education
grrlscientist | April 27, 2010tags: The Truth About HSUS, pets, animals, animal rights, wingnuts, cults, Wayne Pacelle, Humane Society of the United States, HSUS, streaming video
The real agenda of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is to remove money from your wallet and put it into their CEOs' retirement funds, to ignore animal shelters, and to forever destroy your ability to live with animals.
grrlscientist | April 27, 2010tags: Political Change with Pen and Paper, politics, letter-writing campaign, Omar Ahmad, TEDTalks, streaming video
Politicians are strange creatures, says politician Omar Ahmad. And the best way to engage them on your pet issue is a monthly handwritten letter. Ahmad shows why old-fashioned correspondence is more effective than email, phone or even writing a check -- and shares the four simple steps to writing a letter that works.
After years of volunteering for grassroots political groups, I have used my experience to teach and help people write letters to politicians over the years, but…
drorzel | April 26, 2010As of 1:45 Monday, 217 people have cast votes in the Laser Smackdown poll. That's not bad, but it's currently being handily beaten by the 271 people who have voted for a favorite system of units.
The nice thing about using actual poll services for this sort of thing, though, is that I can re-post the poll to boost signal a little. So, here it is again, a list of the twelve most amazing laser applications suggested by my wise and worldly readers, with links to short explanations of the pros and cons of each:
Which of the following is the most amazing application of a laser?Market Research…
mikethemadbiologist | April 26, 2010I think The Huffington Post has outdone itself on the bullshit factor. We now have all-encompassing metawoo. Consider this about the supposed harm that our current methods of teaching science inflict upon the young:
When educators try to inculcate children with the scientific method, the main legacy of traditional science, the outcome is often an educational train wreck. As Jeremy Rifkin, author of The Empathic Civilization, puts it:
[T]he scientific method [is] an approach to learning that has been nearly deified in the centuries following the European Enlightenment. Children are…
grrlscientist | April 26, 2010tags: Sedge Wren, Short-billed Marsh Wren, Cistothorus platensis, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Sedge Wren, formerly known as the Short-billed Marsh Wren, Cistothorus platensis, photographed at Attwater Prairie Chicken Refuge, Eagle Lake, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 7 November 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/350s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
If you can ID this species, can you also tell me what its former common name was and how it came by its new common name?
Please name at…
mikethemadbiologist | April 25, 2010I've always thought that the primary reason for tenure at the collegiate level was economic. Intellectual freedom notwithstanding, without academic tenure, universities would either have to pay more for their faculty or wind up with worse faculty. Consider an undergraduate who might have loans to pay off. Then add five to eight years during which, if he is lucky, he doesn't accumulate debt, but certainly isn't saving any money. Then add the post-doc (at least one) where, again, there's low wages and little savings. Follow that with five to nine years of running like hell, at which point…
grrlscientist | April 25, 2010tags: Black-faced Lourie, Bare-faced Go-away-bird, Corythaixoides personatus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Black-faced Lourie, also known as the Bare-faced Go-away-bird, Corythaixoides personatus, photographed lying motionless in the afternoon sun 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, 200-400 VR lens at 240 mm, ISO 500, f/8 1/1250 sec.
As an added bonus, can you tell me what this bird is doing and why?
Please name at least one field mark that supports…
grrlscientist | April 24, 2010tags: African Wattled Lapwing, Senegal Wattled Plover, Vanellus senegallus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] African Wattled Lapwing, also known as the Senegal Wattled Plover, Vanellus senegallus, photographed at the Kilombero River, Tanzania, Africa. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Dan Logen, 9 January 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D300, 600 mm lens. ISO 320, 1/1000 sec, f/7.1 Exposure compensation at 0.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
bioephemera | April 23, 2010
FYI: I'll be appearing next Friday on a panel as part of the "Unruly Democracy: Science Blogs and the Public Sphere" workshop sponsored by the Program on Science, Technology and Society at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Knight Science Journalism program at MIT. I'll be appearing with Chris Mooney of the Intersection/Discover on a panel called "Science and the Web."
Now, if you've read the blog for a while, you'll know I'm not a new media cheerleader. I do love new media, but I also have many concerns about its evolving mores. So in…
clock | April 23, 2010This week in NYC, at #140 conf, I was most impressed by the talks and panels about education, and the use of online technologies, Web, and particularly social networks like Twitter in the classroom. You know I am interested in this - just search my blog for names like "David Warlick" and "Stacy Baker", or dig through my "Education" and "Science Education" categories. These videos are all short - 10 or 20 minutes long, so I strongly recommend you watch all four clips:
Chris Lehmann (@chrislehmann) - Social Media + Education:
Real Time Communication and Education: Aparna Vashisht (@Parentella…
grrlscientist | April 23, 2010tags: Great Horned Owl, Tiger Owl, Bubo virginianus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Great Horned Owl, also known as the Tiger Owl, Bubo virginianus, photographed on the roadside in the Edinburg, Texas in The Lower Rio Grande Valley. This valley occurs at the boundary between the United States and Mexico. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: ©JRCompton.com/birds: JR Compton, 2008. I encourage you to purchase photographs from this photographer. [larger view].
