Science Education

Science and Story: How narratives can lift your lessons

March 20, 2013

I have an interesting guest post today on a subject that is dear to my heart — why narrative, or storytelling, is important in teaching science.  My former boss and mentor at the Exploratorium, Paul Doherty, always captivated teachers during his workshops by telling the most interesting stories about the history of science.  The crazy [...]

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Science puzzles to kill time…

December 17, 2012

Here is a useful tidbit from a teachers’ listserv. Oftentimes in class you finish a topic early and there’s not enough time to start a new topic and you don’t have any extra credit planned. So, what are some good science puzzles you can pull out of your pocket? Several veterans responded with their favorites. [...]

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Notes from the (GK12) field

November 25, 2012

There are precious few opportunities for graduate students to get a taste of outreach or teaching.  One of those, the GK12 program, gives STEM graduate students some pedagogical training and then places them in a student-teacher type of role in K12 classrooms.  Sadly, the funding for that program was recently cut, so the program is [...]

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Talks at the University of Oregon (Cognitive Science & Science Communication)

May 3, 2012

I just came back from the University of Oregon, in beautiful Eugene, where I did a series of workshops and talks.  Here are the materials and slides from those talks, for anyone interested in these materials. What every teacher should know about cognitive research. This talk looks at some of the findings from cognitive psychology [...]

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Frank Oppenheimer lab setup at CU Boulder

March 21, 2012

I blogged earlier about the wonderful must-read book, “Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens,” about Frank Oppenheimer’s philosophy of science education and exploration, and his eventual founding of the best place on earth, the Exploratorium.  You can see another review of the book on the blog Bioephemera, and read the first chapter of the book here. Below [...]

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FTEP “Effective facilitation of clickers” workshop

March 16, 2012

I just gave a workshop, along with Steve Pollock, for our faculty teaching excellent program at CU-Boulder on how to effectively facilitate clicker questions in the classroom. I love giving this particular workshop — working on writing questions themselves is fun, but here is where we get to get into the nitty-gritty of how to [...]

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Large lecture inquiry: How to engage students in the practices of science

March 11, 2012

I’m behind in my blogging from the AAPT Winter Meeting, but better late than never. I had the pleasure of meeting Fred Goldberg at this meeting, an influential teacher and education researcher.  Even without knowing that he’s an important guy, you can sense his charm and intelligence like a warm glow.  He’s very thoughtful and [...]

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Seeking the warm spot: My nonlinear career path in science writing and education

February 29, 2012

I was recently invited to write an article for the Agora blog on women and science on my career path.  The resulting article is on their blog, but I am cross-posting it here for y’all: ——— I’ve spent a lot of my life worrying about what to do for a job.  I’ve had so many [...]

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Clicker workshops at Berkeley: Writing questions and effective facilitation

February 5, 2012

I did a workshop at UC Berkeley last week on the effective use of clickers, co-sponsored by the Physics, Chemistry, and IT departments.  We did a two part series:  The first workshop was on writing effective clicker questions, and the second on effective facilitation of clickers in the classroom. The abstracts are below, and you [...]

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Weird Experiments and Mad Science

January 2, 2012

I found out recently about a very entertaining blog (and accompanying book, see below), Weird Experiments.  He doesn’t post very often, but what he posts is fascinating and well-researched.  The book — THE MAD SCIENCE BOOK: EXPERIMENTS FROM THE WILDER SIDE OF SCIENCE — is an entertaining look at a laundry list of interesting experiments [...]

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A summary of the research on how to study

December 19, 2011

To follow up on the last post on the videos pitched to students on how to study, I want to direct your attention to a wonderful resource I just found out about: Organizing Instruction and Study to Improve Student Learning. It was published by IES, the Institute for Educational Sciences, which is the scientific arm [...]

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The Flipped Classroom: Using class time for learning, not presentation

December 5, 2011

I write a lot about teachniques (just coined that phrase, how do you like it?) to get students more interactive and engaged in your courses.  But a lot of teachers aren’t sure how to take the time to do those activities given how much content there is to cover.  As you might be aware, one [...]

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Where can I get good clicker questions?

November 7, 2011

I give a lot of workshops on the use of clickers and peer instruction to improve student engagement and deep learning.  I just found out about one more useful place to get good question items. Quick background information — I promote the use of clickers to help facilitate getting students to discuss and argue through [...]

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Learning Assistant Liveblogging: Pedagogy course

November 3, 2011

Once again, liveblogging from the national Learning Assistant Workshop in Boulder. When we started out the conference this afternoon, and participants shared their primary area of interest in learning more about effectively running an LA program, I’d say about half of the crowd Steve Iona talked to us about what that pedagogy course entails, and [...]

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Education Emergency First Responders: Learning Assistant workshop liveblog

November 2, 2011

I’m currently at the national Learning Assistant Workshop in Boulder.  Since I’m right here, I thought it would be useful for me to learn more about LA programs that are being created at various institutions.  I’ll liveblog from the conference a little bit.  One thing that I’ll say up-front though — if you’re interested in [...]

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Teaching faculty about effective use of clickers #clickers

September 13, 2011

I’ve been working for the past several years to figure out the best ways to teach faculty about how to use clickers effectively; to engage students, ask questions that get students thinking, and to use peer discussion to help students work together to learn from the questions.  It’s not always easy.  Recent research has shown [...]

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Ideas for the first week of class: Teaching the nature of science (and evolution)

August 8, 2011

At the start of the school year, a lot of science classes start by trying to answer — what is science?  What is this endeavor and what makes it special?  One way to do that is by the dull-and-deadening pedantic introduction to the scientific method, emphasizing the formation of hypotheses and testing of those hypotheses [...]

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Providing validated tests for instructors to use (#AAPTsm11)

August 4, 2011

Our plenary speaker this morning was Thomas Holme, of Iowa State University, speaking to us about the standardized assessments in chemistry.  Sounds boring, but he raised some interesting and insightful thoughts about assessment. He started out by describing the fine line he has to walk as an instructor: “Teaching is inherently personal and inescapably corporate.  [...]

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Teaching with style: Physics to stake your life on

June 29, 2011

A friend just sent me this YouTube video, and I show it here as an example of how lecture can be used to utmost effectiveness.  A bit of showmanship, a memorable experiment, and crystal clear explanations: What strikes me is that this instructor has got this class in the palm of his hand. Not just [...]

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Free online textbooks (and prisoner education)

June 27, 2011

I get a surprising number of comments and emails about my post regarding a college education for inmates.  I take this as a sad indication of just how few resources there are out there for education for incarcerated persons. I used to volunteer at the Prison University Project at San Quentin — the only program [...]

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