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Martin Burrett

Book: MasterClass in Science Education by @DrKeithSTaber via @BloomsburyAcad - 5 views

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    "In his new book, Professor Keith Taber reassures practicing and training science teachers, as he explores a range of issues faced by secondary school educators and discusses strategies for teaching the nature of scientific knowledge, making practical work effective and challenging young scientists. Throughout the academic prose, Professor Taber reflects on the nature of scientific knowledge in science education encouraging creating narratives, challenging misconceptions, and exploring principles of constructive teaching. The book continues with exploring specific challenges, such as teaching electrical circuits to lower secondary school students, along with a chapter dedicated to supporting gifted students who excel at the subjects."
Nigel Coutts

Understanding the true nature of science - The Learner's Way - 21 views

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    As thousands take to the streets as part of a global 'March for Science' it is worth considering the significant role that education has to play. What are the messages we need to send our students about science and what role have schools played in creating the current climate? Now seems like the time to pause and reflect on the place of science in our community and our schools.
Martin Burrett

BBC Nature - 55 views

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    The nature homepage of the BBC. A vast collection of information, photos, profiles, videos, and activities about thousands of animals, plants and natural history. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Science
Gregory Louie

Understandings of Consequence > Curriculum Modules > Ecosystems - 1 views

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    This curriculum module contains lessons to be infused into a broader unit on ecosystems. It is divided into six sections. Each section addresses one of a set of six broad and persistent misunderstandings that students have about ecosystems. These misunderstandings stem from how students reason about the nature of causality. The module sections introduce understandings about the nature of causality in ecosystems that students need to develop in order to overcome the misunderstanding and to deeply understand ecosystem concepts. Research shows that students who are taught about the nature of the causal patterns while learning science achieve a deeper understanding than students who are just taught the science
Martin Burrett

American Museum of Natural History - 74 views

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    The children's section of the American Museum of Natural History site is packed with fun, games, images and information about the natural world. Explore animals from the distant past right up to how humans read expressions. There is something for anyone. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Science
Steve Ransom

Despite Obama's Urging, Policy Stymies Science Students, Teachers Say - NYTimes.com - 18 views

  • In middle school, science fair projects are typically still required — and, teachers lament, all too often completed by parents.
  • In many schools, science fairs depend on teachers who shoulder the extra work. They supervise participants and research, raise the money for medals and poster boards, and find judges — all on their own time.
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    Sad statement of the lack of sufficient time to really get into science that leads naturally to the display of learning... on class time, not extracurricular time. The US DOE is really not interested in deep learning at all...
Michele Brown

iNaturalist.org · A Community for Naturalists - 107 views

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    A superb science site, perfect for a nature project. View and upload geo-tagged photos of animals and plants as you find them in your surroundings. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Science
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    Record your nature findings on an interactive map or explore others observations.  Learn some facts about nature and wildlife in the resources section. 
Richard Bradshaw

The Progressive Movement and the Transformation of American Politics | The Heritage Fou... - 33 views

  • Government had to be limited both because it was dangerous if it got too powerful and because it was not supposed to provide for the highest things in life.
  • In Progressivism, the domestic policy of government had two main concerns. First, government must protect the poor and other victims of capitalism through redistribution of resources, anti-trust laws, government control over the details of commerce and production: i.e., dictating at what prices things must be sold, methods of manufacture, government participation in the banking system, and so on. Second, government must become involved in the "spiritual" development of its citizens -- not, of course, through promotion of religion, but through protecting the environment ("conservation"), education (understood as education to personal creativity), and spiritual uplift through subsidy and promotion of the arts and culture.
  • Progressives therefore embraced a much more active and indeed imperialistic foreign policy than the Founders did.
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  • The trend to turn power over to multinational organizations also begins in this period, as may be seen in Wilson's plan for a League of Nations, under whose rules America would have delegated control over the deployment of its own armed forces to that body.
  • The Progressives wanted to sweep away what they regarded as this amateurism in politics. They had confidence that modern science had superseded the perspective of the liberally educated statesman. Only those educated in the top universities, preferably in the social sciences, were thought to be capable of governing.
  • Government, it was thought, needed to be led by those who see where history is going, who understand the ever-evolving idea of human dignity.
  • Politics in the sense of favoritism and self-interest would disappear and be replaced by the universal rule of enlightened bureaucracy.
  • Today's liberals, or the teachers of today's liberals, learned to reject the principles of the founding from their teachers, the Progressives.
  • That is the disparagement of nature and the celebration of human will, the idea that everything of value in life is created by man's choice, not by nature or necessity.
  • Liberal domestic policy follows the same principle. It tends to elevate the "other" to moral superiority over against those whom the Founders would have called the decent and the honorable, the men of wisdom and virtue. The more a person is lacking, the greater is his or her moral claim on society. The deaf, the blind, the disabled, the stupid, the improvident, the ignorant, and even (in a 1984 speech of presidential candidate Walter Mondale) the sad -- those who are lowest are extolled as the sacred other.
  • The first great battle for the American soul was settled in the Civil War. The second battle for America's soul, initiated over a century ago, is still raging. The choice for the Founders' constitutionalism or the Progressive-liberal administrative state is yet to be fully resolved.
  • The Progressive system managed to gain a foothold in American politics only when it made major compromises with the Founders' constitutionalism.
  • Sober liberal friends of the Great Society would later admit that a central reason for its failure was precisely the fact that it was an expertise-driven engineering project, which had never sought the support or even the acquiescence of popular majorities.
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    I hope you know better than to use any resource from such a biased source in the classroom without one from the opposite side, say the Brookings Institution in this case. I found your posting of this article from this anti- free thought organization that is a puppet of big business and the far right on an education site plain wrong.
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    Well, the truth is I did not intend to share this bookmark with Diigo Education, but somehow it was posted in the group. I had intended it only for myself as part of research I am doing.
Maureen Greenbaum

