Science Education
gregladen | September 22, 2008Members of the Public: Now is your only chance to comment on Minnesota's new Science Standards. My suggestions: Take out the woo, dampen down the special interests, and please, consider NOT removing biology from the High School standrds!!!!!
To comment, go to this web site and read the context, the standards, and use the resources available there. And/or visit one of the public meetings listed on that site.
Overall the standards are probably an improvement on prior standards. A few questions to consider:
Looking at these standards, it seems as though High School Biology has been removed…
clock | September 21, 2008Miss Hoffman is using her blog for the second year in a row - she would like to see some guest-posts.
Miss Baker can use some of your help:
I would be excited to see scientists contribute to student-run science blogs! They could comment to student posts or submit their own post and converse with students. A conversation could continue with a video conference or an actual visit to the school. My students work so hard on their blog and would benefit greatly from input from scientists.
Perhaps we can get some of the science teachers with experience in using blogs in classrooms to bring their…
clock | September 21, 2008The September 2007 issue of JCOM - Journal of Science Communication - (issue 3, volume 7) is online.: Next issue will be online on the 18th December 2008. There are several articles in this issue that I find interesting and bloggable.
Contents:
EDITORIAL - The better you know, the better you make your choice. The need for a scientific citizenship in the era of knowledge by Pietro Greco:
Martin W. Bauer is right, two evolutionary processes are under way. These are quite significant and, in some way, they converge into public science communication: a deep evolution of discourse is unfolding,…
sporte | September 21, 2008Part I. The back story from the genome record
Together, these five posts describe the discovery of a novel paramyxovirus in the Aedes aegyptii genome and a new method for finding interesting anomalies in GenBank.
I. The back story from the genome record
II. What do the mumps proteins do? And how do we find out?
III. Serendipity strikes when we Blink.
IV. Assembling the details of the case for a mosquito paramyxovirus
V. A general method for finding interesting things in GenBank
I began this series on mumps intending to write about immunology and how vaccines work to stimulate the immune…
sporte | September 21, 2008What do you do if you're a scientist and want to volunteer in a classroom?
How do you find the right place to go and right kind of activity that suites your talents?
One of my commenters asked about this a few weeks ago. With the new school year up and running, it seems like a good time to tackle this question.
What kinds of volunteer activities do scientists do?
Your effort can be big or small. Small efforts can involve speaking in a classroom, mentoring students via ea-mail, judging science fair projects, or assisting with homework questions. Larger efforts can entail doing or…
sporte | September 20, 2008Hey high school teachers! Are your students interested in the brain?
Who isn't?
Three winners will win all-expense-paid trips to present their work in a poster session in Seattle at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology. Their teachers get to come too! I can tell you, Seattle is a fun place to visit.
Low tide at Golden Gardens, July 2008
Plus, three student winners will get $1000 in cash in addition to the trip.
Find out more at www.aan.com/achieve.
gregladen | September 19, 2008 Gustavus The Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College, naturally.
Gustavus Adolphus was the king of Sweden and founder of the Swedish Empire from the age of seventeen until he his death at the age of 37, in 1632. He looked, as a testosterone-ridden teenager, at vast unconquered lands, at his large and experienced army, and noticing that he was in charge of everything, made a run at taking over the world. He left Sweden with his army and never looked back.
Meanwhile, well, a couple of centuries later, Alfred Nobel was busy inventing TNT and establishing the Nobel Prizes for…
clock | September 18, 2008From today's Carrboro Citizen:
Next week, Sep 24-30, is "Take a Child Outside Week," and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences has planned some specific activities to promote awareness (www.naturalsciences.org).
A visit to the Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh begins with awareness on the outside. Along the half-block-long north side of the museum facing Jones Street, there is a wild garden in dramatic contrast to the strictly regimented lawn and shrub monoculture of the North Carolina Legislature across the street.
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Every week should be "Take a Child…
tsmith | September 18, 2008This started out in the comments to Janet's conundrum about what to do regarding her child's upcoming science fair:
I'm very committed to the idea that a science fair project is the kind of thing a kid should control, from start to finish -- conceiving the project, formulating some clear questions and some promising strategies for answering them, doing the experiments and making the observations, adjusting the strategies as necessary, setting up more experiments, looking at the results, figuring out what they might mean, flagging the questions that remain unanswered, and then figuring out how…
clock | September 17, 2008Not in my back yard!
