ALL the children, not just their own. Or something along those lines, perhaps I am understating it a tad.
cagapakis | September 22, 2010Thanks to the internet, you can find out your pirate name and your Jersey Shore name, and now thanks to the EMBL-EBI learning tools, you can find your protein name too!
When you type your name into the box, the program reads the letters of your name as if they were the single-letter codes for amino acids. Since there are only 20 amino acids, if you have a B, J, O, U, X, or Z in your name the program reads it as "X" which just means any amino acid could go in that spot.
The amino acids are then translated back into one of the possible three-letter DNA codes for each amino acid, and that DNA…
mikethemadbiologist | September 21, 2010Robert Samuelson has a penchant for willingly misinterpreting data. Time was, the newspaper bidness considered that to be a bad thing. Given his track record on Social Security, which led me to create the Samuelson Unit, it should be no surprise whatsoever that Samuelson screws up educational data.
Bob Somerby, rightfully offended by Samuelson's false claim that students have made no educational gains over the last forty years, asks, "Does Robert Samuelson hate black kids? It's always possible he doesn't--but he certainly seems to enjoy misstating their academic gains."
Somerby:
Among 17-…