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
One of my goals for the…
jdupuis | April 23, 2010This one's on Cracked.com and, unusually for them, is Safe for Work.
Now, I'm down with making education more interactive, social, customizable, multitasking, multimedia and web-enabled and all that, but for every good thing there are potential downsides. And Cracked's article nicely sums up some of the more, shall we say, absurd and ridiculous implications of Web-enabled education.
Let's just say the words pwned, First!, mentos, TL;DR and Nigerian princes all make cameo appearances.
Take a look, the Top 20 Ways the Internet is Taking Over Schools.
grrlscientist | April 23, 2010tags: Deutsch für Doofe, German for Boneheads, German language, education, streaming video
Okay, let's face the facts: my German sucks. Every time someone says something to me in German, my first reaction is to either respond in Spanish or Indonesian or (surprisingly) Japanese. As a result, I am left stammering my way through a ragtag collection of phrases in several languages, and no one, not even I, can understand what I am trying to say. So I am too intimidated to attempt to practice speaking my piss-poor German because the Germans are not very forgiving of idiots (forgetting of course,…
grrlscientist | April 22, 2010tags: The Secret Life of Scientists, careers, Webby Awards, scientists, public outreach, educational, funny, documentary, NOVA, PBS, streaming video
Okay, my peeps, I need your help. PBS is airing a NOVA series called "The Secret Life of Scientists." This miniseries has been nominated for a Webby Award for the Best Documentary Series, and is almost tied with a David Lynch film. We need your help to push this one over the top and give it the support of the people! I've embedded a clip below that I know you will enjoy (interestingly, I know several of these scientists in real life, too). So…
jdupuis | April 22, 2010A small selection from some tables of content from a few recent journals and proceedings. These will require subscription access to the ACM Digital Library.
Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
Connecting k-16 curriculum & policy: making computer science engaging, accessible, and hospitable for underrepresented students by Joanna Goode
Computational thinking for the sciences: a three day workshop for high school science teachers by Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed, Dennis Brylow, et al.
Connecting across campus by Mark D. LeBlanc, Tom Armstrong, Michael B. Gousie
Teaching communication…
drorzel | April 22, 2010What's the application? Producing artificial "stars" to serve as a reference for telescopes using adaptive optics to correct for atmospheric turbulence. This allows ground-based telescopes to produce images that are as good as those from the Hubble Space Telescope.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? "How can I make this giant telescope produce even more impressive pictures?"
How does it work?The basic problem with ground-based telescopes, as anyone who has ever looked at the stars or listened to nursery rhymes can tell you, is that stars "twinkle." They appear to fluctuate in brightness…
grrlscientist | April 22, 2010tags: Tawny Fish-Owl, Bubo flavipes, Ketupa flavipes, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Tawny Fish-Owl, Bubo (Ketupa) flavipes, photographed at Corbett Tiger Reserve (also known as the Jim Corbett National Park), northeast of Delhi in the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains of India. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: John Kneeshaw [larger view].
Canon EOS 40D with 300mmAF lens.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
mikethemadbiologist | April 22, 2010I came across this post by Digby about the narcissism of CEOs, which is worth a read. One of the things I think a lot of academics have a hard time understanding is how common antisocial personality disorders can be in positions of power outside of academia. In my experience, sociopaths and narcissists--and I use those terms in their clinical sense, not as synonyms for asshole--are really infrequent in academia. This isn't because scientists are better people (Intelligent Designer knows that's not the case). Instead, academia has a lot of objective (relatively speaking) criteria for…
grrlscientist | April 22, 2010tags: Glowing Life in an Underwater World, marine biology, bioluminescence, luciferase, luciferin, green fluorescent protein, eye-in-the-sea cam, ethology, evolution, Edith Widder, TEDTalks, streaming video
Some 80 to 90 percent of undersea creatures make light -- and we know very little about how or why. Bioluminescence expert Edith Widder explores this glowing, sparkling, luminous world, sharing glorious images and insight into the unseen depths (and brights) of the ocean.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's…
gregladen | April 21, 2010C.E. Cupp is Ann Coulter before the bottle-blond crap is poured on her head, but maybe slightly less vile.1 She just came out with a new book: Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity, which explains everything you had wrong if you were a progressive liberal in the education business. The book even comes with forward by Mike Huckabee.
Well, Steve Levingston of Political Bookworm on the Washington Post web site has reviewed the book, and seeing as how he does not have a lot of background in the Creationism vs Reality struggle, he interviewed Joshua Rosenau of the NCSE…