education
sa smith | June 28, 2010Rule #9284748 of Science:
Your side projects will work beautifully, garnering you lots of middle-author yet high-end publications, while your main project stagnates in a puddle of its own filth, laughing maniacally as you poke it with a stick trying to get it to move.
YAY SCIENCE!
kcollins | June 28, 2010Enter the Great Science Teacher Video Contest
Great teachers inspire students to pursue a higher education in science and engineering. They communicate difficult concepts with ease. And they make science fun. Are you a great teacher?
Can you explain the photoelectric effect so that students really get it? Or have you got the perfect experiment to demonstrate Newton's 3rd Law? Wouldn't it be great to share those lessons with the entire nation? Well, here is your chance.
Simply shoot a video of your lesson and submit it to the USA Science & Engineering Festival. Winners will receive…
grrlscientist | June 28, 2010tags: King Rail, Marsh Hen, Freshwater Marsh Hen, Rallus elegans, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] King Rail, also known as the Marsh Hen or the Freshwater Marsh Hen, Rallus elegans, photographed at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, Anahuac, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 26 May 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/400s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Today's Mystery Bird seems a bit confused about its own identity,…
grrlscientist | June 28, 2010tags: Evolution in Action by AMNH, Congo River, fishes, AMNH, American Museum of Natural History, evolution, variation, biodiversity, Melanie Stiassny, streaming video
This video tells the story of speciation in Central Africa's roiling, rapid Lower Congo River. This river is home to an extraordinary assortment of fish -- many truly bizarre. This new video by Science Bulletins, the American Museum of Natural History's current-science video program, features Museum scientists on a quest to understand why so many species have evolved here. Follow Curator of Ichthyology Melanie Stiassny and her…
grrlscientist | June 27, 2010tags: Green Wood-Hoopoe, Red-billed Wood Hoopoe, Phoeniculus purpureus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Green Wood-Hoopoe, formerly known as the Red-billed Wood Hoopoe, Phoeniculus purpureus, photographed in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania, Africa. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Dan Logen, 18 January 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D300, 600 mm VR lens with 1.4 extender ISO 500, f/5.6, 1/250 sec.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This mystery bird species has a remarkable breeding strategy, can you tell me what…
grrlscientist | June 26, 2010tags: Village Indigobird, Vidua chalybeata, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Village Indigobird, Vidua chalybeata, photographed in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania, Africa. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Dan Logen, 17 January 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D300, 600 mm VR lens with 1.4 extender ISO 500, f/8, 1/1000 sec.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This Old World genus of birds is filled with species that have a very close relationship with another species of bird -- can you tell me the nature of that…
drorzel | June 25, 2010Continuing with the uncomfortable questions, H asks a good one:
Union is one of the most expensive colleges in the country. What are students getting for their money? How does Union justify the increase in price over other schools with comparable academics and facilities?
See, now that's an uncomfortable question, especially on an institutional level.
Stripped down to the most basic level, and stated as bluntly as possible, students at an elite private liberal arts college are paying for three things: faculty/facilities, individual attention, and connections.
Faculty and facilities are the…
grrlscientist | June 25, 2010tags: Ancient Murrelet, Synthliboramphus antiquus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Ancient Murrelet, Synthliboramphus antiquus, photographed zigzagging rapidly roughly 15m below the waves off the south side of Alki Point, Seattle, Washington. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Ron Shimek [larger view].
Olympus OM-10 in an Ikelite Housing, Kodachrome 64 film.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This poorly-known mystery bird species has two remarkable behaviors that are thought to reduce predation at the nest -- what…
jdupuis | June 24, 2010First of all, the conference program is here. All the paper versions of the presentations will eventually be deposited in Queen's IR, QSpace, but don't seem to be there yet. I posted about my presentation here: Using a Blog to Engage Students in Literature Search Skills Sessions.
Now, If there can be said to be a theme to a conference which has no official theme, then the CEEA conference's theme was nicely summed up by a question from the audience during one of the sessions:
"How do you teach humbleness?"
Again and again it came up -- the challenge of teaching young, confident and…
drorzel | June 24, 2010Starting at the beginning of the uncomfortable questions left by readers, we have Tex asking:
If physics is the basic science that underlies almost every other science, why do American high schools usually teach it in the 3rd or 4th year, after biology and chemistry? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Physics first, then chemistry, then biology?
