February 2009

Electron flow vs. current flow

February 27, 2009

I just got this question from a teacher on Webconnect (which lets teachers ask science questions): “In the past when I taught electricity I always understood that it flows from the negative terminal to the positive.   The CPO books and materials have the opposite – from positive to negative.  This doesn’t make sense to me [...]

Read the full article →

The science of attractiveness

February 27, 2009

A recent volume of Science News had a feature article about attraction and the evolutionary basis of our conception of what makes someone beautiful.  As writer Elizabeth Quill says (I love this quote) — “For humans, there is osmething captivating and unforgettable about the arrangement of two balls, a point and a horizontal slide on [...]

Read the full article →

The burden of proof: What does education research really tell us?

February 25, 2009

UPDATE: I’ve just posted a new article about how educational innovations do (and don’t) spread around. Do active learning strategies work? This article — and especially the lively discussion in the comments — argue about why college instructors aren’t using active learning strategies, and whether there is evidence that such strategies work.  He says: People [...]

Read the full article →

Books of classroom demonstrations (A Demo a Day)

February 23, 2009

Here is a very nice review (from a teacher’s listserv I’m on) about what sounds like a great book for the chemistry teacher: A good book about Chemistry for the middle school and high school:  “A Demo a Day, A Year of Chemical Demonstrations”, by Gross, Bilash and Koob.  It has “Separating Metallic Iron from [...]

Read the full article →

Body metrics: Helping students learn the metric system

February 21, 2009

Students really struggle with the metric system.  I know I still do.  I have a rough iea of how long an inch is, and how long a foot is, but I don’t have a great sense of how long a centimeter or meter is.  In this episode of Science Teaching Tips, TI staff educator Lori [...]

Read the full article →

Worst food of 2009

February 21, 2009

I’ve been meaning to post this tidbit from Yahoo News for a while.  You want a jaw-dropper?  Read this! The Worst Food of 2009 Baskin Robbins Large Chocolate Oreo Shake 2,600 calories 135 g fat (59 g saturated fat, 2.5 g trans fats) 263 g sugars 1,700 mg sodium We didn’t think anything could be [...]

Read the full article →

Superglue a snowflake

February 19, 2009

Hey, wow, I just read this wonderful do-it-yourself experiment.  A lot of people liked my previous post on the myth that no two snowflakes are alike.  Here’s a way to preserve a snowflake forever using superglue. It turns out that the reason superglue bonds things so quickly is that it’s made of a bunch of [...]

Read the full article →

Embargoes and an overinflated sense of self-importance

February 14, 2009

There’s something quietly thrilling about going to an embargoed news conference.  Even if it’s no huge shakes in the grand scheme of things (this one was on new research on the science of kissing!), there’s just this fun sense that you know something that the rest of the world isn’t allowed to know yet.  Of [...]

Read the full article →

Bloggers unite at AAPT!

February 14, 2009

On a totally random note, I had my first sciencegeekgirl hallway recognition moment, from a faithful reader, Danielle, who writes Urban Science Adventures — a really beautiful blog helping young people explore ecology and environmental science from their backyard.  We tend to think there’s no naturalism to be done in urban environments — not true!  [...]

Read the full article →

New ways to assess your students’ learning

February 12, 2009

Why is it that we make tests multiple choice, when the world isn’t multiple choice?  We’re not an industrial society anymore, where following directions is the key to success.  Instead, we’re problem-solvers, and knowledge is the important commodity.  But our education system hasn’t quite caught up with this shift.  We’re still testing our students like [...]

Read the full article →

More crazy ideas

February 12, 2009

Look at this picture.  What will happen to the balloon when we push the cart forward, and why?  (Don’t watch the video first — come up with ideas and reasons first). Make as many predictions, and reasons, that you can, even if you don’t believe them all. Remember that coming up with the right explanation [...]

Read the full article →

Explanations are important

February 12, 2009

So try this.  Instead of trying to come up with the right answer (and rewarding that), require students to come up with 3 “crazy ideas” for what is happening .  A crazy idea (for the earlier experiment with the horizontal and vertical motion) could be that there’s a magnet in the cart.  Or that it [...]

Read the full article →

Do your students have trouble with the normal force?

February 12, 2009

A lot of students will say that if you put a bowling ball on the table, there’s no “normal force” – the table is just “in the way.”  So try this first, says Eugenia Etkina. Have them hold a bowling ball and a tennis ball. Now draw a picture, using arrows, showing what their hand [...]

Read the full article →

What do you believe about how people learn?

February 12, 2009

[Session:  Eugenia Etkina - Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK)] What you believe about how people learn, and about the role of teachers and students is in the classroom, WILL affect your teaching. For example, do you believe that a student misconception is something that needs to be eradicated with a clear example that clears up the [...]

Read the full article →

Don’t just teach teachers how to teach — teach them how to teach PHYSICS

February 12, 2009

[Session:  Eugenia Etkina - Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK)] There are some major problems with the current approach to teacher education in this country.  There is a strong sense that all you need to teach is to know the content.  That’s why a graduate student can get their PhD and then go on to teach as [...]

Read the full article →

Liveblogging from AAPT

February 12, 2009

Yup, it’s happening again, I’m blogging from the American Association of Physics Teachers conference.  I don’t have internet access from the sessions, so you’ll get my posts as a series of rapid-fire posts all at once. So stay tuned for a series of posts!  The American Association for the Advancement of Science conference is right [...]

Read the full article →

Classroom Clickers and the Cost of Technology

February 11, 2009

There’s been a quite interesting (and sometimes vitriolic) exchange of ideas on the usefulness (and cost) of clickers in college classrooms, in which I recently took part.  A “clicker,” for those of you who haven’t heard of them yet, is just a little device which lets an instructor take a real-time poll of the class.  [...]

Read the full article →

Let’s Find Out!

February 10, 2009

We’re up to Episode 67 of the Science Teaching Tips podcast! Woo hoo, over a year of science education podcasts!  This one is with one of the most brilliant folks at the Exploratorium (and that’s saying a lot) — Dr. Thomas Humphrey makes my brain spin.  And it’s because he’s just so interested in so [...]

Read the full article →

Dr. Steph has a new podcast series!

February 5, 2009

I’ve got a new podcast series out, and this one is my best yet.  I’ve been hired by the wonderful folks at the National Science Digital Library (they provide a central depot for great digital media for teaching science) to create a podcast for elementary educators on using polar science in their teaching.  We (me [...]

Read the full article →

Downloading videos from YouTube (for schools with blocked internet access)

February 3, 2009

I’ve been meaning to write a post forEVah about all the wonderful ways there are to download YouTube (and other) videos to watch offline. This is particularly helpful if you’re at a school with blocked internet access so you can’t show streaming video, but it’s also just useful if you want to archive a certain [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries