Science Education
clock | April 26, 2007I am teaching my BIO101 again starting this Monday. The class is very small, so the discussions and student presentations will not last very long. Thus, I will have extra time at the end of each lecture. This can be a good time to show some videos. So, if you know of good movies available online or that can be ordered as CDs or VHS tapes, let me know in the comments (check the link for the topics I need to cover). I have a couple of ancient tapes whcih will do in a jiffy, but I am looking for more recent and better stuff. Keep in mind that this is VERY basic biology. Thus, the cool…
clock | April 23, 2007RPM found this on The Disgruntled Chemist's blog: the most awesome Rube-Goldberg machine I have ever seen. Much better than the one built by the Mythbusters guys. Just follow this link and watch the movie!
RPM complains that it does not appear to actually do anything, but, who cares? The thing is so intricate! Think of it this way - this is a metaphor for a cell: the (circadian) clock sounds an alarm and as a result a large number of molecular interactions occur resulting, in the end, in the opening of the curtain an ion channel.
I have already mentioned here, here and here that a Rube-…
clock | April 15, 2007In the latest dust-up over framing science, an unfortunate frame is emerging that I want to nip in the bud, that 'appeasers' in the big culture war against religion are the same as 'framers' in the current debate, and likewise that 'anti-framers' and 'vocal atheists' are the same people. It is a result of confusion, and I want to clear it up right now.
You know that I am strongly in the Dawkins/Myers camp in the fight against religion:
Dawkins, Harris and Dennett are changing the landscape of the discourse, forming an environment in which it is possible to talk about atheism and religion on…
clock | April 13, 2007Truth, All the Truth, and Nothing but the Truth.
You are all familiar with the phrase. It actually figures prominently (though unspoken until now) in this whole discussion about framing science.
Nobody - absolutely nobody - ever suggests that anything but The Truth should be used when communicating science or communicating about science.
The wisdom of framing is that 'All the Truth' can be omitted, as too much information puts off the target audience in some cases, and is thus counterproductive.
The self-styled Defenders Of The Truth insist that a) 'All The Truth' should never be omitted,…
clock | April 9, 2007Real Life (as well as the framing science debate) took too much of my time and energy and attention so I never got to posting this very inportant notice. I will just copy what Sharp Brains put up, but feel free to write your feedback both to me and to Alvaro:
What is the Brain Essay Student Contest?
A real-life experiment to connect high-school students and teachers of biology and psychology with science and psychology bloggers.
What will happen?
1) Essay submissions by May 10th, 2007: students (or teachers, with students' consent) can use the form below to submit 400-800 word essays on the…
clock | April 7, 2007The Bodies Exhibition is coming to The Streets at Southpoint in Durham.
My wife saw it last year in NYC. My daughter will probably be too squeamish for it, but I'll try to get my son to come with me.
Once I go....well, it is certainly a bloggable event.
clock | April 6, 2007My SciBlings Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet just published an article in 'Science' (which, considering its topic is, ironically, behind the subscription wall, but you can check the short press release) about "Framing Science"
Carl Zimmer, PZ Myers, Mike Dunford (also check the comments here), John Fleck, Larry Moran, Dietram Scheufele, Kristina Chew, Randy Olson, James Hrynyshyn, Paul Sunstone and Alan Boyle have, so far, responded and their responses (and the comment threads) are worth your time to read. Chris and Matt respond to some of them. Matt has more in-depth explanations here, here and…
evolgen | April 6, 2007GAME PREVIEW | PRESS CENTER
Yesterday's game between Corporate and Charles Darwin was a battle between free market capitalism and the greatest naturalist of all time. The Corporate team is loaded with the world's top pharmaceutical and chemical companies. Darwin is the author of important works such as On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. To find out who came out on top, click through below the fold.
Everyone expected Darwin to start out with a heavy dose of the Origin. And if he didn't come heavy with that, he'd bring The Descent of Man. But Chuck use neither in the opening…
clock | April 5, 20072007 TED Prize winner E.O. Wilson on TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talks:
As E.O. Wilson accepts his 2007 TED Prize, he makes a plea on behalf of his constituents, the insects and small creatures, to learn more about our biosphere. We know so little about nature, he says, that we're still discovering tiny organisms indispensable to life; and yet we're steadily, methodically, vigorously destroying nature. Wilson identifies five grave threats to biodiversity (a term he coined), and makes his TED wish: that we will work together on the Encyclopedia of Life, a web-based compendium of…
clock | April 5, 2007I was waiting until the last installment was up to post about this. Revere on Effect Measure took a recent paper about a mathematical model of the spread of anti-viral resistance and wrote a 16-part series leading the readers through the entire paper, from the title to the List of References and everything in between. While the posts are unlikely to garner many comments, this series will remain online as a valuable resource, something one can use to learn - or teach others - how a scientific paper is to be analyzed.
