Education

Junk Science

This entry was posted in Biology Education Politics Science on by

I am sure that there is a lot of junk science being performed in the world but the web site junkscience.com may not be the best place to get an objective evaluation of scientific research:

Unsuspecting visitors might think that Milloy�s site is devoted to criticizing shoddy science, but they would be wrong. If you look at what he �debunks� you will find that the real criterion for deciding what is �junk science� is not the quality of the work, but the political agenda that it might support.

As usual apply your critical thinking skills when visiting sites like junkscience.com and, well, apply them all the time.
Via John Quiqqin at Crooked Timber.

One Child Who Was Left Behind

This entry was posted in bush Education on by

Ok, I haven’t picked on someone’s use of the english language in a long time.
From Ampersand who picked it up from Trish Wilson:

George W. Bush on January 23, 2004

The illiteracy level of our children are appalling.

’nuff said.
Well, not quite enough. Trish quotes the entire paragraph for context and w’s closing sentence is:

I expect you, as mayors, to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations. I challenge you to keep raising that bar and standards.

I probably have no hope of ever understanding what he means by ‘soft bigotry’ but I do know that low expectations is a problem that does permeate our culture

“Though your qualifications are quite impressive, I regret to inform you that we have selected another candidate. It was felt that your demeanor and therefore presence in the classroom would serve as an unrealistic expectation as to what high school students could strive to achieve or become.

and that setting high expectations can lead to success.
Thanks to Resurrection Song and The World Wide Rant for the pointer to the Marquis Harris story.

Mammalian Embryology

This entry was posted in Biology Education on by

Sit down when you have some time and review this tutorial on Normal and Abnormal Mammalian Development. It is both interesting and informative:

The 3-D like quality of the micrographs coupled with selected line drawings and minimal text allow relatively easy understanding of the complex morphological changes that occur in utero. Because early human embryos are not readily available and because embryogenesis is very similar across mammalian species, the majority of micrographs that are utilized in this tutorial are of mouse embryos. The remainder are human.

There is nothing hard here and I don’t understand why students coming out of elementary school do not have a understanding of this material at this leve l(other then it is not presented to them).
Via Metafilter.

Academic Blogging

This entry was posted in Blogging Education Law on by

Professor Bainbridge quotes at length one Dean’s thoughts on blogging, scholarship and tenure:

Bottom line: While no replacement for writing articles and books, and no one is going to get tenured or promoted through blogging (at least not today); but what I’ve called a serious blogger would get a big plus on the positive side on the ledger from me when it gets to merit review time! Failing to reward it would be failing to recognize that blogging is not just another new communication medium; it is a new way to do scholarship.

The Dean also recognizes something many of you are experiencing. Blogging can absorb huge amount of time:

That being said, just reading blogs – let alone writing them – can be entirely too much fun, and could suck time away from the grind of in depth writing and research. In fact, I should be massaging my footnotes instead of writing this. I’m also advising my juniors not to get blog-happy.

Read the rest and for those interested in delving deeper there are links to a couple long discussions.