Science Education
sporte | October 13, 2006Yikes, I've spilled some DHMO on my hands! What do I do now?
Do you know the truth about DHMO?
Look at this web site and tell me if you still want to go swimming.
sporte | October 13, 2006In last week's episode, your assignment was to think of an interesting plant trait and find a description about a gene, related to that trait, by searching PubMed.
Since coming up with an interesting trait might be a challenge for some people, let's think about how to approach this step.
Picking your trait. If you're having a hard time thinking of a trait, it might be helpful think about where plants grow, why we grow plants, and why it might be hard or easy for plants to grow.
Some of the environmental factors that affect plant growth are: climate, soil composition, nutrient…
clock | October 12, 2006This is what I do and this is how I think about what I do (from February 13, 2006)...
I teach Biology at a community college, but not on the main campus. Instead, I teach at a satellite campus dedicated to adult education. Those are all accelerated courses, which means that classes meet for about three hours once a week, either in the evening or on Saturday, and the classes last five, eight or twelve weeks.
Biology lasts eight weeks, although I teach the Lab over four weeks, doubling the face-time each week - that way more gets done, students are happier, and if an experiment does not work…
sporte | October 11, 2006When does a little artistic license go a little too far?
We don't always expect the truth in science journalism imagery. We've all seen the newspaper pictures of the famous scientist wearing a lab coat and gazing intently at a gel, looking through a microscope, or contemplating an agar plate streaked with lovely colonies of bacteria. Some of us find these pictures pretty funny, especially if we know that the subject of the photo hasn't run a gel in the past twenty years and never wears a lab coat unless they have to give a lecture to medical students.
Okay, perhaps the glossified,…
sporte | October 11, 2006No one in a life science-related industry or research lab, in Western Washington, is safe at this time of year.
Surely, you're joking!
No, seriously, there are teachers and science enthusiasts everywhere looking to sign you up! And don't call me "Shirley."
Sign me up?
That's right, it's time to prepare for the
BIOTECH EXPO
This is the Western Washington version of the science Olympics! Those science enthusiasts are out scouting for anyone who does something related to science or a life-science industry to act as an advisor (sort a mentor with a lower committment level) to high school…
sporte | October 10, 2006Why is an eye, an eye and a nose, a nose? Why do different cells create different kinds of tissues when all the cells in a single organism start out with the same set of instructions (aka DNA)?
Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes is a learning activity that helps students discover, for themselves, that certain genes are expressed in some tissues but not in others. My goal here, as part of our NSF-funded project, is to show how students can learn biology by doing science with bioinformatics tools.
If you already know all about ESTs, you might want to jump ahead and read about the activity. If…
sporte | October 9, 2006How can you extend a blood typing activity with an active learning approach?
The blood typing lab, part I. What went wrong? and why?
Blood typing part II. Can this laboratory be saved?
The learning objective: To understand the inheritance of blood type.
In this activity students:
1. Identify which blood type a person would have based on their alleles,
2. Observe the alleles that an offspring would have and identify the blood types of the offspring,
3. Use the observations and rules gleaned from step 2 to predict the blood types of other offspring, when given the genotypes of their…
sporte | October 7, 2006The blood typing lab, part I. What went wrong? and why?Blood typing part II. Can this laboratory be saved?
Those wacky non-major Zoo students are at it again! And this time they drew blood!
Mike's undergraduate students learned about blood typing, a common tool of detectives and real crime TV. They did the classic blood typing lab, and by golly, they refused to parrot the correct answer on the test! The nerve! After all, he pretty much told them the answer and even used the exact same wording that was used on the test question. Why didn't the students just memorize it and regurgitate…
sporte | October 6, 2006Many science experiments are carefully thought out. Often, the procedures we follow have been thoroughly tested. We measure everything we can at every point that we can, so that we can determine if a procedure, like isolating DNA, is working properly and if the procedure doesn't work, we can determine what went wrong. When the procedure is done, we analyze our data to determine if our experiments really gave us an answer. Then, we present our data to others, in venues like lab meetings and conferences, subjecting our work to review to the toughest critics we can find.
Every act of…
tsmith | October 6, 2006I've mentioned frequently how my kids are fascinated with bugs and things creepy-crawly, whether it's spiders, giant moths, or butterflies. On that topic, via Bitch PhD comes this article from yesterday's New York Times on monarchs, their endangered habitat, and what just about anyone can do to help out.
(More after the jump...)
Pinching a bright orange butterfly in one hand and an adhesive tag the size of a baby's thumbnail in the other, the entomologist bent down so his audience could watch the big moment.
