Communicating Science

Writing about starquakes and quantum cats

January 17, 2012

I haven’t been doing much straight science journalism lately, having gotten my grubby mitts deep into science education and education research and seemingly unable to extract them.  But recently I was contracted to write some research pieces for JILA (an institute of CU-Boulder and NIST that focuses a lot on atomic and molecular physics, among [...]

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Phylm: Make a film about physics!

January 8, 2012

Phylm /’film/ n. [physics + film] The fifth annual Phylm Prize is now open! Until May 13, anyone can enter a film — though students are especially encouraged — about physics. Year three’s winners were a set of students with the Special Relativity Rap. The second year was Science Made Fun about black holes (which [...]

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Portal to the Public: Connecting scientists to the masses through museums

November 28, 2011

In my past life as a science writer, I was particularly enamored of the idea of helping scientists to speak to “real people,” partially because I was the poor sucker on the other end of the phone trying to decipher the strange language that scientists were speaking.  Science journalists are really translators more than anything.  [...]

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Dance, dance your PhD

November 20, 2011

I love the Dance your PhD contest, in which doctoral students are invited to take the horrible monster that gobbled their life for 5+ years and interpret it through dance in a 5-minute video.  What better way to become a clear communicator? I was even more excited to see that one of my colleagues, and [...]

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The Art (and Science) of In-Class Questioning via Clickers (Learning About Teaching Physics podcast) #clickers

August 22, 2011

In this second episode of the podcast, I explore recent research on teaching with clickers and in-class questioning:  What techniques do teachers use to make maximal benefit of this teaching approach? Are “clickers” or “personal response systems” just the latest fad in education? Or is there solid research behind their use? In this episode we [...]

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Speaking of Physics: The art of science communication #aaptsm11

August 2, 2011

I just gave my invited talk at AAPT, on effective science communication.  The whole session was delightful — Becky Thompson from APS gave a rundown of the different types of evil geniuses portrayed in movies, Jacob Blickenstaff outlined the images of scientists in the Big Bang Theory, and Karen Williams looked at students’ views of [...]

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New podcast: Learning About Teaching Physics

July 28, 2011

This has actually been in the works for about a year, but I’m finally unveiling my brainchild of the past several years — a podcast to communicate physics education research to working teachers.  I’m calling it Learning About Teaching Physics, and our amazing local high school teacher Michael Fuchs is co-hosting it with me.  Here’s [...]

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The Psychology of Climate Change Communication

June 16, 2011

I’m increasingly interested in how education researchers can more effectively get their messages across, so that people act on these findings (see my post about my FFPERPS talk, Get the Word Out).   I’ve been writing a lot about climate change communication lately because climate change communicators face some of the same challenges — communication of [...]

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The importance of mental models

June 13, 2011

I wrote last week about how the metaphors we use in communication have a powerful effect on how the issue is framed and how people understand and/or are convinced by what we say. Part of the thing that is so powerful about metaphors is that they prime us to think about something in a certain [...]

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Communication and persuasion: The importance of metaphor and framing

June 6, 2011

I‘ve written here and here about climate and persuasion, and what this means for us as education reformers working to change the system from within.  Today I want to write about metaphor and framing. Framing is basically how you describe, or “frame” an issue — what is the issue, why is it important, what should [...]

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When arguments backfire: Climate change communication and persuasion

June 1, 2011

I wrote before about how skeptics of Obama’s birthright aren’t convinced by a flimsy slip of paper indicating his citizenship — that hitting a belief head-on with data generally doesn’t work.  Instead, arguments are more persuasive when they fit with someone’s previous mental models of how the world works.  Confronting a “birther” with Obama’s birth [...]

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Arguing against a denier: How to convince a die-hard

May 19, 2011

What does Obama’s birth certificate have to do with science education? A lot, it turns out. Check out this awesome post by FastCompany. Apparently, despite the fact that the birth certificate has been revealed, a lot of die-hard skeptics are still arguing that Obama is not native to the U.S. How can reasonable people firmly [...]

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Get the word out: Effective communication of physics education research

May 16, 2011

I recently gave a plenary talk at the Foundation and Frontiers of Physics Education Research – Puget Sound conference.  What an honor!  And very fun, because I got to talk about anything that I wanted to.  I’ve been wanting — for ages — to talk about the intersections that I see between science journalism and [...]

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Beautiful data… visualizing science!

April 24, 2011

I have been absent for too long — this time for a good cause:  Vacation!  Geekgirl enjoyed California and Vegas and anything not involving a computer for over a week.  It is a good experience to have at least once a year.  And in return, dear reader, I give you a nice long post.  Thank [...]

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Hook kids into science with music: “Songs from the science frontier”

March 25, 2011

I was just sent a charming CD to review — an album of music for elementary and middle-school age  kids about science by children’s songster Monty Harper.  This is an interesting album because it’s not just about the standard stuff — stars, rockets, DNA, dinosaurs (well, there is a dinosaur on there) but his songs [...]

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Phylm – make a film about physics!

March 23, 2011

Phylm /’film/ n. [physics + film] The fourth annual Phylm Prize is now open!  Until May 13, anyone can enter a film — though students are especially encouraged — about physics.  The first year’s winners were a set of students with the Special Relativity Rap.  The second year was Science Made Fun about black holes [...]

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Wikipedia as a training ground in science communication

January 11, 2011

I had this idea a while back — wouldn’t it be cool to use Wikipedia as an outlet for some of my urge to write about particular topics that I was learning about?  For example, I saw that the entry for physics education research is pretty paltry. Well, it looks like the chemists are away [...]

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Which is scarier: The zombie apocalypse or math? (Book review of The Calculus Diaries)

January 6, 2011

To continue the theme of the last post, today I’ll write about zombies.  I was happy to get a review copy of Jennifer Ouellette’s new book, The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse.  Jennifer is a wonderful writer (and the reason I started blogging; [...]

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Ask Dr. Ryan: Environmental videos for the classroom

December 25, 2010

It is such a pleasure to see something done well.  And that is the case with the latest initiative from one of my fellow scientists and science communicators here in Boulder — Ryan Vachon.  Ryan’s got a PhD in geology, and is now plying his trade making educational videos on science.  And man, this guy [...]

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We’re on our 500th post! Come over and say hello.

November 30, 2010

Welcome to the 500th post of sciencegeekgirl!  To celebrate, I’m going to resurrect a meme from Not Exactly Rocket Science (via Cocktail Party Physics) and ask readers to introduce themselves in the comments.  Lurkers and one-time visitors and vocal frequent visitors — you know which one you are.  Say a quick hello and tell us [...]

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