The Future of College? - The Atlantic - 29 views

  • proprietary online platform developed to apply pedagogical practices that have been studied and vetted by one of the world’s foremost psychologists, a former Harvard dean named Stephen M. Kosslyn, who joined Minerva in 2012.
  • inductive reasoning
  • Minerva class extended no refuge for the timid, nor privilege for the garrulous. Within seconds, every student had to provide an answer, and Bonabeau displayed our choices so that we could be called upon to defend them.
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  • subjecting us to pop quizzes, cold calls, and pedagogical tactics that during an in-the-flesh seminar would have taken precious minutes of class time to arrange.
  • felt decidedly unlike a normal classroom. For one thing, it was exhausting: a continuous period of forced engagement, with no relief in the form of time when my attention could flag
  • One educational psychologist, Ludy Benjamin, likens lectures to Velveeta cheese—something lots of people consume but no one considers either delicious or nourishing.)
  • because I had to answer a quiz question or articulate a position. I was forced, in effect, to learn
  • adically remake one of the most sclerotic sectors of the U.S. economy, one so shielded from the need for improvement that its biggest innovation in the past 30 years has been to double its costs and hire more administrators at higher salaries.
  • past half millennium, the technology of learning has hardly budge
  • fellow edu-nauts
  • Lectures are banned
  • attending class on Apple laptops
  • Lectures, Kosslyn says, are cost-effective but pedagogically unsound. “A great way to teach, but a terrible way to learn.”
  • Minerva boast is that it will strip the university experience down to the aspects that are shown to contribute directly to student learning. Lectures, gone. Tenure, gone. Gothic architecture, football, ivy crawling up the walls—gone, gone, gone.
  • “Your cash cow is the lecture, and the lecture is over,” he told a gathering of deans. “The lecture model ... will be obliterated.”
  • One imagines tumbleweeds rolling through abandoned quads and wrecking balls smashing through the windows of classrooms left empty by students who have plugged into new online platforms.
  • when you have a noncurated academic experience, you effectively don’t get educated.
  • Liberal-arts education is about developing the intellectual capacity of the individual, and learning to be a productive member of society. And you cannot do that without a curriculum.”
  • “The freshman year [as taught at traditional schools] should not exist,” Nelson says, suggesting that MOOCs can teach the basics. “Do your freshman year at home.”) Instead, Minerva’s first-year classes are designed to inculcate what Nelson calls “habits of mind” and “foundational concepts,” which are the basis for all sound systematic thought. In a science class, for example, students should develop a deep understanding of the need for controlled experiments. In a humanities class, they need to learn the classical techniques of rhetoric and develop basic persuasive skills. The curriculum then builds from that foundation.
  • What, he asks, does it mean to be educated?
  • methods will be tested against scientifically determined best practices
  • Subsidies, Nelson says, encourage universities to enroll even students who aren’t likely to thrive, and to raise tuition, since federal money is pegged to costs.
  • We have numerous sound, reproducible experiments that tell us how people learn, and what teachers can do to improve learning.” Some of the studies are ancient, by the standards of scientific research—and yet their lessons are almost wholly ignored.
  • memory of material is enhanced by “deep” cognitive tasks
  • he found the man’s view of education, in a word, faith-based
  • ask a student to explain a concept she has been studying, the very act of articulating it seems to lodge it in her memory. Forcing students to guess the answer to a problem, and to discuss their answers in small groups, seems to make them understand the problem better—even if they guess wrong.
  • e traditional concept of “cognitive styles”—visual versus aural learners, those who learn by doing versus those who learn by studying—is muddled and wrong.
  • pedagogical best practices Kosslyn has identified have been programmed into the Minerva platform so that they are easy for professors to apply. They are not only easy, in fact, but also compulsory, and professors will be trained intensively in how to use the platform.
  • Professors are able to sort students instantly, and by many metrics, for small-group work—
  • a pop quiz at the beginning of a class and (if the students are warned in advance) another one at a random moment later in the class greatly increases the durability of what is learned.
  • he could have alerted colleagues to best practices, but they most likely would have ignored them. “The classroom time is theirs, and it is sacrosanct,
  • Lectures, Kosslyn says, are pedagogically unsound,
  • I couldn’t wait for Minerva’s wrecking ball to demolish the ivory tower.
  • The MOOCs will eventually make lectures obsolete.”
  • Minerva’s model, Nelson says, will flourish in part because it will exploit free online content, rather than trying to compete with it, as traditional universities do.
  • The MOOCs will eventually make lectures obsolete.”
  • certain functions of universities have simply become less relevant as information has become more ubiquitous
  • Minerva challenges the field to return to first principles.
  • MOOCs will continue to get better, until eventually no one will pay Duke or Johns Hopkins for the possibility of a good lecture, when Coursera offers a reliably great one, with hundreds of thousands of five-star ratings, for free.
  • It took deep concentration,” he said. “It’s not some lecture class where you can just click ‘record’ on your tape.”
  • part of the process of education happens not just through good pedagogy but by having students in places where they see the scholars working and plying their trades.”
  • “hydraulic metaphor” of education—the idea that the main task of education is to increase the flow of knowledge into the student—an “old fallacy.”
  • I remembered what I was like as a teenager headed off to college, so ignorant of what college was and what it could be, and so reliant on the college itself to provide what I’d need in order to get a good education.
  • it is designed to convey not just information, as most MOOCs seem to, but whole mental tool kits that help students become morethoughtful citizens.
  • for all the high-minded talk of liberal education— of lighting fires and raising thoughtful citizens—is really just a credential, or an entry point to an old-boys network that gets you your first job and your first lunch with the machers at your alumni club.
  • Its seminar platform will challenge professors to stop thinking they’re using technology just because they lecture with PowerPoint.
  • professors and students increasingly separated geographically, mediated through technology that alters the nature of the student-teacher relationship
  • The idea that college will in two decades look exactly as it does today increasingly sounds like the forlorn, fingers-crossed hope of a higher-education dinosaur that retirement comes before extinction.
Nigel Coutts

