Teaching and Learning
greengabbro | October 10, 2008There is still no official word from Seed about matching funds and/or prize drawings for the Donors Choose Challenge. However, Janet has posted a list of individual ScienceBloggers' incentives here. Donating to another Scibling's challenge might not contribute to the glory of the geoblogosphere, but it will contribute to education.
If I weren't trying to win bragging rights, I would claim that the contribution to education is what matters. But really, pretending that bragging rights aren't important is just sour grapes from an ethicist whose readers do not share her commitment to charity.…
greengabbro | October 1, 2008I've seen the geoblogosphere periodically erupt in harrumphing about the way geology is treated (and by "treated" we usually mean "ignored") in K-12 education. Well, now's our chance to fix that. Budget cuts and the No Child Left Behind Act mean that science is getting squeezed out of elementary school classrooms. Teachers know that their students love science, and are determined to keep them engaged, but they don't have the resources they need.
That's where you come in.
Donors Choose is a nonprofit organization designed to help you help schools tackle the projects you think are important.…
jstemwedel | September 30, 2008I suspect I'm late to the party on this one, but I just had occasion to check out The Periodic Table of Videos produced at the University of Nottingham. It's a collection of 118 short videos (ranging in length from approximately one to ten minutes each), one for each of the elements currently in the Periodic Table of the Elements.
I did not watch all 118 of them, but the ones that I did watch covered, among other things:
What mercury has to do with doorbells.
What molybdenum has to do with beans.
What sulfur has to do with Silly Putty.
What lead has to do with submarines.
What fluorine *…
jstemwedel | September 29, 2008You know how graduate students are always complaining that their stipends are small compared to the cost of living? It seems that some graduate students find ways to supplement that income ... ways that aren't always legal. For example, from this article in the September 8, 2008 issue of Chemical & Engineering News [1]:
Jason D. West, a third-year chemistry graduate student at the University of California, Merced, was arraigned last month on charges of conspiring to manufacture methamphetamine, manufacturing methamphetamine, and possessing stolen property. West allegedly stole…
jstemwedel | September 18, 2008Back in June, I wrote a post examining the Hellinga retractions. That post, which drew upon the Chemical & Engineering News article by Celia Henry Arnaud (May 5, 2008) [1], focused on the ways scientists engage with each other's work in the published literature, and how they engage with each other more directly in trying to build on this published work. This kind of engagement is where you're most likely to see one group of scientists reproduce the results of another -- or to see their attempts to reproduce these results fail. Given that reproducibilty of results is part of what…
jstemwedel | September 18, 2008The elder Free-Ride offspring, having entered fourth grade this year, will be participating in the school science fair in the spring. The elder Free-Ride offspring is very enthusiastic about the whole science fair thing.
Meanwhile, I'm having a very hard time.
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…
jstemwedel | July 30, 2008You've probably already heard the news last week that a study published in Science indicates that the gender gap between girls and boys in mathematical performance may be melting faster than the polar ice caps. The study, "Gender Similarities Characterize Math Performance" by Janet S. Hyde et al., appears in the July 25, 2008 issue of Science (behind a paywall). [1]
Hyde et al. revisit results of a meta-analysis published in 1990 (J. S. Hyde, E. Fennema, S. Lamon, Psychol. Bull. 107, 139 (1990).) that found negligible gender differences in math ability in the general population but…
jstemwedel | July 27, 2008Reading the comments on my post and Chad's post about the different societal attitudes towards humanities and arts and math and science (especially in terms of what "basic" knowledge a well-educated person ought to have), I get the feeling that some interesting assumptions are at play. Since I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, I'm just going to lay out some of the hypotheses that have occurred to me as I've read through these discussions:
Math and science are objectively harder (and/or require greater intelligence to learn) than humanities and arts.
While math and science do not…
jstemwedel | July 26, 2008Today Chad has an interesting post about attitudes among academics toward math and science versus the humanities and arts. The general attitude Chad sees on display in his academic milieu is that a gappy knowledge of art history or music or literature is something to be embarrassed about, but when it comes to innumeracy or scientific ignorance, intellectuals have no shame.
Chad writes:
Intellectuals and academics are just assumed to have some background knowledge of the arts, and not knowing those things can count against you. Ignorance of math and science is no obstacle, though. I have…
jstemwedel | July 25, 2008Sure, we still have about a week of July left, but those days are getting shorter and soon the classrooms will be filling up again.
Which means that it's a pretty good time for public school teachers (in the U.S.*) to start thinking about what they'd like to accomplish in those classrooms, and whether submitting a classroom project proposal to DonorsChoose could help them secure the funds to make exciting ideas into real educational experiences.