Physics is the final course in the standard American high school curriculum for two reasons, as far as I can tell: history and math. History is the less convincing of the two, as it amounts to "the courses are in that order because they've been in…
grrlscientist | June 24, 2010tags: Brown Pelican, Pelecanus occidentalis, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Brown Pelican, Pelecanus occidentalis, photographed at Monterey Bay, California. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 7 May 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/750s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Can you tell me something remarkable about this mystery bird's beak/mouth?
The pelican's gullet pouch really can "hold more than its belly can" (as claimed…
rallain | June 24, 2010The Louisiana Board of Regents is promoting a 'performance-based' funding model for the universities in the Louisiana system. In short, the funding each university will receive is based on:
The percent of students that graduate
Graduating more non-traditional students and minorities
Accepting and graduating more students that transfer from community colleges
Here is my main problem with this funding formula. Don't we want to do these things anyway? Isn't this suggesting that we are not trying to do these things and if we do try, we will get more funding. Actually, it is not about trying…
grrlscientist | June 24, 2010tags: Education Innovation in the Slums, education, technology, poverty, slums, curriculum, philosophy, learning as a productive activity, Charles Leadbeater, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video
Charles Leadbeater went looking for radical new forms of education -- and found them in the slums of Rio and Kibera, where some of the world's poorest kids are finding transformative new ways to learn. And this informal, disruptive new kind of school, he says, is what all schools need to become.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the…
grrlscientist | June 23, 2010tags: Western Scrub-jay, California Jay, Aphelocoma californica, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Western Scrub-jay, also known as the California Jay, Aphelocoma californica, photographed at Bodega Bay, California. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 23 December 2007 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/750s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This mystery bird species performs a remarkable behavior that has intrigued scientists and even…
grrlscientist | June 22, 2010
Remember how I told you that, until 30 July, all Royal Society Publishing's online journal content is available for free in celebration of the Royal Society's 350th anniversary? I thought I'd mention some of the remarkable papers that you can get your hands on: papers by Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley, Edward Jenner, Alexander Volta and James Clerk Maxwell. Even though I am not a physicist, I've met these men several times by learning about their discoveries (and reconstructing them for myself) when I was in school, but never have I had the opportunity to read their actual papers describing…
kstarko | June 22, 2010Karen Starko writes: Even though I am a former EIS officer I am still amazed by the many successes of the EIS that Mark Pendergrast so clearly details in Inside the Outbreaks, The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service. As I reflect on the outbreaks and epidemics described in the book and my own experience, I realize that the case study method employed in the training course and the two-year hands-on program plays a critical role in the success of the EIS program.
Picture this: young doctors, nurses, veterinarians, and other health professionals, many barely out of…
grrlscientist | June 22, 2010tags: Killdeer, Charadrius vociferus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] newly hatched Killdeer, Charadrius vociferus, photographed at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, Anahuac, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 1 June 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/640s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This cute little bird was or will be, at some point during its youth, protected by a spectacular display by one of its parents. Can…
grrlscientist | June 21, 2010tags: The Laryngeal Nerve of the Giraffe is Proof of Natural Selection, animals, giraffe, evolution, creationism, intelligent design, dissection, necropsy, autopsy, recurrent laryngeal nerve pathway, vagus nerve, cranial nerve X, evolutionary legacy, Richard Dawkins, streaming video
This video, including comments by Richard Dawkins, documents a necropsy (an autopsy on an animal other than a human) carried out in a classroom on a giraffe. In this video, we follow the pathway of the recurrent (inferior) laryngeal nerve, an important nerve that is a branch of the Vagus nerve (tenth cranial nerve…
clock | June 21, 2010A couple of days ago, I had a very pleasant conversation with Brian Bedrick whose Charlotte NC based Interactive Data Partners turns massive amounts of data into visualizations, particularly in education. They take all sorts of metrics, e.g., on educational outcomes, and make them instantly obvious through visualizations. Those kinds of things are important to administrators, but there are other potential uses. For example, instead of giving a student a single grade, the work can be divided into several categories and visualization can immediately show in which areas does a student show…
grrlscientist | June 21, 2010tags: Marbled Godwit, Limosa fedoa, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Marbled Godwit, Limosa fedoa, photographed at Galveston Island East Beach, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 1 June 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/1000s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This species is comprised of a seemingly homogeneous population of birds. However, scientists have recently found that this species shows some geographic variation…