Learning with the New Science & Technology Curriculum - The Learner's Way - 20 views

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    In the final weeks of 2017 a new Science & Technology Curriculum for Kindergarten to Year Six slipped into the schools of New South Wales. What does this new curriculum bring and what does it reveal about the nature of learning as we approach the year 2020?
A Gardner

How science works: The flowchart - 194 views

    • A Gardner
       
      Reminder that science is not linear in practice nor in gathering information. Work your way through the site to the lab/activities.
    • Brian Hamilton
       
      Excellent visual.
  • process of scientific inquiry
  • Most ideas take a circuitous path through the process
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    A flowchart depicting the process of scientific inquiry (nature of science). Can trace the development of different ideas. Gives a visual representation that the "scientific method" is not a rigid, sequential process that goes automatically from one step to the next.
Michele Brown

Games and Facts from Galleries of Canadian Museum of Nature - 33 views

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    These interactives originate in the galleries of the Canadian Museum of Nature. Even if you can't make it to the museum, you can enjoy a virtual experience!
London Jenks

The Difficulty of Discovery (Where Have All The Geniuses Gone?) | Wired Scien... - 99 views

  • In sciences and engineering, 99.4% of the 171 subfields have seen increased teamwork. Meanwhile, 100% of the 54 subfields in the social sciences, 88.9%of the 27 subfields in the humanities, and 100% of the 36 subfields in patenting have seen increased teamwork
    • London Jenks
       
      This highlights the need to teach our students to collaborate effectively and work well in teams. What skills do they need? 
  • We live in a world of such complexity that our problems increasingly exceed the possibilities of the individual mind. Collaboration is no longer an option.
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    Collaboration is no longer an option.
Holly Barlaam

Seminars on Science - 45 views

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    Professional development programs for educators. Online science courses offered from the American Museum of Natural History. Can earn grad credit.
jnet0124

Can Mary Shelley's Frankenstein be read as an early research ethics text? | Medical Hum... - 7 views

shared by jnet0124 on 13 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • Can Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein be read as an early research ethics text?
    • jnet0124
       
