Science Education
sb admin | December 17, 2008Larry Moran points to a couple of posts critical of microarrays (The Problem with Microarrays):
Why microarray study conclusions are so often wrong
Three reasons to distrust microarray results
Microarrays are small chips that are covered with short stretches of single stranded DNA. People hybridize DNA from some source to the microarray, which lights up if the DNA hybridizes to the probes on the array.
Most biologists are familiar with microarrays being used to measure gene expression. In this case, transcribed DNA is hybridized to the array, and the intensity of the signal is used as a…
gregladen | December 14, 2008Three videos:
Thanks to Stacy for the tip on the first of the three. The next two were sort of obvious after that...
clock | December 14, 2008
This, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Exploring the ecology of insects, The Descent of the Dinosaurs, Where the Woolly Rhinos Roam: A natural history of Ice Age animals and more at Pulse Project.
clock | December 13, 2008This one is good and thorough - by Colin Purrington, Department of Biology, Swarthmore College. Short excerpt from the beginning:
Why a poster is usually better than a talk
Although you could communicate all of the above via a 15-minute talk at the same meeting, presenting a poster allows you to more personally interact with the people who are interested in your research, and can reach people who might not be in your specific field of research. Posters are more efficient than a talk because they can be viewed even while you are off napping, and especially desirable if you are terrible at…
clock | December 12, 2008Correct. The hypothetico-deductive method is just one aspect of the Scientific Method. When are they going to finally update the textbooks?
clock | December 12, 2008
Maxine:
Nature Education, a new division of Nature Publishing Group, has launched Scitable, a free online educational resource for undergraduate biology instructors and students.
Scitable, which currently covers the field of genetics, is built on a library of overviews of key science concepts compiled by Nature Publishing Group's editorial staff. Scitable's evidence-based approach explains science through the lens of the scientific method, with links to milestone research papers.
Topics of investigation include:
⢠Chromosomes and cytogenetics
⢠Evolutionary genetics
⢠Gene expression and…
gregladen | December 9, 2008Draft 2 of the Minnesota Science Standards for K-12 is out, and once the current standards are approved, that's it until 2017. So now is your last chance for input for a very long time.
You could be childless, get pregnant over the next year, and have a child in school with these standards in effect. Even if you don't live in Minnesota, you may end up here. You never know!
HERE is where you go to comment.
clock | December 9, 2008Why do you care about and/or work in museums? Nina has her own reasons:
I don't work in museums because I love them. I didn't grow up staring open-mouthed at natural history dioramas or wandering through art galleries. When I visit a new city, I don't clamor to visit museums. I go on hikes. I go to farmer's markets. I walk around and get a sense for people and place. And while I'll visit museums out of professional (and occasionally personal) interest, I don't do it because of a deep emotional connection. Yes, there are some extraordinary museum experiences that have changed my life, but they…
clock | December 5, 2008An Injection of Hard Science Boosts TV Shows' Prognosis:
It's no fiction: Scientific fact has usurped science fiction as TV's favorite inspiration for prime-time story lines. And to keep everything on the up and up, show writers and producers are hiring scores of researchers and technical consultants to get the science straight.
clock | December 4, 2008
Nomination for 2008 Edublog Awards is now closed and you can now go and vote.
Go and check them all out - there are some great edublogs there I was not aware of from before. This is how I voted:
1. Best individual blog
Using Blogs in Science Education
2. Best group blog
360
3. Best new blog
Teaching in Second Life
4. Best resource sharing blog
Discovering Biology in a Digital World
5. Most influential blog post
THE MACGYVER PROJECT
6. Best teacher blog
Endless Forms Most Beautiful
7. Best librarian / library blog
Blue Skunk Blog
8. Best educational tech support blog
JoeWoodOnline
9. Best…
clock | December 1, 2008Now you can donate a subscription to Seed Magazine to a classroom of your choice:
Earlier this year, as part of the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge, ScienceBlogs readers donated over $18,000 toward science literacy.
Seed Media Group was proud to donate a further $15,000, bringing the ScienceBlogs community's total contribution to over $33,000. Schools around the nation are already putting these badly-needed funds toward science classrooms and labs.
Science literacy is a crucial element in driving progress. We believe that by providing the next generation access to scientific perspectives, by…
scientificactivist | December 1, 2008Seed just announced that it's making available discounted subscriptions to Seed for donation to high schools. If you're interested, click here, and you can donate a year-long subscription for $14.95 (discounted from $19.95). Surely, exposing students to more interesting, diverse, and engaging science writing can do no harm--and hopefully it will pique some students' interest.
sporte | November 30, 2008Getting kids involved in science, outside of the classroom.
A conversation with a friend last night reminded me of some posts I wrote earlier about helping scientists connect to programs for helping students.
My friend, as a parent, approached this idea, of connecting scientists with students, from a different angle.
She wanted to know how you go about connecting students with science?
What do you do if the science program at your kid's high school seems a little, well, uninspiring?
If the teachers aren't interested, how do you help?
How do you create opportunities for kids to get…
clock | November 29, 2008Miss Baker's slideshow about using blogs in the science classroom:
Using Blogs to Promote Science Literacy
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: education blogging)
clock | November 26, 2008
A few days ago, Peggy and Stephanie asked the blogosphere a few questions about the relationship between science and Science Fiction. They want to use the insights from the responses to run their session - Science Fiction on Science Blogs - at the ScienceOnline09 meeting in January.
They got lots of responses - interesting reads for the long holiday weekend:
Responses from the SF Writer Point of View
Sean Craven @ Renaissance Oaf
Simon Haynes @ Spacejock News
Arvind Mishra @ Science Fiction in India
JesterJoker @ Sa Souvraya Niende Misain Ye
Kelly McCullough @ Wyrdsmiths
Mike Brotherton…
sporte | November 25, 2008I just love this title! It's nerdy and cute, all at the same time.
I read about this in www.researchblogging.org and had to check out the paper and blog write up from The Beagle Project (BTW: some of you may be interested in knowing that The Beagle Project is not a blog about dogs.)
The paper describes a class where students from Marseilles University investigate the function of unidentified genes from a Global Ocean Sampling experiment. All the sequences are obtained from the environmental sequence division at the NCBI.
Students follow the procedure outlined below:
This is a great…
clock | November 25, 2008From Museum 2.0, a marvelous blog I discovered last night:
Self-Censorship for Museum Professionals:
There are lots of things visitors can't do in museums. But what about the things that museum professionals can't (or feel they can't) do? This week at the ASTC conference, Kathy McLean, Tom Rockwell, Eric Siegel and I presented a session called "You Can't Do That in Museums!" in which we explored the peculiarities of self-censorship in the creation of museum exhibitions.
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1. Self-censorship is different in different museum types. In science and technology…
sporte | November 25, 2008It's funny but even though I work with data on a regular basis, I can't always predict the best way to manage data until I have my own data to manage.
My classroom wiki site is no exception.
Now, that I've been seriously using a wiki with my class, I've found that I should have set a few things up a bit differently.
Technorati Tags: teaching, teaching technology, wikis, wiki, science education"
The biggest challenge has been making sure that the right people can do the right things - or who gets to see what and upload what where.
Not knowing what methods would turn out to be useful, I…