As you can see, it takes a lot of time to read a paper thoroughly. It also…
clock | April 5, 2007I think I will show this in class in May when I teach the evolution lecture again.
Reed adds some caveats I am sure to point out in the classroom.
Update: Watched it again. I think I'll stop the movie a moment before the first chimp appears. Until that moment the animation, though not 100% accurate, and quite oversimplified, is GREAT for a visceral understanding of evolution. We can debate neutral selection and population sizes, but that is what we do. For a regular citizen uninterested in science, this brief movie is sufficient to "grok" evolution. This is a great example of "visual…
jlynch | March 31, 2007Given the question, 'Is evolution well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community?', 48% of Americans say 'No'. Now, whatever about the "well-supported by evidence" clause (it is), evolution is "widely accepted" and even the anti-evolutionists admit it. Apparently nearly one in two Americans have been hit with the stupid-stick. Really, really hard.
(HT to whomever linked to me from Slashdot.)
sporte | March 31, 2007Science labs are not for all people.
I've always enjoyed teaching lab courses, so some of you might find it strange that I agree with some of the comments from Steve Gimbel and fellow Sb'ers on the questionable benefits of laboratory courses in introductory physics. But you see, I wasn't very impressed with the undergraduate physics labs that I took either. And with a little reminiscing, it's pretty easy to pick out example labs where the kindest description is "time-waster."
This wasn't true of all my lab courses. My biochemistry and microbiology lab courses were phenomenal, and, it's…
evolgen | March 30, 2007PRESS CENTER | UPDATED BRACKET
Early next week, the amorphous, indefinable entity that is Corporate will take on a man named Charles Robert Darwin in the third round of the Science Spring Showdown. That's right, we're down to sixteen teams, including the eleven seed Corporate and the seven seed Darwin. This match up of Chair Region powerhouses will be presented on evolgen. A preview of this potentially epic battle can be found below.
Some may say that Charles Darwin was a tentative man. They base this claim on the fact that Chuck waited twenty years from his first ideas on evolution by…
clock | March 30, 2007There is a growing, glowing discussion about the usefulness of college science labs that was started with an anti-lab post by Steve Gimbel and responded to, with various degrees of pro-lab sentiment by Janet Stemwedel, Chad, Chad again, Chad yet again, Razib, Jeremy and RPM and numerous commenters on all of their posts (also check older posts on the topic by Sean Carroll and Janet). Of course, I felt a need to chime in. I teach labs, after all (and I took many as a student as well).
The core of the problem is the very existence of the institution we call 'college'.
Let me explain.
There is…
evolgen | March 29, 2007Janet pointed me to a post at the Philosopher's Playground about doing away with laboratory courses in the science curriculum. Steve Gimbel, the philosopher doing the playing, teaches at Gettysburg College. He argues that the lab portions of science classes cause non-science majors to avoid those courses and not enroll in any science class not required for graduation. If science courses consisted of more theory and less labs (by theory he means lecture, and, by choosing that word, he indicates he doesn't have much experience in non-physics science courses where the lectures consist of more…
evolgen | March 28, 2007PRESS CENTER | UPDATED BRACKET
The folks that brought you the Second Round of the Octopus Region of the Science Spring Showdown (part 1, part 2) will be bringing you one of the marquee match ups of the third round. Those folks are us, and the place is here at evolgen. We're down to sixteen teams (some would even call this collection of teams "sweet"), which means there are eight games that will be played on the internets over the course of the next week.
We'll be playing host to a game from the Chair Region between Darwin and Corporate. That's right, we're delving into the Philosophy of…
clock | March 26, 2007Alvaro of Sharp Brains (in a comment here) links to a high-school student's science essay that he posted on his blog and asks:
Why couldn't we approach a number of websites where science teachers hang out and propose some kind of essay contest for high-school students, with winning essays published in our blogs?
What do you think?
evolgen | March 21, 2007SECOND ROUND PREVIEW | PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS
Welcome back to our coverage of the second round of the Science Spring Showdown. We had two great games yesterday, and another one finished earlier today. The final game of the round, between HIV and Psychology, is just wrapping up now; we'll bring you the result as soon as that one goes final.
Tom Ribosome: Earlier today, Phylogenetics took on Unipotent in one of the more non-traditional match ups. Coming off of games against classic rivals, Taxonomy and Totipotent, no one was sure what to expect when the tree builders and fated cells…