education
grrlscientist | July 29, 2009tags: TEDTalks, politics, society, Why Societies Collapse, Jared Diamond, streaming video
Why do societies fail? In this video, Jared Diamond uses lessons from the Norse of Iron Age Greenland, deforested Easter Island and present-day Montana to talk about the signs that collapse is near, and how -- if we see it in time -- we can prevent it [22:42]
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.
grrlscientist | July 28, 2009
Who: Josh Rosenau, policy analyst at the National Center for Science Education
What: free public presentation, "Adventures in the Defense of Evolution: From Kansas to Turkey to New York"
Where: SLC Conference Center, 352 7th avenue (between 29th and 30th streets), 16th floor.
When: 700pm, Tuesday, 4 August
"That's not a problem here, right?," New Yorkers ask when they hear what Josh Rosenau does for a living. Rosenau is a policy analyst at the National Center for Science Education, where he defends the teaching of evolution against creationism. He and his colleagues have tracked attacks on…
mikethemadbiologist | July 28, 2009One of the things that I've long suspected about charter schools is that they're an unsustainable model: they rely on incredibly motivated teachers (who I think are a pretty motivated lot to begin with) who are willing to work even longer hours for essentially the same pay (or sometimes less). I'm not sure how to scale that up. Even if there were a significant number of teachers who fit this description, it's not clear how long they could remain like this.
Not only is there a real possibility of burning out, but, as teachers get older, other considerations--legitimate ones--come to the…
grrlscientist | July 28, 2009tags: Pileated Woodpecker, Dryocopus pileatus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Pileated Woodpecker, Dryocopus pileatus, photographed on Katy Prairie, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 3 April 2009 [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.
Review all mystery birds to date.
drorzel | July 28, 2009(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This post is one of those interviews, giving the responses of Katherine Porter, an editor of textbooks and other educational materials.)
1) What is your non-academic job?
I work as a science content editor for Words & Numbers, an educational content developer. Our…
grrlscientist | July 28, 2009tags: physics, flatland, 4th dimension, Carl Sagan, streaming video
In this video, world famous astronomer and astrophysicist, the great Carl Sagan, explains the 4th dimension. I wonder if Carl knew how funny he was? [7:15]
drorzel | July 27, 2009(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This post is one of those interviews, giving the responses of Tim Johnson, a software engineer.)
1) What is your non-academic job?
In a nutshell, software engineering. Started off with C/C++, TCL/TK, and a sprinkling of perl. For the last few years, it has been Java…
mikethemadbiologist | July 27, 2009Dr. Mom raises an interesting point about the amount of time she spends working as a scientist:
I work about 40 hours a week every week. I rarely work at home.
It seems like most of my colleagues (women and men) work crazy 10, 12+ hour days. Often you hear people comparing the academic version of war stories almost as if it is a contest to see who has worked the longest day. But I have never been like that.
At my Midwestern R1U I am considered fairly successful [Mad Biologist: I'll stipulate that she seems very successful]....
Dr. Mrs. Supersuccesful asked to talk to me and we discussed…
grrlscientist | July 27, 2009tags: Fischer's Sparrow-Lark, Eremopterix leucopareia, identify this bird, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Fischer's Sparrow-Lark, Eremopterix leucopareia, photographed sitting on donkey dung in Tanzania, Africa. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Dan Logen, 3 September 2007 [larger view].
Nikon D2X 200-400 VR lens at 400. ISO 200 1/500, f/9.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
drorzel | July 27, 2009Timothy Burke notes a controversy about an NEH program that some philosophers feel tramples their discipline. In talking about a hypothetical program that would do the same for his field of history, Burke suggests something that caught my eye:
f the NEH set up a course development grant called "Time and the Past" aimed at supporting interdisciplinary courses that examined change over time but framed the grant so that ordinary history courses didn't qualify, my first impulse would be to object. Why exclude the discipline that makes that question its central concern?
But hold on a moment. What…
grrlscientist | July 27, 2009tags: physics, solid materials physics, crystal structure, packing coefficient, streaming video
In this video, a physics lecturer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia sets a challenge to the public based in his solid state physics class (PHYS3080). [9:10]
grrlscientist | July 26, 2009tags: Cape Sparrow, Passer melanurus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Cape Sparrow, Passer melanurus, photographed in Swakopmund, Namibia, Africa [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Dennis Paulson, April 2007 [larger view].
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
rallain | July 25, 2009Here is an interesting article from Mashable: In the Future, the Cost of Education will be Zero
In the article, the author Josh makes the following points:
College is expensive and some people can't really afford it.
There is a growing trend in online universities. University of the People is one example.
Other universities are putting a lot of their material online - example MIT's OpenCourseWare project.
There are a growing number of free textbooks available online. I would like to point to an example of a free physics textbook.
Josh also points out that everyone should have a chance to…
grrlscientist | July 25, 2009tags: Black-Bellied Plover, Pluvialis squatarola, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Black-Bellied Plover, Pluvialis squatarola, photographed at Quintana, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 8 April 2009 [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.
Review all mystery birds to date.
drorzel | July 24, 2009(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This post is one of those interviews, giving the responses of Pam Korda, a physicist working for a medical device company.)
1) What is your non-academic job?
I am a "Lead Scientist" at an R&D subsidiary of a medical
devices company. In practice, this means I oversee a…
drorzel | July 24, 2009(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This post is one of those interviews, giving the responses of Denise Hills, a government geologist)
1) What is your non-academic job?
My job title is the very descriptive "Geologist II" which really tells you nothing about what I actually DO, now does it? I work for the…
grrlscientist | July 24, 2009tags: Seaside Sparrow, Ammodramus maritimus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Seaside Sparrow, Ammodramus maritimus, photographed at Anahuac Wildlife Refuge, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 19 May 2009 [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.
Review all mystery birds to date.
drorzel | July 24, 2009Over at Dot Physics, Rhett wonders about the role of homework in a world that includes cramster:
Then what is the problem? The problem is with my jobs. Yes, jobs. I have two jobs. My first job is to help students learn. I am a learning-faciliator if you like. I do this in many different ways. One way is to assign homework. Oh, my other job is to evaluate how well students understand the material. I have to give them some grade at the end of the semester. One obvious way to do this is with an exam or feats of strength.
Here is the question: Do you grade homework? Oh, I know what everyone says…
rallain | July 23, 2009I am pretty sure this came up on some email discussion listserv. Someone mentioned that students could just look up the answers to homework on cramster.com. Maybe you are more with it than I am, but I had never heard of this. Of course I had to check it out.
At the basic level, cramster gives solutions to homework problems. I was surprised how many introductory physics texts were available. They even had Classical Electrodynamics by Jackson. They did not have the text I use for calc-based intro physics, Matter and Interactions.
So, I tried it out. The site is pretty nice. They have…
drorzel | July 23, 2009(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This post is one of those interviews, giving the responses of Sandra Ulbrich Almazan, who works as a scientist in the food industry.)
1) What is your non-academic job?
I am an assistant scientist for an enzyme company. I work in the R&D department; I focus on finding…