      SEE HEAR
  • Frankenstein is an early and balanced text on the ethics of research upon human subjects and that it provides insights that are as valid today as when the novel was written.
  • Mary Shelley conceived the idea for and started writing Frankenstein in 1816 and it was first published in 1818.1 In its historical context, the earlier 17th and 18th centuries had seen the early signs of the rise of science and experimentation. Francis Bacon (1561–1626) had laid the theoretical foundations in his “Great Insauration”2 and scientists such as Boyle, Newton, and Hooke developed the experimental methods. Sir Robert Talbor, a 17th century apothecary and one of the key figures in developing the use of quinine to treat fevers, underlined this: “the most plausible reasons unless backed by some demonstrable experiments seem but suppositions or conjectures”.3
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  • The 18th century saw the continued construction of foundations upon which all subsequent medical experimentation has been built.
  • Lady Mary Montagu promoted smallpox vaccination; its proponents experimented on prisoners to study its efficacy, and James Jurin, the secretary of the Royal Society, developed mathematical proof of this in the face of ecclesiastical opposition.4 Many of the modern concepts of therapeutic trials were described although not widely accepted. Empirical observation through experimentation was starting to be recognised as the tool that allowed ascertainment of fact and truth. An account of Dr Bianchini’s experiments on “Le Medicin Electrique”, reported to the Royal Society explains that “The experiments were made by Dr Bianchini assisted by several curious and learned men … who not being able to separate what was true … determined to be guided by their own experiments and it was by this most troublesome though of all the others the most sure way, that they have learned to reject a great number of what have been published as facts.”5
  • Similarly, Henry Baker’s report to the Royal Society, describing Abbe Nollet’s experiments, outlined the need for comparative studies and that “treatment should not be condemned without a fair trial”6 and a Belgian doctor, Professor Lambergen, describing the use of deadly nightshade for the treatment of breast cancer wrote “Administration of this plant certainly merits the attention of the medical profession; and surely one may add entitles the medicine to future trials … nevertheless the most efficacious medicines are such if its efficacy by repeated trials be approved.”7 In the mid 18th century James Lind conducted the first controlled trial to establish a cure for scurvy and his Treatise on the Scurvy contains what could be seen in modern terminology as the first “review of the current literature” prior to a clinical trial.8
  • Her motives for writing Frankenstein are more difficult to define. In her introduction to the 1831 edition she writes that she wanted her work to … speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror—one to make the reader dread to look round. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name … (p 7, p 8)
  • The 1818 preface, written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, indicates a deeper purpose. He wrote that the story recommends itself as it “…affords a point of view on the imagination for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield…” (p 11) and that “…I am by no means indifferent to the manner in which ... moral tendencies (that) exist in the sentiments of characters shall affect the reader…”(p 12).
Martin Burrett

Girls need more positive experiences of ball skills - 3 views

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    "Children's positive perception of moving is an important supporter for natural physical activity and developing motor skills. A study at the University of Jyväskylä suggests that children had high perceptions of motor skills. Some gender differences were identified, however: girls were better in locomotor skills and boys had higher perception and actual skills in ball skills. "Because ball skills are typically utilized in versatile surroundings and good ball skills are a predictor for more frequent physical activity levels in adolescence, we should encourage girls to play more with balls already in early education," says PhD student Donna Niemistö from Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences. "In boys, there could be more locomotor skills like galloping and hopping involved. Niemistö concludes, "All children regardless of gender have a right to have positive and encouraging experiences of movement.""
donnatmachado

Anopheles gambiae (mosquito) heart (100x) image - Nikon's 25 Top Microscopic Photos of ... - 60 views

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    As a convergence of art and science in the natural world, few things can summon a sense of wonderment like Nikon's Small World photomicrography competition.
Martin Burrett

Active Science - Humans & Animals - 47 views

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    A nicely designed quiz based activity about lots of different aspects of animals and humans, including habitat, senses and movement. Find DOC and PDF worksheets to go with this resource at http://www.abpischools.org.uk/page/modules/humansandanimals/teachers.cfm http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/science
jodi tompkins

Glossopedia Home - 64 views

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    This site is designed especially with the young learner in mind with its age-appropriate content and emphasis on visual and auditory learning. Glossopedia is the kind of site that you can leave open for students to explore and find a fast fact of the day, find their favorite image, or video Glossopedia Categories Geography and Places Nature and the Environment Technology Animals Earth and Space People and Cultures Human Body Chemistry Natural Forces This site is simple and visually pleasing. The font size is great for young learners. Words are hyperlinked to an audio pronunciation that is a real person, speaking really slowly at first then more quickly, and finally the written meaning of the word. Images and photos have a print button prominently displayed.
Roland Gesthuizen

Sudden interest in math -- how teachers can motivate pupils - 25 views

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    "The lack of interest in math or natural sciences is one of the most frequently voiced causes for concern in the debate surrounding education, at least in Germany. It has been seen time and again that pupils lose their enthusiasm for physics, chemistry and math once they reach eighth or ninth grade. But is this inevitable? And if not, how can teachers steer a different course?"
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