It appears that some people are, erm, a little behind the times down in Brunswick County. That dog will not hunt, though, as it has no legal legs to run on, as PZ explains - it's even less sophisticated than what the Dover board tried to do.
clock | September 17, 2008From SCONC:
Wednesday, Sept. 17
6-7:30 p.m.
SCONC monthly meeting at BRITE
Please join us as we visit BRITE -- the Golden LEAF Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise -- at NC Central University in Durham. (http://brite.nccu.edu) David Kroll, SCONC member, blogger and chairman of pharmaceutical science at Central, will be our host. We'll tour BRITE's 52,000 square foot laboratory and classroom facility where students train with scientific equipment and instrumentation found in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, meet some faculty, and talk about biotech drug…
gregladen | September 16, 2008I. The Mitosis Cycle by Numbuh4
Best Cell Movie Ever by Jman1547
AP PKU Biology Project by prometheusjptr
Don't just vote, tell us why. Dpeak to details. is the science good/bad, how is the acting, did you like the sound track, etc. Did you laugh, did you cry, did you learn?
clock | September 15, 2008
First, there was the First NC Science Blogging Conference. Then, there was the Second NC Science Blogging Conference. And yes, we will have the Third one - renamed ScienceOnline'09 to better reflect the scope of the meeting: this time bigger and better than ever.
ScienceOnline'09 will be held Jan. 16-18, 2009 at the Sigma Xi Center in Research Triangle Park, NC.
Please join us for this free three-day event to explore science on the Web. Our goal is to bring together scientists, bloggers, educators, students, journalists, writers, publishers, Web developers and others to discuss,…
clock | September 13, 2008Everything about the Science in the 21st Century conference at Perimeter Institute can be found here.
gregladen | September 12, 2008Life Science Teachers: Take special note!
This is not yet an error in the mainstream press, but there is an error afoot, currently represented in the widely read slashdot, which I imagine will propagate. The purpose of this post is to alert you to this problem and prepare you for the occasion when you run into a wackaloon creationist waving their arms around and screaming "Carbon dating does not work! It's been proven." This story also has a Global Warming Denialism component.
What I'm going to do here is give you the basic facts, then the misinterpreted text.
We start with the basic…
clock | September 12, 2008From SCONC:
Thursday, Sept. 25
11:30 a.m - 1 p.m
(Free lunch if you're early)
Lecture: "Shaking Up Computer History: Finding the Women of ENIAC"
Historian, computer programmer, telecommunications lawyer, and film producer Kathy Kleiman will speak about the women who programmed the first all-electronic programmable computer, ENIAC, over sixty years ago. Sponsored by Duke University's Office of the Provost, Office of Information Technology, Women in Science and Engineering, and RENCI.
Bryan Center, Von Canon A/B/C, Duke
gregladen | September 11, 2008The Minnesota Science Standards are currently in the process of review and updating. This is what the governor of Minnesota thinks. He's wrong about the "local" thing. He is such a ball-less ass. Oh, I so wish he was in Palin's position. Maybe.
If you are in Minnesota and want to provide your feedback on the standards, and you are not Tim Pawlenty, please click here. If you ARE Tim Pawlenty, bite me.
clock | September 11, 2008From SCONC:
Wednesday, Sept. 24
Noon, with free lunch
Sigma Xi pizza lunch with Anne Yoder, director of the Duke University Lemur Center: "Historical biogeography of Madagascar: using genes to study the evolution of an island."
3106 E. Hwy 54, RTP
clock | September 10, 2008Vedran continues to spread the Openness in Serbia:
"Anglo-American School Belgrade, a small private school in Belgrade, started its academic year with an opening ceremony celebrating the joy of learning.
Teachers who gathered on the first day of school learned about the intention of the school management to offer them a number of links to Open Access repositories and Open Access RSS feed aggregators for use in educational practice. Teachers learned about the freedom of knowledge and, with great enthusiasm, started to explore a variety of resources of information in order to enrich lectures…
clock | September 10, 2008From SCONC:
Monday, Sept. 22
5:30 - 7:00 PM
Lecture: "Hot, Flat and Crowded"
New York Times columnist and Pulitzer-Prize winning author Thomas Friedman will discuss his new book on the technology needed to address the energy and climate crisis and how America can be a leader in the "Green Revolution."
Information: Karen Kemp 919-613-7394
Page Auditorium, Duke