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For most of us, science arrives in our lives packaged neatly as fact. But how did it get that way? Science is an active process of observation and investigation. The Evidence Project examines that process, revealing the ways in which ideas and information become knowledge and understanding. a case study in human origins In this case study on human origins, we explore how scientific evidence is being used to shape our current understanding of ourselves: What makes us human-and how did we get this way?

The rocks on the lunar surface, lying virtually unchanged in a weatherless vacuum since their formation, offer opportunities to investigate the origin and evolution of the solar system available nowhere else, and the study deepens with each new generation of scientists and scientific instruments.

100 Best Education Blogs of 2009

100 Best Education Blogs of 2009

List of 100 education blogs of 2009 - I just like to "meet" new people on these lists - don't consider them definitive or scientific. Just someone's opinion.

Great Gadgets, Strange Science & Technology with a Twist "Gajitz is as much an interactive archive of innovations past, present and futuristic as it is a collection of the latest and greatest gadget designs, sensational scientific discoveries and terrific new technologies … with a twist. The primary focus of this tech publication (read: blog) is on objects, finds anddesigns that defy particular typologies, wander away from convention and are more than merely consumable objects."

For a web-based learning to be truly effective it must be interactive. This means that it is not just a reformatted canned lesson of printed worksheets placed on the web. The web-based activity is inquiry-based and incorporates the full features available on the web - interactivity between computer and student. The learning activity must engage student critical thinking skills by using the scientific inquiry process.

Great site for videos of topical scientific information. 

Sumanas develops animated tutorials in a variety of formats for many scientific disciplines.

Much more than learning about frogs. There are lessons about water conservation and pollution, scientific study, geography, 

For ten interactive games featuring ambibians, including frogs: http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/animal-games-amphibians.html

NASA calls for Citizen scientists to help map Mars and says that citizen scientists "have helped to answer serious scientific questions, provide vital data to the astronomical community, and have discovered thousands of objects including nebulas, supernovas and gamma ray bursts." It is time to join your classrooms into the citizen scientist movement. How would your students feel about science if they helped discover a star?

Citizen science website for NASA.

Links, research and readings on constructivism

David, back up your argument. If you think this is junk science, then be a real scientist and substantiate your claim. I'm a very objective thinker and will listen and gladly debate this with you, but having studied this and used it, I'm skeptical of your dissent. It is the only thing that has gotten me through our failed education system, not the reason the system has failed (unless your argument is that our system is failing due to lack of use of constructivist approaches).

Constructivism is a prime example of the dangers of deductive reasoning. Instead of starting with evidence from observed reality which the scientific method dictates (inductive reasoning) constructivism starts with theories and then makes the evidence fit the theory or else dismisses it and rationalises it away. It's the same type of thinking that has gotten all ideologues into trouble throughout history, whether it's the Spanish Inquisition, the Nazis, the hippies or the recent Wall Street bankers who drove our economy off a cliff. Any true system of thought must start with the real world as its beginning, or else it's just a bunch of people making stuff up and then defending it despite all evidence to the contrary until the weight of truth destroys them and usually the institutions they've taken over.

Welcome to the Center on Instruction, your gateway to a cutting-edge collection of scientifically based research and information on K-12 instruction in reading, math, science, special education, and English language learning.

So what is it that we want students to gain from a k-12 science education? What are the goals we should constantly work to promote in students? Considering that rote memorization of scientific ideas leads to little understanding, I have identified ten goals for students that focus on life learning skills, and other traits that will be valuable to them in the future, no matter their career choice. Each goal below is accompanied by more specific explanations of what I might see students doing who meet that goal. I hope whatever your goals are for your students, you have thought about them extensively. We all want great things for our students, but if we do not have well articulated goals, our efforts will not be focused.

"Scientific American highlights a study suggesting subjects forced to get something wrong before being told the answer learn it better."

"Ainsworth, Prain and Tyler  (2011) in a paper in Science argue that  drawing  can play a number of  important roles in learning:, namely: Drawing to enhance engagement - surveys have shown than when students draw to explain they are more motivated to learn compared to traditional teaching of science. Drawing to learn to represent in science - the process of producing visual representations  helps learners understand how scientific representations work. Drawing to reason in science - student learn to reason like scientists as they select specific features to focus on in their drawings, aligning it with observation, measurement and/or emerging ideas Drawing as a learning strategy - if learners read a text and then draw it, the process of making their understanding visible and explicit helps them to overcome limitations in presented material, organise and integrate their knowledge and ultimately can be transformative. Drawing to communicate - discussing their drawings with their students provides teachers with windows into students' thinking as well being a way that the peers can share knowledge, discovery and understanding."

"Drawing from almost 200 scientific studies on workplace meetings, a team of psychological scientists provides recommendations for making the most out of meetings before they start, as they're happening, and after they've concluded. Their report is published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Meetings are a near-ubiquitous aspect of today's professional workplace and there is abundant trade wisdom and written guidance about how meetings should be run. But, as researchers Joseph Mroz and Joseph Allen (University of Nebraska Omaha) and Dana Verhoeven and Marissa Shuffler (Clemson University) point out, very little of this guidance is informed by the available science."

"Name-calling, hair pulling or cyberbullying: About a tenth of adolescents across the globe have been the victim of psychological or physical violence from classmates at least once in their lives. A new study carried out by researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) has shown that victims and their perpetrators both suffer as a result of these attacks: They are more inclined to consume alcohol and tobacco, are more likely to complain of psychosomatic problems and their chances of having problems with their social environment increase, too. In the scientific journal "Children and Youth Services Review", the researchers plead for prevention programmes to place more emphasis on cohesion within the classroom."