Before the students are lining up outside the classroom, check out the DonorsChoose blog, which includes:
Tips for putting together successful…
jstemwedel | July 9, 2008Finally, here is the long awaited fourth part in my three part series examining the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology Ethics Education Committee response to the allegations of scientific misconduct against Spencer Lucas and co-workers. Part 3 was a detailed examination of the "best practices" document (PDF) issued by this committee. In this post, I make a brief foray into the conversations paleontologists have been having online about their understanding of the accepted practices in their field.
As these conversations are ongoing (and some of them are happening on listservs to which I do…
jstemwedel | July 8, 2008
I had my kids with me at my office and needed to keep them occupied for a small chunk of time while I attended to business.
The younger offspring immediately called dibs on the "Celebrating Chemistry" markerboard.
The elder offspring, creeping up on 9 years old, asked plaintively, "What can I do?"
I scanned my office bookshelves. Given that I am trying to minimize the number of frustrating parent-teacher conferences in the coming school year, I passed right by the Nietzsche. After a moment's hesitation, I pulled down my copy of David Z. Albert's Quantum Mechanics and Experience.…
greengabbro | June 24, 2008 I've been reading The Design of Everyday Things, which I recommend as a useful and interesting way of thinking about all sorts of minor frustrations in daily life. It's also applicable to teaching - I've definitely noticed many student problems that have more to do with misunderstanding the nature and purpose of the assignment, than with misunderstanding the concepts involved. I was blown away when I realized that not everyone automatically interprets an expression like "Nc(M)" to mean a quantity Nc that is a function of a variable M, but apparently a dedicated mathphobe in the California…
greengabbro | June 18, 2008A reader named Amanda recently wrote me, asking for some advice:
I graduated from NYU in 2007 and have been working in LA as an assistant, but I'm thinking about going back to college and getting a second degree. My first one is a BFA in screenwriting, so naturally I want to compliment that with a BS in geology in order to be a high school science teacher. Here's the thing: as obsessed as I am with geology, I'm terrified of actually studying it. I'm great with concepts, and applying things I've studied to real life.
Problem is, I'm terrrible at any level of math higher than algebra. Because…
jstemwedel | May 22, 2008Another dispatch from grading Hell (fourth circle), in which the reader gains some insight into circumstances which evoke my sympathy, and circumstances which do not.
I have this pedagogical strategy where I try to make my students think more than they have to write. One way this strategy manifests itself is in how I deal with case studies on finals exams.
We've spent the whole semester working up case study responses following a standard plan of attack -- identifying the interested parties in the case, the potential consequences for those interested parties if the protagonist in the case…
jstemwedel | May 21, 2008I am in grading Hell. I expect to be here until at least Memorial Day (Monday), and possibly through Tuesday. (Does that mean I'm actually in grading Purgatory? Please advise.)
Anyway, in a private communication, PhysioProf asked,
As you get grumpier from grading, do you grade harsher?
If I did, that would be an unfortunate situation for those whose papers I get to last, wouldn't it?
Thankfully for my students, I make serious efforts to apply a uniform level of harshness (or leniency) across the whole pool I'm grading. Here are some of my strategies:
Invest some time in formulating…
greengabbro | May 19, 2008My committee has my thesis draft.
We're getting over a heat wave here in Berkeley. My office is neither air-conditioned nor particularly well shaded and ventilated, so I've been hanging out in my nice cool living room (not air-conditioned, but protected from the yellow face), putting my files in order, catching up on laundry, assembling alternate resumes and writing my acknowledgments.
I imagine committees sitting on drafts as adopting the posture of a brooding hen. That's funnier for some committee members than for others.
My ability to actually write the acknowledgments is limited by the…
jstemwedel | May 15, 2008The classroom I taught in this semester was fairly hot. Even when it was chilly outside, the temperature in the classroom was uncomfortably warm.
Of course, I think it might have been worse for me (pacing in front of the whiteboard, trying to keep things lively) than for the students most of the time. But today, we had the final exam in that room. And unlike most class meetings, every single chair in the room was filled.
And we experienced record highs, temperature-wise.
So, how hot was it? I give you the testimony of one of the students taking the final today:
"I blame any mistakes on…
jstemwedel | May 14, 2008There's an article in Access (the glossy magazine put out by our School of Journalism and Mass Communication) about why so few of our students manage to get their degrees in four years. Part of it has to do with the fact that most of our students work -- many the equivalent of full time (or more) -- and many have long commutes to get here. As well, many who start out taking courses at community colleges discover that some of those credits don't transfer.
But a lot of the challenge, it turns out, has to do with lining up all the classes to fulfill all the major and general education…
jstemwedel | May 6, 2008More than a month ago William the Coroner tagged me. It is not just that I am slow; this meme is challenging!
Not mush, methodology.
A surprising number of people seem to think being ethical amounts to not being an inherently evil person.
I am passionate about teaching my students that making ethical decisions involves moving beyond gut feelings and instincts. It means understanding how your decisions impact others, and considering the ways your interests and theirs intersect. It means thinking through possible impacts of the various choices available to you. It means understanding…