"You want to lay it right on this cell here, the one shaped like a mitten," the…
sporte | October 5, 2006Many of you might take this for granted, and I know it seems amazing today, but I when first started teaching, our access to scientific literature was pretty limited. I could go to the UW and use Grateful Med to search Medline, but we didn't have anything like it at my college and web browsers, like Mosaic, had yet to be invented. So, when I first started giving workshops for teachers on biotechnology and the world of the web, many were quite surprised to find out about the PubMed database.
Since PubMed is (to me) one of the best resources to ever come along, I think we should explore it a…
clock | October 3, 2006
Just to make sure everyone knows where it is going to be, and while still early in the game, we decided to change the name of the conference into 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. So, go to the main page to download new logos and flyers. The t-shirt is also in the making...
clock | October 2, 2006
A science (and medicine) blogging conference, the first of its kind, is now officially announced for January 20th 2007. What can you do?
1. First, go to the conference wiki and look around to see what it is all about.
2. Help to spread the word by blogging about it. If you do, you can use these cool logos as well as this Technorati tag.
3. Download this flyer (pdf), print a couple of copies and post them outside your office/lab door or down the hall on a bulletin board, or wherever else you think it is appropriate.
4. Use the word of mouth or e-mail to tell your friends about it. Tell…
clock | October 1, 2006Welcome to the thirteenth edition of the Teaching Carnival where we discuss all things academic, from teaching to college life, from HigherEd policy to graduate school research. Last time, I separated the Two Cultures in a way. This time I want to keep them mixed - both sides of campus often deal with the same issues anyway. There are tons of links, so let's start right away...
SATs and getting into college
Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles commented on the top SAT essays published by the NYTimes. He argued that writing a decent essay in 25 minutes with a prompt not known in advance is…
tsmith | September 29, 2006Via Dean and Science, Just Science comes this story about a new group trying to get ID into class in the UK:
Parents are being encouraged to challenge their children's science teachers over what they are explaining as the origins of life.
An organisation called Truth in Science has also sent resource packs to all UK secondary school science departments.
It promotes the idea of intelligent design - that there was an intelligence behind the creation of the universe.
On their website, Truth in Science notes that they've already sent " a mailing to all Secondary School and College Heads of…
clock | September 28, 2006First posted on December 12, 2005 on Science And Politics, then re-posted on January 16, 2006 on The Magic School Bus and most definitely worth reposting again here...
The new article on PLoS, Evolution for Everyone: How to Increase Acceptance of, Interest in, and Knowledge about Evolution by David Sloan Wilson, describes a successful experiment of teaching evolution to a broad segment of the student population at Bighampton College (the paper looks nicer in PDF format).
Here are just a couple of snippets:The main problem with accepting evolution involves implications, not facts. Threatening…
sporte | September 27, 2006Over the summer, a few ScienceBloggers were pondering the question of why students disappear from science courses, never to return.
James Hrynshyn wrote that we're teaching youngsters the wrong thing. Zuska boldy pointed out the things that many of us think but don't say out loud. Chad Orzel noted that science is hard and shared his thoughts about why students leave. Stein Sigurdsson, on the other other hand, proposed that students leave because science is not hard enough.
Just this week, ScienceBlogger Mike Dunford provided part of the answer to the disappearing student question, when…
terrasig | September 26, 2006Dr Bruce Alberts, recently departed president of the US National Academy of Sciences and Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF, just spoke this morning at a symposium celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Duke University School of Medicine. The overall program is incredible, with four Nobel laureates in three days, plus a number of Lasker Award winners including one of this year's (Linda Grieder).
I'm compelled to put up this quick post on Dr Alberts' talk because of his ambitious plan for improving scientific literacy of the US and the scientific prospects for grad students and…
sporte | September 26, 2006Razib inspired me to share some of the story behind why white people are considered derivatives.
Reposted from the Classic Digital Bio.
No red herrings, here! Lamason et. al. found a single gene that controls human skin color while studying pigmentation in zebra fish (1).
These zebra fish had an unusual golden color that turned out to be an important clue. Lamason and collaborators found that the golden zebra fish lost their normal color because of a mutation in the slc24a5 gene. When the zebra fish have the mutant form, they produce fewer melanosomes.
A short language lesson
Fewer…
clock | September 24, 2006Virtual reality, computer simulations and video games are all over the place these days. See some innovative uses, e.g., in tech education, in teaching immunology and in figuring out the dynamics of drug activation by discovery of Magenstrasse in the stomach.