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This is the biggest problem of universities and It should be solved as soon as possible. what is wrong with these faculty, are students worng with chosing them or are lecturer wrong whilw working for them or other else???

I think we have really problem about the role of arts&scince faculty. they are supposed to prepare students to be scientists or instructors but not teachers. however, when we look at capacity of these faculties make us think that Turkey has most crowded scientist population in the world! I think for arts&science faculty we need increase in quality but decrease in numbers of capacity.

The mission and vision of the arts and science faculties should be presented clearly to high school students or to people who are about to make a decision about a department. Unfortunately, being a university graduate is perceived like a rare feature so most of the high school graduates try to enter a university avoiding the profession and department. Also, the students who hold a BS degree of a department of arts and science faculty should have given more opportunities, like scholarships or job opportunities, so that they will be able to continue their graduate education in a arts and science faculty.

Science fields do not seem famous any more.

The important point in this case is that only girls who study for A-level physics are the ones who came from Girls' schools. It means that as the text stated, mix schools have a kind of characteristic that stereotype the physics as if it was boys' area. However, in my opinion, that's not true. Unless a job does not require so much muscles, it can be handled by both males and females. In physics, the brain, intelligence, and the disciplined work is necessary which are highly available in human beings, not just only in males.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/9609566/Girls-put-off-studying-science-in-mixed-gender-schools-says-headmistress.html Another news related to this!

A book on science of learning from the cognitive psychologist: Gary Marcus

Recently I came across with this paper. According to authors Learning Science has at least 4 dimensions: Education, Neuroscience, Psychology and Machine Learning. By the way, just a fresh news: Next semester we may have a "Learning Science" course offered by Evrim Hoca ;)

Dincer, thanks a lot. I will definitely check this out.

I believe that this lesson plan is a very good example of a constructivist lesson plan for a science lesson. It has many steps that involve the student actively. And as I read I felt that the student is not only hands on, but minds on also. What I mean is that it is clearly a process-oriented plan. Even if the student can't do well in some steps, there are other activities that he can accomplish and enjoy. Also the stress on group work is evident, student can learn from each other and take responsibility. Evaluation part is also very clear, explained to the students with a rubric and it relies on presentations and all the wprk students gather till that day. Making the family involved is another strong part of this plan to me. The things that may not work can be that it takes one month totally, so to keep the attention of the students on the same topic for such a time may be hard, maybe the project could last like two or three weeks. Also the organization of the peer groups is critical.

This is an international study like PISA. Turkey is still under the average among appr. 50 countries.

"impact of technology" part made me think that using technology in education is not valuable without how to use it. The project FATİH is generally taken a big step of using technology in state schools. "What is the cost?" "Are they necessary?" "Will our teachers use it?" are most asked questions. However, "How to use it?" is rare. Here with the word "use" I don't refer to running the devices. I mean the way technology be used in accordance to the educational objectives. As Chomsky says, without knowing what to do, using educational technology effectively is difficult.

There were several points that got my attention in this video. The first one was Chomsky's sentence saying that education had a value in itself. The purpose of it was to create "better" human beings, not bigger human capital for money. At this point, he opposed to idea that all generations should be given enough knowledge about math and science in order to increase people with scientific knowledge that will lead to more money income. Rather, education should foster the ideas of being independent in thoughts, being creative, having the ability and willingness to pursue one's own interest, and learning to learn on one's own. The second one was the analogy that Chomsky used. He made an analogy between technology and a hammer. He said that with a hammer you can either construct a building or smash a school down. This is about how you use the hammer, and it is the same with technology. Thus, it is more important that for what purpose we will use the technology than simply how to use technology. The last one was about achievement tests. Chomsky said that tests do not have so much value. You can pass a test after studying hard for about 3 weeks. Nevertheless, it does not mean that you will remember even the names of the topics that was covered in the exam after 3 weeks of the exam. That's why exploration, self learning, project-based learning and formative assessment is much more important and promising compared to achievement tests.

It says that children can learn with internet without any intervention from outside -like a teacher. When the topic is not defined, children can learn what they want. But for some specific topics, they at least need the very first idea -a question, sometimes even a pre-designed system of information and instruction. Are we too much interfering to students' learning process?

