Scientists are problem solvers. Sometimes I have an interesting question to ask, but can’t immediately think of how to design an experiment that will clearly address the question. That’s a problem to be solved. And sometimes we get results that are quite different from those we expected to get, and then we have to figure out why that happened; sometimes we find that one or more of our assumptions is wrong, and that can lead to some very exciting discoveries. Read More→
In early May I’ll be running a full-day workshop on “scientific communication” at the 6th Annual World Fisheries Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. Try not to feel too sorry for me.
The longer I teach, the more I realize that teaching students how to think logically and clearly, and to get that thinking on paper so that it’s logical, clear, concise, and convincing to readers is one of the most important skills we can pass along, or at least encourage, in our students. It’s hard to imagine a career in which such skills aren’t very, very helpful, not only in keeping a job and advancing, but in getting the position in the first place. And of course, in science, we have a hard time getting our papers published, or our grants funded, unless we can make a convincing case for our work. Read More→
I spent some time a few weekends ago going over photosynthesis with one of my step-daughters; she’s in the 9th grade taking honor’s biology. She knew all the details: where the oxygen gas comes from, what the role of NADPH and ATP are, where those molecules come from, what goes on in the grana of the chloroplast and what goes on in the stroma, what goes on in Photosystem I, what goes on in Photosytem II… all those details. Read More→
For the past several weeks I’ve been part of a very interesting conversation on one of the LinkedIn groups that I belong to, on the pros and cons of homework and tutoring.
The homework issue revolves around who actually ends up doing the homework — the student or a parent — and whether homework is at all useful if the student hasn’t first learned the necessary tools or concepts in class. Read More→
One would expect parents to be active and enthusiastic participants in their children’s education. However, many parents either leave education entirely up to the schools or, if they are home schooling, are not as active as they could be. It’s disturbing to hear comments along the lines of “I love this curriculum because I can just give it to my daughter to work on by herself,” but hear them we do. Read More→
A few weeks ago I visited a 3rd grade class in the Cambridge public schools in Massachusetts and did an experiment with the kids on shell selection by marine hermit crabs. Each pair of kids had a hermit crab to first name, and then to work with.
Before we got the study started I took some questions from the children. All of the questions were good, but some of them were great, and some were really surprising.
One child asked, “How do they pee?” Read More→
One of the biggest problems with being a teacher, or a parent, or both, is that we can’t run any controlled studies on our kids.
In a well-controlled experiment in which you are testing the effect of something on something else, you always include some individuals—your control individuals—that don’t get the treatment. In this month’s SuperSpark, for example, we want to know if hermit crabs will preferentially choose or avoid shells that have holes in them. But the hermit crabs in our study might just be unusually reluctant to move into any shell on that particular day, or might be unusually eager to move into any shell that day. And so, to do such this study we need to include a treatment that includes shells without holes in them, so that we have a normal behavior to compare with how the hermit crabs respond to shells with holes. Read More→
Today I’ll muse about something a little more controversial.
In the last few years we’ve heard many suggestions that scientists have been fudging their data about climate change.
Rick Perry, for example, has apparently said that “A substantial number of scientists [have] manipulated data to keep the money rolling in.” Read More→
“The quantity of students’ homework is a lot less important than its quality. And evidence suggests that as of now, homework isn’t making the grade…Enriching children’s classroom learning requires making homework not shorter or longer, but smarter.”
Annie Murphy Paul, 2011, from the New York Times
What does it mean, to make homework “smarter”? To me, a good homework assignment is integrative. It asks students to make connections between the things they’re learning about, and draws on the skills they’ve acquired previously. A good homework assignment should allow students to put what they’ve learned to use, in an interesting way. And if they can enjoy themselves while they’re doing that, well so much the better. Read More→
Both Jan and Tony have long been concerned about the way that science is usually taught, with its almost exclusive emphasis on memorizing large numbers of facts and technical terms, and learning a variety of standard techniques. That’s not what makes science fun, or interesting, to a scientist! Asking questions that have never been asked before. Designing a clever experiment or study. Pulling a convincing story from the data and telling that story clearly and convincingly to others. Discovering something new. That’s what scientists enjoy doing! Read More→