Such educational frameworks support the trend of shift from teacher-centeredness to student-centeredness. In the past, when we need to ask something, we asked to our elders- in school, to teachers. Now, we have an additional elder, the internet. It can answer almost anything. In that sense, the impact of the technology can not be ignored. The idea of providing internet access to places that is scarce in terms of teachers is reasonable - which also supports the idea of distance education. Besides, bringing technology is easier and cheaper than bringing a teacher with resources. However, we still need teachers as -cliche but vital term- "facilitators" and regulators in self-learning process. It is necessary for constructivism as well as child-driven education or for any other self-learning methods. Someone is needed for wrapping-up the knowledge gained, for assessing the results, for remedying circumstances that obstruct the learning process, for deciding goals or organizing goals to be attained, and for secure and heuristic browsing on the internet. In that sense, I support the idea of "self organized learning environments" as Mitra offers, but also I contend that there should be teachers around these environments for facilitating. In short, we should not quit important elements of education while trying to make it better.

I believe although computers and instructional softwares are amazing to enhance the effectiveness of instruction, they are not enough. They are always limited. It is impossible to load them all possible questions of students and their responses. Moreover, none of the computers or softwares would be able to fulfill students' emotional and motivational needs. There is also the uniqueness of the students; not all of the students would enjoy a computer-based education. Lastly, as a science educator when I think for my area; it is never the same to make an experiment on computer and in a laboratory. Students learn better when they are actively engaged in an experiment and seethe results with their eyes.

Some useful explanations and examples for humanistic environment in a school regarding curriculum, methods and facilities

Burcu, thank you for sharing. I must confess that I did not understand the difference between humanism and neo humanism:). They seemed almost the same to me. In the movie, children are running in the environment, observing the world, helping people, establishing love and trust with peers and etc. And their ages are small. I support the idea that small children should be made aware of their uniqueness. However, when they grow up, we will have to show them science, math, history and etc. The bulk of knowledge in the world and in our education might unable school to continue humanism in education. Actually, it means that especially for higher graders, we should use humanism as an element in classrooms, not a whole teaching strategy since as wee from the video, creating humanistic classroom is not feasible at all and may not be affordable for higher number of students. In the video they said that firstly they "choose" students. It means that, it is a private school. For private school, one can create almost % 100 percent humanistic environment. However, in public schools, teachers have to integrate humanistic elements into predetermined educational environments.

Each presentation challenges the audience to think differently about an issue of local, national or global significance. Big FAT Ideas encourage audiences to engage with issues and concepts they haven't explored before, or perhaps see familiar issues from a different point of view.

This is a lesson plan I prepared during my last year of college while I was taking school experience course and attending a public school as an intern. My proffessor Jale Çakıroğlu also liked this lesson plan very much and published it in her book named "Bilimin Doğası ve Öğretimi". Moreover, I also implemented it this semester with preservice teachers at METU. I took activity from http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/gr.fs.fd.html and adapted it into Turkish. I also made some changes to make it more appropriate for 6th graders. In this activity, students are active all the time. The teacher only provides them the required materials and answer their quesions to guide them. The students work in small groups to learn the nature of science aspects with an acitivity where they act as they are scientists. The evaluation is process based not product based and this is clearly explained to the students. Since I prepared this lesson plan, actually implemented it and saw that it worked perfectly I would not change anything, but I always welcome your suggestions. :))

Gamze, thanks for sharing the lesson plan. This is an exemplary lesson plan and let's talk about it in class.

İnsan Vücudunu Kas-Kemik-Organ'ına kadar gösteren 3d modelleme. Fen Bilimleri öğretmenleri için faydalı, merak edenler için de eğlenceli bir uygulama,

We can see a brief overview of these stages which used examples for each levels..

It is really weird to watch the reasonings and answers although we read that they are so. I was surprised once again.

Yes hatice, actually I can go on applying the theory to my cousin by hiding it from Yengem, it is unethical I know:). May be I should wait until I have my own children. I can give permission myself to apply Piaget's theory to my children, no problem:), I agree saime, in one ofthe video a little girl was shown a simple triangle and was asked to draw exactly what she saw, and she drew a different sketch and showed the corners of her triangle that was completely in different places. It was in the video that Evrim Hoca posted to Diigo, I guess.